From Strahan to Lake St Clair

A whole blog entry for a drive that only takes a few hours?  Well yes, if there are a lot of lovely walks in national parks along the way.

We drove to Queenstown, which is an interesting old mining town, famed for destroying its environment.  Now, nature is returning and it is nowhere near as barren as I had heard.

After Queenstown, we had a big itinerary of walks, starting with the iron knob lookout over the open cut mine. 

Directly opposite this was the Horsetail Falls walk and lookout.  The walk went further uphill, beyond the best view of the falls, and we realised it was so you could see the sea near Strahan from up on the hill.

If you look closely at the horizon, you can just see the sea. 

Next stop, the gorgeous Nelson Falls, and a lovely walk through cool temperate rainforest beside the river. We were very glad we had bought a National Parks pass on the Spirit of Tasmania, so we had no issues stopping at all the lovely national park walks along the way.

On, on, on,  to the Donaghys hill walk.  This one was a stroll uphill through rainforest and button grass plains to a glorious 360° view of mountain peaks.

Looking down at Franklin River

The day was getting on, so we almost didn't stop at the last walk, but who could resist the lure of the Franklin River?  Later I learned that we should have also stopped to do the first kilometre or so of the Frenchman's Cap walk, as it has a swing bridge - but we didn't know, and the full walk was a bit much for a quick walk while traveling.

What a lovely series of walks, and we felt very lucky to have enough time to enjoy them all.