All aboard the Ark
Nature — both wild and tame — comes thick and fast in
Tasmania. Flocks of green rosellas, a parrot native to the state,
swoop overhead on the drive out of Derby through Scottsdale,
with its rolling green hills and fields of apricots, cherries, and
poppies. An overnight stay at Currawong Lakes, a luxury
lodge and fly-fishing retreat tucked away in Tasmania’s remote
eastern highlands, brings a bevy of black swans, hundreds
of Bambi-like fallow deer, and Tasmanian devils, their husky
screams like something from a Wes Craven film.
From Currawong, we head west via the beautifully
preserved towns of Launceston, Bothwell, and Hamilton into
Mount Field National Park, one of 19 protected parklands in
Tasmania. It’s another vision of pastoral beauty, all fern walks,
waterfalls and glassy salmon ponds; there are paint charts of
greens made by the willows and swamp gums, the latter the
tallest flowering plant in the world. It’s here that Liam and
Fiona Weaver run Tassie Bound Adventure Tours, leading
small groups of kayakers on ‘Paddle with the Platypus’ trips
through the park’s sylvan waterways.
“I reckon there are more platypus on these three miles
of river than anywhere else in Australia,” says Liam, as Di
and I pull on our lifejackets. And sure enough, as we glide
down the tranquil River Derwent, we spot more platypus
than humans, their little backs rising and falling in the
water like tiny Loch Ness monsters. But my closest encounter
with Tasmania’s wildlife comes at the Bonorong Wildlife
Sanctuary, where I begin to suspect the staff are inventing
curiously-named animals to make fun of me. Bettong, quokka,
echidna — surely all fictional?
“We’re the Noah’s Ark of Australian wildlife,” founder Greg
Irons tells me as I pet Millie the baby wombat. I learn that most
of the animals taken in here have been orphaned or injured.
“We’re the last stand for so many special species: prehistoric
species; species you won’t find anywhere else in the world;
species we still know very little about.”
There are creatures such as eastern quolls, a cat-sized
marsupial now extinct on the mainland; the Tasmanian tree
frog and, of course, the Tasmanian devil, whose population has
fallen by 90% since the late 1990s due to a facial tumor disease.
Greg’s aim is to rehabilitate and restore populations and get as
many animals back into the wild as he can. In the meantime,
visitors to the sanctuary are allowed to interact with many of
the animals in ways that won’t stress or upset them. I hand-
feed kangaroos, watch Randall the echidna slurp up ant mush
with his long tongue, and offer eucalyptus leaves to a rather
bored-looking koala.
If Tasmania is hell, like Di says, then I plan on being very,
very bad indeed.PARTNER CONTENT FOR TOURISM TASMANIA