And pretty much all of it drinkable!
Tassie is renowned for its high rainfall, and we got our fair share of rain early on in the week. Thus, the streams and waterfalls were running at full pelt. These were taken in the aptly named, Waterfall Valley.
We visited one sizeable waterfall…
… And slipped behind the curtain of water.
Woke up one morning to find wallabies grazing on the grass. And what do you know, she has her little joey with her.
My next retrospective is still over the sea, but much closer to home – walking along the Overland Track in Tasmania. This track stretched from Lake Dove in the north to Lake St Clair in the south.
I walked it with a guided group, and to this day it is one of the most challenging things I’ve ever done. The track was walked over a week, with a few detours along the way.
The weather was very changeable, but that didn’t stop me from snapping some truly special scenes, like this of Artist’s Pool, at the foot of Cradle Mountain.
And finally, we are at sea. The next patch of dry land is Australia, over 3,000km away.
We dip our feet in the cold water. Watch the breakers roll in. Enjoy the moment.
Thus, we come to the end of our journey at KareKare. Well, not quite.
How did I find out about this magical place in the first place? Through a little film called The Piano, where the beach is definitely the star. For all those who have seen it and thought that the beach was so picturesque due to the work of a good cinematographer, well, the camera in this case only captured the truth.
Finally, we reach the tide mark. White salt on black sand. Sea spray of fog-like proportions from the sheer pounding of the Tasman Sea. Disappearing footprints in the quicksand. Biting, whirling winds.
It reminds me of an old Crowded House song called Fingers of Love, which was incidently recorded in a house behind this beach. It captures the mood of this beach perfectly.
We pass chunks of driftwood, washed up by the sea, bleached white by the elements. They provide a stark contrast to the black sand that surrounds them. They are endlessly fascinating to study and beautiful to look at.
Leaving the cabbage palms behind, we reach the beach proper. The first thing that struck me was the immensity of the place: the soaring hills in mist, a desert of black sand that is a reminder of KareKare’s volcanic past.
Continuing on our journey to Karekare beach…
We cross the black sand dunes, through strands of cabbage palms. The black sand is a muddy black after the week’s rains, but on a summer’s day the quartz glitters and becomes positively scorching.
Getting to KareKare Beach from the carpark involves a bit of a walk. Firstly under a canopy of kanuka (or tea tree to us Aussies).
I watched a delightful film at the Sydney Film Festival last week called The Strength of Water. It’s about two Maori kids growing up in remote Northland.
It’s wonderful what can be done with non-professional actors, especially children. In this film the film-makers really brought out the best in them and the landscape they inhabited.
It brings to mind all the strikingly beautiful places I visited last October on my journey around Northland, where the film was shot, particularly Hokianga and the West Auckland black sand beaches. To illustrate, here are my two favourite shots from the trip:
At the head of Hokianga Harbour.
Driftwood on KareKare Beach, west of Auckland.
Static and Silence 