I started off Saturday in fairly boring fashion, [tag]Christmas[/tag] shopping, I’m really starting to dislike christmas, I’m absolutely crap at buying presents and I hate with a passion spending money that could be spent on much more productive things, like getting me out of this country.
[thumb:27:l]After all that was finished, at least I’d had enough, we got ready to go to Mt Field National Park, which is about 1 hour north\west of [tag]Hobart[/tag]. It’s pretty cool that we have quite a few places like this so close to home. It’s a pretty nice drive out through New Norfolk, it’s a small wine region but more known for where a lot of Hops is grown for the local beer.
I was told that [tag]Waterfalls[tag] make for good walks when you are starting with bushwalking, especially when your partner is a little reluctant, unfortunately when we got there we found that the full circut of the three waterfalls reasonably close together was partially closed, we could still get to all three but had to turn back when we got to the last, I was a bit worried because I thought Jo might get a bit restless having to double back without actually feeling like we were going anywhere other than out. Except for her we were going somewhere, the small rasberry farm we passed on the way in and we HAD to to get there before it closed, so she actually set a pace on the way back faster than mine.[thumb:22:l]
Anyway the walk we did didn’t actually take us far into the park but it wasn’t terribly short, the first fall we walk to is Russell Falls, the biggest and only 10min from the vistitors center, it’s a really beautiful fall and the biggest I’ve seen on my short list of waterfalls I’ve visited, It looks quite tropical and I wanted to go and stand under it but for some reason the parks service doesn’t seem to like people getting to close to things. Unfortunately about halfway up there are a couple of trees growing on the edge of the first lip that blocks most of the view to the top.
The next was Horseshoe falls which is only a small one but set in a really nice rainforest area, you can actually walk out onto the rocks in front of this one but it is a bit slippery.
There is about a 45 minute walk from Horseshoe falls to the next one on the circut which is Lady Barron Falls and in between is the Tall trees circut, half of which is the track to Lady Barron. We came across a very cute little Echidna and a Paddymelon. Lady Barron Falls is a medium sized fall compared to the other two and again you can’t really get anywhere near it. Maybe I’m wrong but I’m not really one for looking at these type of things from a nice platform, I want to climb the rocks and actually touch it.
[thumb:29:l]So we couldn’t go any further on the circut from here so it was time to double back on where we came. The track on this circut is very easy the first section as long as you don’t cross the bridge is good for wheelchairs up until Russell Falls but from there on it’s no good for them, all of the track is clear, mostly over flat terrain with a few steep climbs but nothing any abled body person couldn’t handle. It took about 2 and 1/2 hours return to see all three although if the circut was completely open it would have been shorter or if you stroll it can take up to 4 hours. For us we also got to break in our boots a bit more, although my feet weren’t hurting it was a relief to get them off when we got back to the car, for some reason my big toes start to hurt before anything else.
We will have to come back and venture further into the park next time. I’m keen to see the lakes, tarns and glacial valley. As you can see we took the camera with us, this time with the new addition of a UV filter (pretty standard), I’m not sure if it made a huge difference but it definately made lens-flare a problem. We took about 100 photos and the better ones I have added to the Gallery so check them out. I’m really keen to learn how to use the Arpeture and Shutter priority settings now so I can improve depth of field and take longer exposures of waterfalls and the like.
[tags]Bushwalking, Photography, Wildlife, Mt Field, National Park, Gallery[/tags]
