Last Thursday I had the uncommon pleasure of a break day from work and fretted over the place to go for a stroll and take some images. My coronary heart was set on the Southwest and climbing up Druids Hill however alas the climate had different concepts. I’m a tad off form on off observe walks and the Southwest isn’t a spot to fiddle with, so I made the choice to go along with Plan B, Cape Raoul. The drive down was a superb probability to take our new automotive for a spin (It has since damaged down so fortunately that didn’t occur on a slender winding highway on the Tasman Peninsula).
I arrived on the Stormlea carpark round 10:30am and though my reminiscence of it’s imprecise from a earlier stroll to Shipstern Bluff, they undoubtedly appear to have made some upgrades. Probably have Red Bull to thank for that as they’ve been placing on some large browsing occasions down at Shippies in recent times. I believe we took the “shortcut” all the way down to Shipstern the final time so it was good to be on a unexplored little bit of observe for the stroll all the way down to Cape Raoul. I say down but it surely’s extra of a delicate up after which a delicate down as you scale the headland resulting in the cape.
The stroll begins off in some good dry Eucalypt forest that slowly winds its approach in the direction of the cliff face and the primary lookout. I made it there in good time and pressed on rapidly, consuming some lolly snakes for gas and sipping on my water bladder. I’m all the time stressed every time I cease on a stroll and really feel rushed to maintain going and end the journey, needing to get dwelling and choose up Lachie provides to that additionally haha.
Once by way of the forest, the character of the place you’re begins to disclose itself. The plants turns into shorter, hardier, sturdier. The wind that was however a chilled breeze by way of the bushes turns into a roaring gale whipping up the edges of the cliffs and battering the vegetation silly sufficient to try to develop out on the far reaches of the Dolerite. The energy of the air is palpable and also you realise it’s impact on the waters under, making them equally monstrous and relentless. We fall asleep in our beds at evening, we cease transferring, the ocean doesn’t, it retains pounding and smashing into the rocks with a drive you’ll be able to barely think about. There’s a spot simply earlier than you get to the lookouts, a kind of lagoon the place a small pond has shaped and the wind is completely howling by way of, blowing up the floor of the water and sending clouds of spray in all instructions. I needed to hunker down and take off my cap to get by way of it and over the duckboards, it’s fairly the push!
The Dolerite columns have been shaped throughout the Jurassic Period over 185 million years in the past and pushed as much as the floor within the final 10 million or so years. That sheer energy of the waves has been battering these columns for a protracted very long time and but, they’re nonetheless nearly completely shaped geometric columns, a mathematician’s dream. We complain about bushwalkers leaving a wrapping paper behind or taking a rock with them. How about utilizing the Dolerite columns of Cape Raoul for goal observe? Yes, the Navy……used…..Cape Raoul……for goal observe. The Navy did extra injury to them with a couple of salvos of artillery than tens of millions of years of abrasion. We actually don’t deserve this planet will we?
You get a way of the facility of the waves when you attain the lookouts on the finish of Cape Raoul. The stunning blue of the ocean provides option to patches of white because the water is churned up by its influence with these big columns of rock. The assembly level between ocean and land is pure chaos, a blender turned as much as most. Yet simply inches away from this, a bunch of Seals are sunning themselves on a shelf of rock, not a care on the planet. It’s a spectacle straight out of an Attenborough documentary, only a brief….ish stroll away from the carpark. That’s the magic of Tasmania, really epic landscapes and nature in your doorstep however nonetheless requiring somewhat little bit of effort to see. There’s no conveyor belt of vacationer buses whizzing by as uncaring guests lean out the window to take the identical selfie as everybody on the bus earlier than them. There’s the distinct menace of that elsewhere in Tasmania however hopefully it’s a great distance away from locations like Cape Raoul but.
