I am a really slack blogger

I  apologise to those following this blog ... and I am amazed at how many there are ... for being so far behind with daily reports.  Sadly many places in Tasmania have poor internet coverage and often to download pics takes hours with constant service provider interruptions.  It gets very tiring and frustrating.  But I promise to bring it all up to date when we get home after 9th December.  Just check back after that please.  Gordon and Barabara.  And we still miss you heaps GUS! 

The trout that got away …

Having held a fascination for me over many years, I finally got to try fly fishing for trout when I moved to Melbourne in August 2009 and discovered I was very close to the headquarters of the Southern Fly Fishers Club at Highett.

Most of my life I have been a salt-water fisherman of sorts … starting in 1943 at age 5, when my mother and new step-father commenced annual camping holidays. They would fish from beach and/or rocks at places like Jerry Bailey (renamed Shoalhaven Heads in 1955), Huskisson /Jervis Bay and Coledale …all great ocean fishing spots on the NSW (Australia) south coast.

Fishermen always have hard luck stories to tell, but before I write about my most recent here in Tasmania, I want to relate not so much ”fish that got away” stories … more situations and events that occurred while on fishing holidays with my parents.

In February 1943, living conditions in Australia were tough because of the Second World War. Basic foodstuffs such as butter, flour, sugar and tea were in really short supply and only available on the production of government-issued food ration coupons.   

In my step-father’s 1929 “Bullnose” Morris Cowley  tourer just like this: (picture, courtesy Unique Cars & Parts) 

we drove from Bondi Junction to Jerry Bailey ... a long, tough drive given the design of that vehicle and the condition of the roads.   

My parents were expecting the fish they caught to be our primary food source, supplemented with locally grown vegetables. 

However it was stormy all the first week, which put paid to any fishing success, and the only vegetables available in the area were SWEDE TURNIPS! 

For the whole damned week, our breakfast, lunch and dinner consisted of nothing but boiled Swede turnips and stale unbuttered bread.  I have never again in my life been able to even LOOK at a Swede turnip without wanting to dry wretch!

The second of my “fishing” tales is one of great tragedy.  My step-father married my widowed mother when I was 4 years old.  By the time I was 11, I had come to loathe him (an attitude that did change in time I must confess) 

He was a miserable penny–pinching man who intensely disliked children. Because of this, we never holidayed as a family during designated school vacation time … that would be more expensive and bring him into contact with “too many noisy bloody kids”. 

So my parents’ annual vacation was always in February when schools had re-opened after the six week Christmas summer break. In February of 1948 and ‘49 we camped at Coledale, south of Sydney, north of Wollongong. (Picture courtesy Surf-Sisters)

 

On both occasions I was enrolled for three weeks at the Coledale Public School, which sat atop a cliff overlooking the beach-level camping ground. I hated it. The local children did not like “strangers”, and the school’s curriculum, handled by one teacher taking three grades, was totally foreign to me.   

The worst part however, was sitting at my desk, looking out the window and seeing both my parents enjoying themselves fishing off the beach or the northern rocks!

They didn’t do this on Wednesday 23^rd February 1949 however. The weather that day was absolutely filthy … gale-force winds, rain squalls, low cloud and ferocious waves pounding the beach. 

 

And those on the beach that day were certainly not fishermen. They were frantically trying to launch the Coledale surf life boat into mountainous seas with little success.  Several times the boat was flung high into the air and its hapless volunteer oarsmen thrown into the boiling ocean only meters from the beach. Further out to sea, just discernible in the haze, a Catalina flying boat circled low and dropped a flare. 

Can't you can imagine the reaction to all this of a classroom of 9-11 year-olds. Not much school work done that day. Only late in the afternoon did we learn of the capsize during the night of the tiny (500-tonnes) blue-metal-carrying coastal freighter, “Bombo” (Photo courtesy United Divers- see link below)

with the loss of 12 of her 14 crewmen. I urge you to read the story of this disaster via this link. Use your computer’s zoom facility to make more readable the long lines of very small type. It is worth the effort because it is a true story, well told with a diver's video of the sunken Bombo.

