A quick trip in North West Tasmania

The reason that I was in Tasmania riding a Moto Guzzi Stelvio 1200 NTX is a bit too convoluted for this blog but there I was under beautiful Autumn sun.

I have been to Tasmania a number of times but a couple of places had eluded me.

The far north west coast and the Tarkine Rain Forest wilderness.

Arthur River has a lovely camp ground in the remote North West Coast.

Near the mouth of the river there is a little beach and lookout at a place called The Edge of the World. The longest uninterrupted stretch of ocean in the world bound against these shores.

Travelling west from here the next stop is Patagonia.

The drift wood on the beach dragged across the sea by the pounding waves of the great Southern Ocean.

Even when it’s a still day the waves roll in on their relentless motion.

There was time for a swim under the warm sun rays of the late afternoon sun.

Before the sun set.

South of Arthur River there is a road junction. Heading south is the Western Explorer a gravel road that runs 150km south to Zeehan. The road west is the Tarkine Drive the winds through a mixture of farmland and wilderness.

The Tarkine Wlderness is an amazing temperate rain forest.

The Tarkine is limestone country with a number of sinkholes some of which have been plugged by forest debris to form lakes and ponds.

Being a rainforest there is also an array of beautiful fungi

The unique Tarkine Widerness is currently a battleground between conservationists and logging and mining interests.

If you would like to support the preservation of this unique wilderness contact https://bobbrown.org.au/

It was a short trip to this beautiful place but I’m sure I will be back.

The Giants provides insight into the importance of old growth forest and the Giants in them. Trees 100 metres high and thousands of years old.

Jewels in the South of Western Australia-Denmark and Esperence/Cape Le Grand

After months in the hot tropics of northern Australia and the arid dry coast of central Western Australia arriving in the cool damp southern parts of the state was a sharp change of environment.

The area was cool and moist with rain never far off and a swim in the Southern Ocean is nothing short of bracing.

The landscape around the river and lake is quite beautiful.

But for my the highlight was walking through the coastal forest of Black Butt, Paper Bark and Melaleuca trees.

With the colour of wildflowers and moss sprinkled through

Around 350km east of Denmark is the city of Esperance with the Cape Le Grand National Park near by.

The coast at Cape Le Grand is wild in natural beauty etched by the wind and water.

It’s the quartz in the granite rock formations that makes the sand the whitest in Australia.

In an environment like this I could not help but scale a peak

Or take a dip in the cold waters of the Southern Ocean.

Cape le Grand was such a peaceful beautiful place.

A mother kangaroo happy to show off her baby joey.

Maybe we should all pause a time and think about the beauty of the natural world because it is nature that sustains us.

Maybe can all stand up like the people of little Denmark did in the lead up the World Climate Change Conference and say We Can Do It by cherishing our natural world.

In Queensland it’s coal vs nature on the FrontLine Action on Coal (FLAC)

In North Queensland only a few hundred kilometres inland from the World Heritage Great Barrier Reef is some of the most intensive coal mining in the world.

The Stop Adani Campaign has been the headline battle to try and stop the coal behemoth swallow up the fragile land water and wildlife churn it and just spit it out as tailing and pollution

And the fight still goes on at FLAC https://frontlineaction.org/

The west of Queensland is dry and outside the wet season the riverbeds are dry sand

And farmers, animals, birdlife and native flora rely on water stored underground.

It bubbles up in springs across inland Australia. The springs I swam in on the Oodnadatta Track, thousands of kilometres away are linked and fed water by the Queensland springs.

Springs like Doongmabulla Spings https://www.defendourwater.org/springs#:~:text=The%20Doongmabulla%20Springs%20complex%20is,very%20dry%20landscape%5B1%5D.&text=These%20springs%20are%20like%20oases,They%20also%20support%20remarkable%20ecosystems.