TripRoundUnder

Things are finally right with the world again, Trip Round Under has found some waterfalls!

We actually managed to tick one of our biggest bucket list items for our trip on the way by finding a Platypus in the wild! We went on our second ‘Platypus walk’ of the trip, but this one was a little more accurate! We ventured slightly off track up a river in the small town of Geeveston and literally put blood sweat and tears into our search with Lauren having an argument with a blackberry bush shortly before taking a quick non planned swim…

However, these efforts were worth it and after waiting a little while, we found a little friend poking his head up right near us in the water and we had found our platypus! We managed to get such a good close view of this amazing animal and left feeling very happy with ourselves and feeling slightly less affected by our blackberry cuts.

First off, we headed up to Mount Field National park with the intent to have a look at the renowned and often photographed Russell Falls. We managed to slip in to a very nice little campsite in the National Park right next to the Tyenna River and as we’ve found at almost every campsite in Tassie, we soon had some inquisitive hoppy friends!

Steve was back it with the fishing/losing lures expeditions and after finding out that the Tyenna River was well known for having good stocks of Brown and Rainbow trout, had a few casts down at the river bank. Safe to say, more tree branches were caught than fish and Steve managed to fall out of a tree after fetching one such catch. One positive to come out of the experience was a second platypus sighting in consecutive days as one popped out in front of Steve while he was fishing!

Things were pretty warm and we decided to go check out the local National Park Pub and promptly became best friends with the pub dog, a very friendly groodle. This gave mixed emotions given Toby the groodle at home with Steve’s parents.

We then went on a walk through the National Park which encompassed both Russell Falls and another two waterfalls, all of which were spectacular! We also got another glimpse of how massive the Tassie trees can get and how much they dominate the skyline through the forests.

From here, we made our way further up the island and after further consulting the online waterfall finding gods, we decided that a place called Parsons Falls sounded pretty cool. We didn’t quite know the journey it would take to get there though…

To start things off, we had to drive up a pretty steep sketchy dirt road which if anyone has ever drove a non turbo troopy, you know that it’s not the fastest hill climber. We’re not sure how it happened, but, a fellow traveller seemed to have lost parts of his wardrobe scattered most of the way up the track which didn’t fill us with much confidence, but we continued. The track led to the origins of the hydro electric system in the area near Lake Mackenzie, where we had to exit the car and proceed on foot. Following the loose instructions online, we made our way down past some hydro pipes and did some rock scrambling following pink ribbon tied to trees. This led to one of our favourite places we’ve been to on our trip in the form of a large waterhole and waterfall. It would be rude not to have a dip and the whole experience definitely made the long trek all worth it.