Tag: waterfall

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Weld Angel Falls 2018 May

Weld Angel Falls 2018 May


I loved climbing Mt Weld a few years ago, remembering the forest as being particularly lush and green, and full of beautiful fungi. I was really looking forward to visiting the Angel Falls, or, the Weld Angel Falls as Craig Doumauras of the Waterfalls of Tasmania website likes to call them, to distinguish them from the Angel Falls that are below Mt Sarah Jane near Mt Anne. It’s good to have two different names to avoid confusion. Besides, the Weld Angel wasn’t just any old angel: she was specific to the Weld area, and to the battle to preserve it from the axe, so why not call her by her full name. The falls are just a nameless line on the map, so there is no official name at this stage. The creek they are on is also nameless – an anonymous tributary of the beautiful Weld River running at right angles below.  Imagine being that beautiful and still lying in anonymity.


I had read Dennis’s blog in https://hikinginsetasmania.blogspot.com/ and marked waypoints on my phone map in readiness for when I would go one day. The big drive put me off. It’s a long way from Launceston. Eventually, Craig and I agreed to go to coincide with a conference he had in Hobart. That way, I would only have to do the Launie to Hobart section of the drive. Yippee. And Craig and I always have fun when we waterfall bag together. Meanwhile, a new ingredient was to be added to the stew: southern waterfall bagger extraordinaire, Caedence Kueper, was to join us as well. Three waterfall maniacs in the one car. Would it cope? It belonged to Craig, so it had to be used to it.


We turned off at Geeveston (having become a trio at Huonville – following coffee stop number two within the confines of an hour), travelling towards the Tahune Airwalk on C632, Arve Rd. However, we didn’t continue left down Arve Rd near the Walk, but went straight ahead on a road, Southward Rd, that seems to go forever, and turned around many times. We crossed the Huon River while still on this road, but not too long thereafter, turned left onto Eddy Rd, Next turn was a left again, this time onto Fletcher Rd, and we were on this to cross the Weld River. Fletcher Rd eventually comes to a T-intersection, where we turned right onto South Weld Rd, which takes you eventually, if you are very patient, to a collapsed bridge and whopping hole in the road. Do not even think about following these instructions without a gps device. You won’t find cute road names out there. I’ve given you names to help you read the map.
There’s a little shelf that you can walk along to get past the humongous hole that stopped you driving any further. I like looking down and seeing the creek (Isabella Creek) rushing far below.
This walking part is the same as the route to climb Mt Weld. After 1.3 kms, however, we diverge right off this forestry road, in favour of a different one, now heading NNE (see map below). Where that path does a dogleg to the left (after maybe 1 km) on the map below, there is a clearing made of piles of felled timber, surrounded by regrowth – but it’s not too hard to get through. If you go over some of the logs until a path comes in off the right, and head left (W), then you’ll pick up some faded tapes that lead you through the mess until you get back to unfelled, unrefined rainforest, when you can take a deep breath and start to enjoy yourself again. You are now in heaven. As you can see from the map, you stay roughly on contour, cross a creek, go to the turning point of the spur and head down steeply north to the falls. You are now at the top. Good luck if you want to go to the bottom. It’s very steep and enormous care needs to be taken if you don’t want to ruin the forest or your own body. My rule (apart from the regulation not to go destroying moss, ferns or other aspects of beauty) is to never go down what you can’t get up. Sliding and hoping can lead to trouble. It can also cause a mini destructive landslide as you lose control.


I actually loved the top of the falls more than the base, but both were well worth the visit. It was hard, however, to get an angle on the angel down the bottom, as there is a lot of debris at the base, and the fact that it was raining lightly, and that everything was wet and slippery didn’t help our cause. We had lunch in the forest back up the top, eating and chatting before moving on to our next waterfall for the day, Reuben Falls, a much easier one than Weld Angel Falls: it has a track. I like to do the harder one first; I find the harder ones more interesting anyway. Challenges are more fun than ease.

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Myrtle Gully Falls 2018 May

Myrtle Gully Falls 2018 May


This was my third visit to Myrtle Gully Falls, but the first time that I have found any water worth finding, and thus the first time I have seen them looking like a waterfall rather than a dainty and elegant trickle. I loved them today. Thank goodness I was scheduled to be in Hobart on a “good water day” (much better than a “good hair day”).


The walk is not long at all, so barely constitutes exercise, but is a nice little hike, nonetheless, even if the duration is rather short (I took eighteen minutes in each direction). I began at a right-angled bend on Strickland Road (the main road curves left going up the hill; I went through a gate, and followed a dirt road slightly uphill). It is signed as “Main Fire Trail” and leads up and down three times until it intersects with another trail that you see coming in from below right before you see that it continues up the hill (Guy Fawkes Track). Head left up the hill, and soon enough, this small path through lush green forest with moss and tree ferns swings back towards the creek that contains the Myrtle Gully Falls (Guy Fawkes Creek). The path crosses the creek at the falls. It is lush and peaceful, and a lovely place too spend an hour or so.


