Western Tasmania

The bus meandered through the turns.  They reminded me of cooked spagetti in a bowl bending this way and that.  I sat in the front behind the bus driver.  The second best seat, second to the one on the left which with a little imagination allows you to pretend like you are flying.  We crossed a bridge just hovering above the water-line.  There were far off mountains on the other side of the water way.  It reminded me that I am in another country within another country.  I am in Tasmania, I thought to myself. A few more spagetti noodles and I looked to the left.  The road way was met by a sharp drop off.  In the far off distance was a water fall so large that the water turned to mist and I don’t know where it landed.  I had never seen a waterfall like it.  A left turn; a right; an S-curve, and another.  The topography morphed from green to brown to tan.  What is that on the hills, I wondered.  we were approaching a mining town.  Welcome to Queenstown I read on a sign that flashed by in a blur.  I could see the roadway as it spagetti noodled far down to the bottom of the high mountain pass that we were on.  It felt like the ‘tea-cups’.  Yes, just like that.  Turning this way and that.  I smiled and felt joy.  What a fun ride.  The town had one straight-away that was developed.  One straight-away in the middle of vast open nothing-ness.  Hills and dirt and trees, and one straight away with some newer cars parked in drive-ways with little houses attached.  A man was watering his garden.  It looked like the Truman Show but for just one block.  Beyond that the houses along this block stretch of roadway dissolved into the nothingness.  This was Queenstown, the smallest “big town” I have ever seen.  Long story made short:  Queenstown had a boom and the population went up like a mushroom cloud.  The boom faded and the mushroom cloud faded into the town that I saw before me.  An hour went by.  My next bus arrived.“Hi I’m Mark.  We are all set but we are missing two girls, have you seen them?”  Hi Mark.  Yes, I saw them.  One was wearing a red shirt.  One a gray.  Both with bobbed hair.  ”Oh that should make it easier to spot them now that I know what they look like.  If they don’t get here in five minutes were leaving.”  The other bus driver said we had a full hour.  ”Oh he doesn’t know any better.”  The girls don’t know to be back to the bus.  ”Oh well maybe they will get here in five minutes.”Peculiar.  We started to pull away.  There they are, I said as I pointed to the women casually strolling along.  Little did they know that they almost missed their bus.“Where are you saying?” Mark asked me.  Oh I’m going to work on a sailboat that goes up the Gordon River, the “Stormbreaker”.  It is skippered by Trevor.  Trevor has a wife name Megs.  ”Oh I know them.” Mark told me.  Mark told me a lot of things.  Mark told me that there are three types of snakes in Tasmania that are poisonous and as luck would have it the same antivenom works for all three.  There is also a version of the infamously deadly Funnel Web Spider in Tasmania, that is not poisonous at all.  ”Strahan used to have 15,000 people living in it.  Now it has 500.”  Forty-five minutes later and Mark drops me off at the Stormbreaker.  I exit the bus and shake Marks hand.  I’ll see you around I told him.  For some reason I felt like I would.I saw a smile and a blur of a hand.  That must be Megs.  What a delight to enter to the ‘vast unknown’ and have someone there to welcome you.  I walked into Megs’ office and immediately felt like I had known her for some time.  Tevor came in soon after.  These are my kind of people.  They are good hearted and fun.  Plus they understand sarcasm.  I like that.  Later I’m shown to the Stormbreaker, my home away from home temporarily.  The next day I set sail.  The Stormbreaker takes tourists across Lake Macquarie, the largest harbor in the world – six times larger than Sydneys Harbour, and passed the penal colony remnants of Sarah Island, and up the Gordon River.  The Stormbreaker is the only boat that can go up as far as it does along the Gordon River.  Tasmania is filled with mighty rivers but many have been blockaded with dams.  There is one river, the Frankland, that has survived without being dammed.  A few dozen years ago there was a big controversy over damming the Franklin.  The protesters were brought up the Gordon River to stage themselves and won.  The Franklin is the only river like it that flows freely here.  There are kayakers and rafters that take on the mighty Franklin.  The Stormbreaker picks them up when the Franklin pours into the Gordon at a designated National Park that is only accessible by water.  There is a waterfall there too.  It’s quite nice.It takes three hours to sail across Macquarie Harbour and another three hours to get up the Gordon were we moore for the night.  In the morning we pick up the rafters and head back.  It’s beautiful here.  The beauty is magnified by the seclusion.  All alone.  I work on the Stormbreaker and Megs and Trevor allow me to sleep here too.  I am most gracious and take care of their mighty-boat with more respect than I do my own person.  Well that’s not saying much.  Let’s just say if I were to have children than I would comparably take care of the Stormbreaker as I would my own child.  Okay, that’s better.