Gordon Dam
Button grass plains
Lake Pedder panorama (click for larger picture)
Hi folks,
Blog posting is a bit of a trial at the moment with respect to the pictures and video so bear with us due to the flakey internet overloaded by tourists.
Today we drove down to the south west wilderness. It is not a huge tourist destination judging by the traffic today. However it is quite beautiful and deserving of its World Heritage status. The mountains and valley vistas are quite striking. The weather was cold and windy with some scudding showers.
It would be fair to say that the two most photographed items are man made being Lake Pedder and the Gordon Dam.
Lake Pedder withs it's own construction controversy in the early 70's was really the start of the green movement in Tasmania. The fruition of which came in 1983 with the kybosh on the construction of the Gordon below Franklin Dam. The sole purpose of Lake Pedder is to supply water to Lake Gordon which has a hydro electric power station of around 500MW.
We pottered around the Dam. One improvement on my last visit in 78 is you can now walk across the dam wall which i did. Susan was unable to negotiate the open stairway down to the wall. Looking down the dam can be a fairly bracing experience a drop of 143 metres. It was very impressive. We returned more slowly checking out a few items of interest on the road. We stopped at Lake Pedder Chalet which is housed in the Hydro building at Strathgordon. They should do pretty well as they are the only business for about miles around. We had a nice plate of wedges, coffees and muffins.
On our return to Mount Field Susan knocked up some tasty pasta and at 730 we joined a small group on the platypus tour. After a little delay we did sight some. As far as i recall the first ones i have seen in the wild.
The weather is slowly improving so we will do some more walking tomorrow although not right up the mountain.
Night folks
Cheers Simon
Platypus
Gordon dam
Where's Susan?
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