Apparently this waterfall is about to get a new, aboriginal, name. When it does, I will add it in here, but as web information and local lingo both use the traditional name of Myrtle Gully Falls, I will not be deleting the old name. It may not be on the LIST map, but it is the name by which the falls are known at present. We can’t communicate with each other if we don’t call things by the same name as each other. We will enter a period of transition when the new name comes into being, as people will still continue to use the name they have always known, even if DPIPWE has not chosen to bless it by putting it on the map.

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Holwell Gorge Falls 2018 May

Holwell Gorge Falls. May 2018


Why would I choose to “attack” the Holwell Gorge Falls from the distant northern end, rather than the closer, easier, southern option? Because I am not interested in “efficiency”, but in beauty, and in “bang for my buck”, or, perhaps more nicely put, a good drive to walk ratio, which tips the scales as much as possible in the direction of walking. I love exercise and walking through magic, lush forests full of fungi beside streams of astonishing clarity. Why on earth would I go for the quick option? In addition, the one time I visited the southern end (just to above the falls), I found that the greater height meant that the forest was dry sclerophyll, and the mosses and fungi I so love down lower were not present.



I have wanted to visit the Holwell Gorge Falls for a year now, having visited their northern brother, the Holwell Falls, a year ago. I have been impatiently waiting for enough rain to engender some flow, and for the right opportunity.  At last, today, it came. Or, I thought I had a sporting chance, let us say. I knew the early section very well, so marched through it in 11 minutes. Now came a sign that told me the upper falls, the Howell Gorge Falls, were 40 minutes return. DO NOT believe this sign. If you read my blog regularly, you will know that I am not a slow walker. I took 41 mins ONE WAY to reach the upper falls. This sign is very misleading, and it meant that I got very hungry, as I wasn’t expecting to take so long, and if you read this blog, the other thing you will know about me is that I get hungry often and quickly, and get quite desperate for food once hunger hits.


All the dire warnings about needing experience should be reserved for this second section. Once you are past the Holwell Falls, you lose your manicured highway, and encounter a track that can be, at times, downright dangerous. I was climbing over logs that were fat and slippery, and that didn’t always have anything to stop me should I start sliding downwards. I’m sure if you were taller, with longer legs than mine, it might be easier, but I was uncomfortable about being solo on one or two occasions when straddling an overweight, sloping log with nothing to hold on to.  There was one section where I even feared for my continued existence, where I had to sidle along a ledge with nothing to hold. The ground under this ledge … did not exist. It was like a tooth with a gaping cavity. I hoped against hope that the unsupported earth wouldn’t collapse under my weight. Whew. I got to the other side; however, on the way back, if you look at my map, I chose to stay in the creek bed rather than trust fate twice running. The odds were too heavily stacked against me.


The sign said 40 mins return. Elementary pre-school maths says that means roughly 20 mins in each direction if you walk at “sign speed”, which translates to about 15 or so for me. 15 went by. 20, 25, 30. Had I missed something? I got out the map to check. Na. I still had at least 600 ms to go. Hm. I’d be lucky to do one way in 40, let alone there and back! Panic hunger began. Lunchtime would find me at the waterfall, not at my car. Anyway, the scenery was superb, and the gymnastics needed to make progress, somewhat diverting, so on I pressed. Hundreds of fungi and countless moss and lichen specimens later, I finally arrived. I loved the end result, and took a long time enjoying the area.


The way back was faster than the way out – a neat, round 40 minutes – as I was rushing, and I knew more what I was doing now I had a modicum of familiarity. I avoided the deadly ledge by staying in the creek, thereby, unfortunately, missing my very favourite fungi that I had saved for the return journey. Oh well. I got back to the car before I fainted from hunger, and drove home in 34 minutes. That makes this the closest waterfall to my house, I believe. I’m so glad it’s so very well worth visiting. Lillydale Falls are possibly not much further, but with only a five-minute walk, they hardly justify the drive.

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McGowans Falls 2018 May

McGowan Falls, May 2018.

I had for some reason expected McGowans Falls to be a little like Lillydale or Liffey Falls, with signs, paths, picnic tables and so on. I was thus rather  surprised to discover that there was not one single direction post to the falls, no road names to give you a clue where you were, just in case you had doubts, and no “arrival status” save for a little cairn with some adorning pink tape. (Not necessarily complaining: just noting. I neither want nor like infrastructure at my falls). If you look down the track, you can see some orange tapes for variety, and even two discarded beer cans hanging in trees in the first three metres to alert you to the fact that you are there.

Russula persanguinea
The fact that these falls are not “maintained” means that the pad is an aesthetically-pleasing bush route; there are no metre-wide, levelled-out paths of fake material so you don’t slip; no handrails, and, oh joy, no bridges made out of that plastic stuff Parks now favours – and no viewing platforms to ruin the place. There was not even any rubbish. Weee. It had a magic feel to it.

