The Ides of March! as we make our way slowly south east.
It's not all big days and bucket list stuff! Many days have been spent simply - going for drives into the hills, along rivers and streams, picking wild blackberries, fennel for our fish, and a new one for me, rose hips (they are still drying). New Norfolk along the Derwent is lovely. Lots of hops and other good things produced around there.

First night we were joined at Happy Hour by this little darling

We camped at Mt Field National Park for 3 days - it's a place we really love. Totally different to west coast and central highlands. Did lots of walks including 6 k on the Port Davey track in the footsteps of wombats and beside the mud holes and chimneys of burrowing crayfish, through peat and heathland and wooded hills careful not to tread on delicate fungi like babies ears. It's supposedly the hardest of the two tracks to Melaleuca; we did the easy first tiny bit of it.

The Port Davey track is not paved but in parts
boardwalk.s stretch  over marshy areas

Entoloma chrysopus (I think - there are so many)

In spite of the consequences of damming and flooding (both negative and positive), Lake Pedder so beautiful. The Port Davey-Melaleuca track starts from the Scott's Peak dam at the southern aspect of the lake (80 odd Ks from Mt Field).

Lake Pedder, Australia's largest freshwater lake (Lake St Clair is our deepest),  is so beautiful

That whole area has a stillness and almost eerie tranqility. The towering craggy mountains that seem to engulf you, are awesome. We peered down the wall of the Gordon river dam - and couldn't see the bottom. It is a James Bond kind of place, the ultimate abseiling spot.

Needless to say we didn't walk out on the dam wall, but people do
Sheer madness!

On Mt Field, we walked under towering eucalypts - the swamp gum/mountain ash is the tallest flowering tree in the world - amazing! We visited waterfalls dropping from high escarpments, and spent quite a few hours walking around Lake Dobson in Mt Field National park driving through alpine meadows to get there. Part of that walk is through a pandani grove (this giant grass tree is endemic to Tassie) interspersed with ancient pencil pine and pineapple grass. We saw many sub-alpine plants, even tasted a few of the mountain berries - snow berries, wild currants, pepper berries.

The worlds tallest flowering tree - Mountain Ash

Pandani - giant grass trees (we saw them also at Dove Lake,
Cradle Mountain but didn't know what they were.

We revisited the river which seems to start out of the rocks. It's part of the 30 km Junee karst system. The riverJunee bursts out of a dark cavern which is home to weird creatures - I could almost hear Tolkens gollum's evil hiss talking to his 'precious'. It is home to the endemic Hickman troglodyte a huge spider with feeds of cave crickets. I didn't see any - shudder! But it is a whole other world in those caves.
Then it was time to move on south ..............