Veronika Wild

Dark waters of Lake Rosebery, Tullah, Tasmania  -early in the morning. The water is brown due to the tannin in the vegetation, but it is in fact very clean.  Spotify leaps back into life as the car lurches down the last few zig zags onto the Tullah straight. I didn’t really appreciate country music until I came here. It tells the stories of country life.  I think of  John Prine’s “Paradise” for example. Tullah even had a place called “Paradise” on the Macintosh River where everyone used to swim, before it was swallowed up by the Lake. Many places on the West Coast were indeed "hauled away by M r. Peabody’s coal train" or one very similar - Places  like Dundas,   Williamsford, Crotty, Adamsfield and Linda ,  to name just a few.    Tullah - which means "meeting of the waters," did have a couple of near -death experiences. Silver -lead was discovered by Tom Farrell in 1892 and by 1900 two mines had sprung up at each end of the valley, each...

Early morning at Lake Burbury - there's still snow on some of the peaks There’s a new walking track at Karlson’s Gap, the top of the hill before the 99 – the series of bends before you land in Queenstown itself. I didn’t notice it this time but there used to be a sign here warning drivers of campervans, articulated vehicles and the towers of caravans and boats, to beware of the wind gusts that blast up through the valley on the other side and lead you to lose control of your vehicle. I’m still careful. You don’t know either at this point if there’s frost on the road. The new walking track starts opposite the road to the Iron Blow lookout   The new 30 minute track to Horsetail Falls which you can see from the highway, is a marvellous bit of engineering, yet as it happens, you   don’t see much more of the falls than you could before. They aren’t running so well today and are tucked into the groin of a valley on Mt. Owen. Still, it does give you a chan...