Off you set down a track wide enough for cars for a couple of metres, and then you hang a left (taped) and your track becomes a narrow and appealing route through a rain-forested fairyland along to the top of the falls, and then down a steep climb to the bottom if that’s what you want. It’s not a big walk: it took Carrie and I twelve minutes to get from the car to the base of the falls. It took a LOT longer to come back up – not, as you might think, primarily because we were going upwards, but rather because we had agreed that we would go straight to the falls and then shoot fungi on the way back out. That took a VERY long time.


Cortinarius rotundisporus

Cortinarius austroviolaceus I think. If you know better, please advise.
And how do you find the magic cairn that begins this mini-adventure? Turn down the road immediately to the west of the Cam Bridge (A10. W of Burnie), and travel on it to Yolla. There, turn right heading for Takone on what is, or at least becomes, Farquhar Road (not named as such). Stay on this as it goes through “West Takone” (nothing there) and on for a few more kilometres. Ignore the (right hand), northern-pointing Pruana (unnamed / unsigned) Road, and drive until you reach an intersection that is the shape of a fairly narrow Y. Now you turn right to join Relapse Creek Road, not that there is a sign that informs you that this is the case. I marked this intersection on my gps to be doubly sure that I was where I wanted to be and turning right off Farquhar Rd at the right spot. Once you are on Relapse Creek Road, you don’t have too far to go (maybe about a kilometre) until you see the cairn and tapes on your right. The waterfall is on Relapse Creek, downhill to your right. The route from the top of the falls to the base is not for the faint of heart. There’s one “delicate and interesting” ledge section that should be avoided by people not used to negotiating such things.

Boletellus obscurecoccineus

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Old House Falls 2018 Apr

Old House Falls (by Lake Rowallan), Apr 2018.
Old House Falls looked nice and simple on the map. I checked with a guy who’d been there the day before as to whether I could get my car along this road, and he said there’d be no problems. Blissfully ignorant, off I set, along the usual Mersey Forest Road I know so well from bushwalking. But, instead of crossing the Mersey and going down the normal, eastern side of the lake, I continued on the western shore, as per the map I had: on and on and on and on. Like a kid who keeps asking its parents: “Is it time yet?”, I kept consulting my map as the road got worse and worse. Is it time yet? SURELY it’s time by now. Na, came the inevitable answer each time. Not warm yet.


The pot holes got deeper, the stony bits rougher, the mud sections slipperier, the ponds I drove through murkier. How deep were they? I almost closed my eyes so I wouldn’t see my own accident as I drove through, hoping I wasn’t going to drown myself or my engine. I have a Subaru AWD, not a huge 4WD. This was nauseatingly scary. I was by now miles and miles and miles from any help should I need it, and it looked like I would need it very soon. Lucky I can run long distances. I could see a very long training run for help coming up. Tessa was pleased. She likes that.


Eventually, I came to a creek I was supposed to drive through with steep banks (for me) each side. Enough was enough. My adrenalin levels were now through the roof. I managed to execute a hundred-point turn, and, convinced NO person in a quarter of a right mind would come this way, decided a skinny car could get by, parked, and off I set. I had 1.6 kms to walk until the creek I wanted, Old House Creek. The Falls would then be about 60 metres to my right up the hill (west). The foot bit was glorious. I began to relax and enjoy the view. Why hadn’t I abandoned my car and given myself peace of mind earlier?


Just before the falls, I saw a claret coloured ute. Amazing!! Someone had got that car all the way there. It must be an abandoned car, its owners too scared to drive it out, I figured. On I went to the beautiful falls and photographed them. Just as I approached the area where the claret ute had been, I saw it leaving. Oh no. It was too fat to get past me. I waved and called. They drove slowly but continued on. Had they heard me? Oh well. The walk had taken thirteen minutes. If they took four to drive it, they wouldn’t have to wait ALL that long. On I pressed.


As I neared my car, I saw two guys, brandishing axes. Luckily I am not suspicious or paranoid, and so did not think the axes were intended for retribution delivered to my car, or, worse, to be used to punish me for being an inconsiderate twod preventing a normal citizen his right of passage. They assumed I’d broken down (how generous and kind of them) and were just going to cut their way out. Instead, I drove, with them as my backstops, until the danger was over. They, too, were waterfall baggers, so we all sat by the lake once we’d finished with mud-slides and driving through lakes of unknown depth and over fallen trees, and had a lovely time eating and chatting whilst staring at Clumner Bluff perfectly reflected in the waters of Lake Rowallan. You’ve no idea how unscary the road was when I had a backstop. Thanks to Shane and Ed, I even like these falls, and now I’ve got over my “beginner’s angst”, I may even go back one day to check them out when the flow is bigger.