MOT Tour Day 38 - Strathgordon

Ted's Beach

Third day at Strathgordon and we spent it cleaning up the bits we hadn’t done. Starting after breakfast, we walked a hundred metres to Jack’s track, a short 30 minute walk reputed to be a lovely example of rainforest.

Nope. Overgrown, wet and not recently walked, we were brushing vegetation aside to try and make passage. Given warnings about the number of Tiger Snakes about, the latest - issued as recently as yesterday by reception staff - we bailed. The decision had no sooner been made than I came a cropper. A thin layer of wet soil over a flat section of wet rock caused slipping of my boot and I folded up like a cheap picnic table from ALDIs.

No great damage done. Knee is a bit sore. Ego will heal.

We retraced our original path coming to Strathgordon. It looked better without the rain. A few stops along the way enhanced our knowledge of the place - its history and geography.

Ted’s Beach is the main camping area, located right on lake’s edge, with supplied septic toilets, camp kitchen and limited access to power through a few power points in the camp kitchen. No power, no water so you need to be self-sufficient.

McPartlan Pass Canal

At McPartlan Pass Canal, we found out that Mr McPartlan was an intrepid explorer, the first white man to find a passage west as far as the place that would become Strathgordon. The canal we were looking at connects Lake Pedder to Lake Gordon, so that water can be channelled through to Lake Gordon power station to generate electricity. About 41% of the power produced at LGPS comes from Pedder but it needn’t be so. It was at this point in McPartlan’s journey west that he found a pass through the mountains and down into the original Lake Pedder. The engineers, a hundred years later, took advantage of the easy passage to push through a canal.

Our last point before return was at an art installation called Bitumen Bones. Art installation, I hear you cry! Yes, at the most dramatic bend in the Gordon River Road, one where the Sentinel Range is close enough to intimidate you, Alex Miles has created an immersive sculpture depicting bleached skeletal remains of a wombat which has become road kill, which is being picked over by a crow. On one wall, the poem by Sarah Day which inspired the piece, has been reproduced. How wonderful to see a poet’s words so publicly recognised.

Bitumen Bones & the Sentinels

Of course, the main event are the Sentinels, a range which run like the spine of a giant laying face down beside Wedge River which flows past in the sharp valley below where you stand. The pink quartzite is exposed in monumental cliffs above you and vegetation fills cracks and crevices in defiance of gravity or common sense. It’s an awesome scene so reminiscent of the Scottish Highlands that difference is hard to tell.

The scoot back to Strathgordon was fun. With no van on the back to be responsible for and in dry weather and over a slightly more familiar track, I could “drive” the road closer to my and the Forester’s capability.

In the afternoon we readied the van for travel tomorrow, powering up its systems and returning clothes and other items to its cubby holes, before a few beers on the deck of the Wilderness Lodge with the Pedder and her mountains as companions.

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Strathgordon - Pedder Wilderness Lodge - has been a wonderful break from close-quarters living, coming as it has halfway through our Tassie odyssey. Another awaits us up in the mountains at Lake St Clair, starting from tomorrow.