The weekend before last Ella and I drove up to the northeast see Anita, who was visiting from Queensland. Anita was down to spend a week walking a new track with some of 'The Friends of the Blue Tier'. The Blue Tier is one of the few remaining areas of wild forest in Tasmania’s North-East, and one of Tasmania’s most controversial forest flashpoints in the state-wide debate over logging. The Friends have been trying to generate publicity about the area by developing the through-walk and linking up a number of forest reserves to create a new national park. This way they hope to get some of the forest protected.
We drove up on Saturday morning taking the scenic route and visiting Evercreech forest reserve. There we saw the rather impressive White Knight trees, and very large they were:
We drove on the maze of forestry roads to get to Pyengana ... although not exactly directly as we got a bit lost, and made it to Leslie's house where Anita was waiting. They took us up to a great camping spot for the night, from where we could see much of the northeast highlands:
It is quite sad to think that nearly all of this is reserved for forestry. But the next day we got to take a stroll through the old growth forests that make the Blue Tier so special, and the thought that on a whim the whole area can be destroyed to make paper made me more angry than sad. They get about $15/tonne of tree apparently! This 600 year old tree is protected with a 40m zone around it. I'm sure it would really last a long time if they clearfelled the surrounding areas!
We had lunch by a stream and stopped off at the Cradle Tree on the way back to the car, before the four hour drive back to Hobart:
It was another cracking weekend, and particularly good to see some of a lesser known part of Tassie.