I recently re-visited that school which occupied only 6 weeks of my life, but created memories that are forever burned into my brain.

But, back to my hard-luck trout fishing tale. Before coming to Tasmania I met Roger Butler, the principal of Red Tag Trout Tours who operates out of Kingston, a short drive south of Hobart.

He did a presentation on trout fishing in Tasmania to about 70 Melbourne enthusiasts at the Pro Angler shop in Bentleigh             

After seeing what Roger was offering I couldn’t wait to get to Tasmania quickly enough to have him guide me to the big ones.

Now I must say at the outset that Roger’s service is not cheap … but let me assure you, he is worth every cent that he charges.

He picked Barbara and me up from Snug caravan park and drove us to a private dam of about 7 acres (3 hectares) with a depth of about 70 feet (20 meters) at the dam wall. The dam was well stocked with brown trout and rainbows.

Even though I had tuition with the Southern Fly Fishers, Roger first proceeded to revise what I had learned and demonstrated the correct techniques for casting under various situations.

He soon had me casting well 80% of the time and untangled the “wind knots” I created with the other 20%.

      

Part of Roger's instruction (all set out in a thick folder he presents to each client) is the technique for identifying the lure or "fly" most likely to attract the trout on that day. In this next picture is a live nymph Roger found under a log at the water's edge and the imitation nymph concealing a tiny hook we used in an effort to fool the fish.

After a "Red Tag' lunch, we were ready to take on the "big ones". At the deep end of the dam Roger had me casting with a dry fly, and in the background, seated in a folding chair Roger had provided for her, Barbara had the camera aimed and focused right on the lure.

Without warning, there was a huge explosion of surface water and my line tautened. (In pic above, by enlarging to full screen, you can see the fish's big tail and half his body high out of the water) Through lack of experience with fly fishing gear, I failed to raise the rod butt vertically and haul on the line in left hand at the same time ... compounding my errors by taking backward steps. For a brief moment I felt this enormous strain on the line and then nothing ...

nothing but that emptiness in the gut a fisherman feels when he realises he has "dropped" a special fish.
And it was all the more painful for both pupil and teacher when the series of shots Barbara had managed to capture were reviewed ... a much more skillful performance with camera than with rod. Score: Barbara One - Gordon Nil.

But that is the wonderful thing about fishing ... there is always tomorrow ...

Was I happy with the first day of Roger Butler's Red Tag Trout Tour?  You bet your sweet bippy I was.  I can't wait for the day we do the fast running stream section as soon as the weather is right.

And for this lucky couple touring Tasmania ... tomorrow a new day dawns

Where were you on 7th February 1967?

(Elvis calendar courtesy a1dvorin.com)

7th February, 1967 eh?

Well, if you are 42 or younger, you hadn’t even been born. 

And if you are aged 43 to 52, your memories of anything around that time are not likely to be very vivid … unless of course you were living in Tasmania on that day!

I have a pretty fair idea where I was.

Being a Tuesday, I would have been in the city working my butt off as an advertising rep for Radio Station 2SM, Sydney. I'd have been selling "time"in the new Mike Walsh "Two-Way Radio Show" ... the first REGULAR  talk-back program in Australia. I had to work hard because I was supporting a wife and a son aged 6 years 4 months, another son just turned 4,  a third aged 2 years 8 months and a daughter not yet  9 months old.

We were living in a dreadful three-bedroom weatherboard cottage on a huge area of land (by suburban block standards) at 24 Vine Street Hurstville, NSW Australia.  

That was right in the heart of St.George Rugby League territory … a club, on that day, still basking in the glory of its history-making 11^th straight Grand Final win just 4 months earlier.

In that tinderbox-dry, 80 year old, house with it’s rusty corrugated iron roof, my wife and kids would not have stood a chance had a fire broken out … it would have burned to the ground in minutes. 

