Taking the plunge

The peacock encounter is one of many surprises on a road trip through Tassie’s north-east, a loose, approximately 500km circuit from Launceston that passes plenty of spots to take a dip or enjoy water-based activities. The first swimming option is at the gorge itself, where hardy souls brave the chill (and reportedly eels) to swim in the First Basin of the South Esk River. For those who prefer to see their feet when they swim, there’s also a lap pool set in the manicured lawns of the reserve. Launceston is at the confluence of the North and South Esk and Tamar rivers, and cruise boats ply the waters of the Tamar Valley. Just 10 minutes’ drive north along the Tamar, the boardwalks of the Tamar Island Wetlands Centre provide easy access across shallow lagoons, where black swans, chestnut teals, swamphens, Pacific black ducks, white-faced herons and great egrets feed in the native reeds. Warning signs indicate copperhead snakes also find the boardwalk useful for sunbathing.

Heading west from Launceston, it’s a half-hour drive to Deloraine, a pretty National Trust-classified town at the base of the mountain bluffs of the Great Western Tiers. The Meander River lazes through town, and locals use it as their leisure centre, for swimming, fishing and kayaking, and platypus sightings are almost certain at dawn and dusk. Upstream at the hamlet of Meander, Jules Stevens is knee-deep in fast running water, as she trains for a trip this May to the Czech Republic as part of the Australian Ladies’ Fly-Fishing team competing in the World Masters Fly Fishing championships. Jules is a relative newcomer to the sport and says she was coaxed into it because her husband, Mike, owns the Essential Flyfisher store in Launceston and she found herself attending competitions showcasing their merchandise. 

“I don’t eat fish and I’d never kill one,” she says. “To me, the happiest sight is a trout swimming away. But I love the tranquillity of fishing and, having now fished all over the world, I’d say we have some of the best fishing grounds available. I favour the pristine waters of the Liffey, the Meander and the Mersey, but there are also great spots on the lakes up in the Central Highlands.”

Nearby, at Red Hills, 41° South Tasmania salmon farmer Ziggy Pyka is doing his best to redress the bad rap the salmon farming industry has been getting. “It doesn’t have to be a polluting industry,” he insists. “We use a wetland biofilter system and tests show that the water from our fish tanks goes back into the Western Creek with zero impact on the environment.” Ziggy hot smokes his clean, green salmon and infuses it with ginseng and Tasmanian native pepperberry.

Heading back to Deloraine, the easiest way to access the celebrated multi-tiered Liffey Falls is via a gravel forest road detour off Highland Lakes Road to the upper carpark. From there it’s a 2km walk to the bottom of the falls, with lookouts to see other cascades along the way. Retrace your route back towards Deloraine to connect with the C504, then connect with the C513 to go through Liffey and rolling farm country to Cressy. The agricultural centre makes much of its status as the ‘gateway to trout fishing paradise’, with trout street signs and a big leaping brown conveniently posing for photographs next to the public toilets. From Cressy, it’s 50-odd kilometres to Campbell Town, home of the 1838 convict-built bridge, Australia’s oldest red brick arch span bridge, which crosses the Elizabeth River, where more fishers cast a lure in the shade of the willows lining the banks.

From Campbell Town, take the Lake Leake Highway for 92km to Bicheno on the eastern holiday coast, but allow a bit longer if you take the short detour to visit the lake itself, another fishing and watersports hideaway (actually a cluster of shacks and a pub), preserved in 1950s aspic like a beetroot jelly mould. 

At 6.30am on a chilly early summer morning in Bicheno, the skies are ominous and there’s a rising swell. But that doesn’t deter former Olympic champion Shane Gould and her band of ocean swimming mates who – rain, hail or shine – congregate at Waubs Beach most mornings for a bracing dip. In her short, but stellar, international swimming career, Shane won 5 medals at the 1972 Munich Olympics and, in 1971–72, became the only swimmer in history to hold all freestyle world records – 100m, 200m, 400m, 800m, 1500m and the 200m individual medley – at the same time. 

