Veronika Wild

Bruny – Day 2 Labillardiere Peninsula Ranger time 5 hours according to the original sign, 6.5 is probably for normal bushwalkers. My time - around 7 hours, not counting the false start I stayed at the Jetty Beach Campground in the far south of South Bruny overnight. It’s lightly timbered and sheltered from the sea. Even the long drops are light and clean, don’t smell and have a little tank and tap at the back so you can wash your hands. They have come a long way from those that were on the Franklin, but one of the tanks is already empty and there are no bins. Rumour has it that this year there were 200,000 visitors on the island, though many of them were probably day trippers. Wild seas and rocky headlands are the order of the day The wind howled and the forecast said as it had for the past two weeks, “Possible morning shower.” There is no specific weather report for Bruny and there is no signal here so what I had was issued two days ago. It seems that the Weather ...

Waiting for the ferry. It's drizzly but the excitement is palpable You could say I went overseas this week. OK, not far - only twenty minutes by ferry, but it was a different world. The ferry leaves from the little seaport of Kettering, about an hour south of Hobart. It's not too expensive at around $38 return for cars and it's free for passengers, but there was still that little frisson of excitement.   When I think about Bruny, being an island of an island State and that Bruny itself has islands, it makes me think of Matryoshka dolls or boxes within boxes, bracketed equations or something which quietly does my head in. Couldn't help noticing this spider on the car in front The bumper sticker seemed very apt   Bruny, named after French explorer Bruni D'Entrecasteaux who mapped the Channel in 1792 and 1793, sprawls along the coast between Kettering and Cockle Creek, almost as far South as you can go for about 100 kilometres. It is in fact two i...

Early Morning at Dee Lagoon - the smoke haze hasn't diminished   I turn right towards Ouse at the T-junction with the road to Liena and shortly after there’s a sign pointing to the Victoria Valley Falls. This is rarely shown on any tourist map and it doesn’t take too long to find out why.   It says carpark 200m, but when I get close it is not clear which of several wide spots in the road is the car park. I end up at the bottom of the hill, where a bridge has either been washed or burnt out at some stage. There is no indication of which way to go, but by chance I walk back up the way I have come first, rather than continuing over the creek and up the hill.   I would say neither party has been here since these signs were erected   As it happens there are two signs in the bush which I didn’t see from the car. One says “Victoria Falls Walking Track 20 minutes return.” The other says this is "A joint project between Forestry Tasmania, Parks and Wildli...