Wilderness On The Doorstep

Sydney Morning Herald

Saturday October 18, 2008

Tim Richards Tim Richards travelled courtesy of Tourism Tasmania.

The jewel in Launceston's crown is a short walk from the city, writes Tim Richards.

I haven't spent a lot of time in the company of wallabies, especially in a Victorian-era garden setting. What's the etiquette when you're meeting a marsupial?

The wallaby I'm with is chewing grass contentedly in the centre of a lawn at Launceston's Cataract Gorge.

As I edge forward with my camera, she raises her head to regard me with only measured concern.

I can see a joey in her pouch. I lift the camera, click, and she lowers her head. It's not easy living in the shadow of the paparazzi.

The Victorian gardens on the northern bank's Cliff Grounds are a wonderful place to be at 8am on a weekday.

No one else is around except for the occasional jogger passing through but there's birdsong in the air, animals on the ground and a bracing chill, its edge being slowly absorbed by the sunshine.

The remarkable thing is that the gorge is only a 15-minute walk west of Launceston's central business district.

It's a startling contrast, as the gorge's rugged dolerite cliffs and native vegetation suggest a location somewhere in the wilderness.

None of which stopped Tasmania's early settlers from making the place more like home. In the 1890s a pedestrian route was constructed along the gorge. The gardens, bandstand and nearby tea rooms added a suggestion of the Mother Country. The later addition of a suspension bridge across the South Esk River that flows through the gorge completed a scenic route that has retained its popularity.

I cross the bridge and look across the First Basin towards the gentle slope opposite the gardens, with its swimming pool set into a broad lawn. It's at the centre of a spectacularly scenic site, where the river opens into a wide pool surrounded by dramatic cliffs.

In Victorian times Launceston residents could buy water carted from here into town. It was also the location of a laundry service with the world's best view.

It's now the home of a chairlift that takes visitors across the basin, over its rocky waters and the rhododendrons on the opposite slope. A relative latecomer, being installed in 1972, the chairlift was the brainchild of Barry Larter.

I find Larter in the box office and he's full of details on the history of the gorge area.

"It was an ambitious plan but it's been very successful," he says. "We'd be carrying almost 100,000 people a year."

Crossing the basin on the chairlift, I finally get to see the actual gorge. It's lined by dramatic walls of grey rock peppered with gum trees and great vertical slabs.

The river below is a silty brown and I'm told children often jump (against the rules) into the water on a hot summer's day.

At the end of Cataract Walk is the wooden toll booth where the 19th-century citizens paid a penny to fund the construction of the track. And just beyond is the city centre.

If I lived in Launceston and had the gorge on my doorstep, I'd be here all the time. Hobnobbing with wallabies.

© 2008 Sydney Morning Herald

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