So I am sure the risk of fire would have been right there, to the forefront of my mind, on the 7^th February 1967.  

Yet today, 43 years later, for the life of me, I have absolutely no recollection at all of the holocaust that engulfed ¾ of the State of Tasmania that day.

Sixty two men, women and children lost their lives, and more than 900 others were injured. To comprehend the full extent of the horror, click on this link to Wikipedia and read the section headed  “Death toll and damage”.                                    

(Photo courtesy Huon Valley Council Tas) 

It is all quite unbelievable.    

I have wracked my brain trying to understand why I have no recollection of the disaster at all. 

However, I soon realised that, back then, we did not have the level of TV news coverage we have today. 

To give you some idea of how “primitive” things were, color television did not commence for another 7 years after the Tassie fires. 

And come to think of it, man's first setting foot on the moon on 20^th July in 1969 was a huge black and white TV spectacular!

(The photo above is the property of  Eric Berry whose permission to publish we gratefully acknowledge)

So why would I remember the Tassie bushfires?  I wasn’t a regular newspaper buyer (couldn’t afford them, and had no time to read them anyway ) and I sure as hell couldn’t afford one of "them new fangled transistor radio thingies".

What was it then that triggered all this awareness of the 1967 Tasmanian bushfires now?  

It was the self-drive tour Barbara and I did of some of the "Huon Valley Trail" on 30th September. Tourism Tasmania are so good at providing visitors with comprehensive maps and background data about the various geographical regions of the State.  

Later on this page you will see how that trip brought home to us jut how bad those fires must have been.  From our home-base at the excellent Snug caravan park, we drove south on the Channel Highway to Kettering, which is the D'Entrecasteaux Channel port for the huge ferry that services both North and South Bruny Islands.

A stop here gave us the opportunity to check out ferry times and prices for when we move across to those fascinating islands.

At this early stage of the drive we had still not come face to face with the reality of the 1967 fires, even though Kettering must have been in the thick of them.

Further south on the Channel Highway at Woodbridge we were able to engage in a rewarding conversation with a grandfather and grandson thoroughly enjoying their time together fishing off the pier. It was bitterly cold and there was lots of green cabbage weed to strangle their hooks. At least they had a small but legal-size  flathead to show for their dedication.

Unfortunately we arrived on the wrong day to gain admission to an important  teaching facility on the pier which forms part of the Woodbridge Public school ... namely the Marine Discovery Centre.

 

Sign boards tell of the wonderful benefits Tasmanian students gain from their study of marine life and the related career successes gained by former students of the school.

We were curious to also learn about what appeared to be some kind of recycled diving bell moored at the pier, but did not feel like interrupting our fisherman friends again with more pesky questions!

Our next stop was Middleton, and once again we had the opportunity to engage in an entertaining conversation with a local ... a little more entertaining for us than her apparently ... so we didn't stick around!

Two bedraggled bystanders were invited to have their say, but "no cormorant" was all we could get from them!

It was a walk along the road beside the Channel at Middleton that finally focused our attention on the ferocity of the 1967 fires. 

Along the path, Kingborough Council, with the support of the local Ratepayers Association, have erected at least three informative display panels detailing the early history of the region and the devastating effect the fires had on the community. We suggest you use your computer's zoom function to view the images and read the text in the next few pics. It's fascinating stuff!

The two remaining "slip" cottages built about 175 years ago

 
From Middleton, the Huon Valley "Trail" next took us 4km to Barbara's favorite little spot in Tasmania ... GORDON! (Well I think that's what she said ... something about little anyway!)

If you have been following our blog you would know I love to photograph birds and at Gordon I had so much joy getting up close and personal with this tern ... he was such a poser! Could some ornithologist please leave a comment as to which race of "Sterna" it belongs.

A short distance further we found ourselves at Randall's Bay where the D'Entrecasteaux Channel is at it's widest. This looked like an ideal spot for Gordon to try once more to catch a sea trout from the beach.

