Veronika Wild

The train chugs into the station*  It's a shame you can't hear the sound *Apologies for poor images too. This is a screen shot from a small video that I couldn't upload. Others are a bit blurry because of the vibration of the train I love the smell of railway stations in the morning, especially when it's accompanied by the hiss of steam and a whiff of coal dust. Today it’s my turn on the West Coast Heritage Railway. Even though the destination is known and not that far, there is still that sense of anticipation -of an unknown adventure waiting -and of comings and goings.   Not relishing the idea of expired milk in my coffee, I had come early to have breakfast at the Tracks Café at the station. The coffee was excellent and not over -priced, the croissant with butter and jam was just right and the big fire was a bonus.   Great care has been taken with the station's restoration. Local rainforest timber has been used throughout - from the elaborate ticket office ...

Mists rise from Mt. Owen at the end of Orr Street, Queenstown's main street I finally had a ride on the West Coast Heritage Railway a couple of weeks ago. The last time I tried to do it, my van tossed its mortal coil halfway up the Tarraleah Hill, which is itself about halfway between Hobart and Queenstown. Although the van has since been fixed, I have been a bit apprehensive about doing it again as the van is getting on and those hills haven’t gotten less steep. To my delight, because of the high fuel prices, our State Government has made the buses free around the state - not just the urban ones, to help rural tourist operators.  A few of us were going to do this together, but we couldn’t agree on a mutually acceptable date when the train was also running, so here I was doing it alone. There was just one catch. The buses only ran on Tuesdays and Fridays to the West Coast, which meant spending three nights in Queenstown. I’d never been there as a tourist and it was the beginning o...

There is a peculiar magic to a Tasmanian winter that mainlanders and other visitors never quite understand until they've lived it. Even if you have managed to cram in a trip around the state, taking in its major cities and maybe Cradle Mountain and Strahan, you may have missed some of the best things of all.     It arrives gently — in the blue-grey light that lingers even at noon, in the woodsmoke curling from chimneys up and down the streets of its quaint C19th villages, in the cold that doesn't so much bite as settle. There’s less traffic and there are even fewer tourists.     Into the Woods Take yourself down or more likely up to a forest. Mt. Wellington/Kunyani is closest to Hobart, but   Mt. Field or the Hartz Mountains are also among the best places down South. Meander Forest Reserve near Deloraine is one of my favourites in the North, though there are plenty of others – Lilydale and Evercreech in the East, almost anywhere in the West, in fact, ju...