Veronika Wild

Once more into the Rainforest   Apart from an impromptu stop at the Mole Creek Market, where I spent most of my money, the next day proved to be rather disappointing.   I had managed to find someone who had not only heard of, but been to Sensation Gorge Falls, but apparently he had only succeeded by clinging onto bushes and hauling himself up a cliff face. Undeterred, I went along to the rangers’ office at nearby Marakoopa Cave. Though they went to great lengths to show me where the track began, they also warned me that the last time someone had come to cut the track, they had given up after encountering four snakes in the first few metres.  Enthusiastic worker at the apple juice stand, Mole Creek Market Ever hopeful, I soon I found myself at a dry scrubby creekbed beset with knee high grass.   Having a pathological fear of snakes, I was about to put my gumboots on, when it occurred to me that if there was no water in the creek, there was pr...

The Great Western Tiers provide the backdrop for this barn "with character" as youngest son would say. The mood changes as I near the end of the Lakes Highway and enter gentle farming country. The music this landscape evokes is more like the tender ballads of John Denver, especially Country Roads.   These country roads make right angled turns around farmers’ fields and their edges are lined with buttercups and daisies and hawthorn in bloom. Another old farm building with character It must have been a spring like this when I first fell in love with Tasmania. The grass is lush and green, the fields of poppies are almost in flower and fluffy lambs, fat cows and sleek horses graze in the paddocks, all watched over by the Great Western Tiers. It’s something to do with scale, but the roads and houses nestle into the landscape here and seem friendly rather than intrusive. I notice there are quite a few bicycle touring route signs out this way (from Liffey Falls on...