Check the slide show on the right as Barbara catches Gordon in the act of being caught by a unexpected incoming wave ... talk about the Dance of the Sugar Plump Fairy! 

We didn't need to look across at the the Hartz Mountains to be reminded how unseasonably chilly it was for the last day of the first month of Spring!

But the tranquility of the landscape overlooking Randall's Bay and the Channel made it all worthwhile.


With tummies grumbling about a  lack of sustenance, it was time to head back North to the charming township of Cygnet, where we had heard about a very popular eatery called "The Red Velvet Lounge".

It's reputation was well deserved! The ambiance was warm and inviting ...

and the gateaux ... certainly not for "waist watchers"!

So when you find yourself in Cygnet, Tasmania, "swan" on down to The Red Velvet Lounge.  You'll love it.


And for these two Tassie tourists, tomorrow a new day dawns.

The Apple Isle’s changing face

(Record of activities on 27^thSeptember, 2010 but posted on above date. Apologies to regular readers for the delay but internet access can be very difficult in some places we stay)

While once famously known as the “Apple Isle”, that tag is no longer appropriate for today’s Tasmania.  Changing markets and an increased diversity into other industries has seen to that.  But somehow the “Atlantic Salmon Isle” just doesn’t have the same “crisp” ring to it, and, in fact, sounds decidedly “fishy”. 

Aquaculture (marine farming) has for almost 20 years been the buzz word here, and whenever you are close to the mouth of any of the mighty Tasmanian river systems you are likely to find huge floating cages chocka-block with Atlantic Salmon, or other seafood delicacies. 

Tasmania’s clean mineral-enriched water is just perfect for the prolific production big healthy specimens and the world demand for Tassie-grown seafood is going through the roof. 

The pictures above were taken on 27th September, 2010 en route to our major destination for the day.      

It is along time since Tasmania had such a cold wet September.  And while everyone understands the need for rain, especially when there has been a long drought, it sure puts a damper on tourist activities. 

Faced with a forecast of yet another day of cold wind and scattered heavy rain, inside somewhere seemed the best place to be, but with plenty of room to stretch our legs. Where more suitable than the largest cave complex in Australia, the Hastings Caves, north of Southport in the fabulous Huon Valley.

Mind you, the forestry road from the Huon Highway to the caves parking area (a quite considerable distance) after a long spell of rain meant "Ranndy" really getting down and getting dirty and the 4WD option certainly aided straight line forward progress!

The walk to the caves entrance from the parking area passes through magnificent rain forest, so much of which we have experienced on this trip.

I never ceased to be captivated by it, and my eyes always stray to any stream my ears have told me is concealed somewhere close by. I feel sure in that sound there is a trout whispering, "Catch me if you can!"

A guide is on hand to take visitors on a 45 minute walk through a small portion of the total underground labyrinth ... the section  known as the Newdegate Cave, estimated to be 40 million year old. 

In our case, the guide was Jason, whose love for the caves and passion for his work was just so obvious. Can you imagine, five to seven times a day, shepherding 30 gawping tourists, constantly blazing away with flash cameras, up and down hundreds of steps along a kilometer or so of carefully laid walkways, while you keep up a witty, yet seemingly, ad lib commentary? You would HAVE to love the work with a passion, wouldn't you, especially when the temperature is a constant 9 degrees Celsius!

Jason told us that the entrance to the caves was not found by Europeans until 1917, when timber-cutters stumbled upon it.  By then, white settlers had been in the region for nigh on a century.

Over the almost-100 years since, an extensive labyrinth of caves reaching over 40 kilometers in length has gradually been explored ... only a fraction of which is accessible to anyone other than carefully-vetted permit-holding speleologists, so significant is their archaeological and paleontological importance.

I wonder if we were to go way, way, way back would we find "ole Nick" himself?

I'll bet all these people who were on the tour with us would just love to know!