Despite these achievements, if no other member of the group they call the Bicheno Coffee Club turns up at the beach, Shane won’t go in the water. All comers are welcome to join the early birds and ‘tea baggers’ (the people who bob about close to shore) so long as they follow the cardinal rule of wild swimming never to swim solo. “It’s part of our ethics to take care of each other,” she explains. “Always ask, ‘Who will I watch and who is watching me?’ If there’s no-one there to watch me, I rarely go in. If I do, I’ll stay close to the beach, just beyond the breaking waves, where I can stand up if anything goes wrong.” The other rules Shane says wild swimmers should observe are to read the conditions, have an exit strategy and be honest about their ability. “One-third of people who drown in Australia are men aged over 55,” she says. “Half of drownings in this country occur in inland waterways – rivers, lakes, dams and even water troughs.”

Although Shane withdrew from competitive swimming at 16, she has dedicated her life to safe swimming, graduating in 2019 with a PhD on the culture of swimming in Australia, and for the best part of the past decade, working with her husband, swimming consultant Milt Nelms, on reducing drowning statistics internationally. Their ‘5-minute life-saving swimming lesson’ encourages people to stay calm when confronted with challenging situations, keep movement to an absolute minimum to conserve energy and keep their heads above water by making use of their ‘centre of buoyancy or personal floatation device’, aka the lungs. “Just staying afloat for 15 more seconds can mean the difference between life and death,” Milt says. 

Bicheno is also home to Sara Walkem and her cray fisherman husband Marcus, who own the Lobster Shack, the place for seafood, on the east coast of the state. Sara was practically born with saltwater in her veins as she’s the granddaughter of Peter and Una Rockliff, pioneering ocean trout farmers. She pursued a career in banking before she met Marcus and agreed to help him with the business, which at that stage was a southern rock lobster processing facility. “I assumed that meant the accounts,” she says. “But people were looking for local seafood, so Marcus said, ‘Let’s open a kiosk and sell the catch of the day’. Then he went off fishing and left me to it.” These days, the Lobster Shack is a fully fledged restaurant offering lobster and other shellfish in various guises and fresh-off-the-boat gummy or blue grenadier with chips. Last year, they sold 24,000 of their signature lobster rolls, literally a taste of traditional Tassie with the prized meat sandwiched in a soft milk bun with crisp lettuce and homemade mayo.

Just a few kays north of Bicheno there’s another, though no less chilly, dip to be had at a waterhole on the Apsley River. Turn off on Rosedale Road and head inland for 12km to the Douglas-Apsley National Park parking area (permit required), then it’s a 1.2km return walk to the waterhole or a longer 7km circuit that takes in Apsley Gorge, its waterfalls cascading into another swimming hole. 

Back on the Tasman Highway, it’s about an hour’s drive north to St Helens, gateway to the pristine coastline of the Bay of Fires, renowned for its eye-squintingly white beaches, turquoise water and orange, lichen-encrusted rocks. 

Taking a short reccy north, there are endless bays and beaches to entice swimmers to roll out a towel for the day. On the way, however, set the navigator for Lease 65, where oyster farmer Craig Lockwood sells the molluscs he’s just plucked from the estuarine waters of Moulting Bay. Craig grew up on a mixed farm near Sheffield on the Kentish Plains and reckons the secret to his world-renowned oysters is a combination of tidal flow between deeper channels and detritus from the cool temperate rainforest in the coastal hinterland that washes into the bay to create the perfect feeding and growing conditions. “I’m fortunate that I came off a dairy,” he says as he hefts a basket of spat onto the barge for transport out to the bay. “You learn pretty quickly that the quality of the animal’s output is directly related to the quality of the food it eats. Keeping the environment healthy is important too, and monocultures are not good for that, which is why we are looking into diversifying into seaweed and maybe scallops. You also need to understand your animals and look at seasonal vagaries to employ a stocking density that allows the oysters to develop naturally.”

In a sheltered cove at Binalong Bay, former Perth home economics teacher Melissa Harbrow sets up a picture-book picnic spread on the beach for a couple who has arranged for her to cater for their anniversary. Melissa was enticed to Tasmania because her husband Justin’s family had land near St Helens. They bought a small farm, where they run belted Galloways and sheep, while Justin works FIFO in his job as a superyacht captain out of Sydney. She took over Pop-up Picnics at the beginning of last year, and is now so busy catering for events, proposals and AirBnB welcome platters showcasing local produce, that she reckons a return to the classroom is an unlikely event. 

Melissa recommends several spectacular spots to seek out along the road that finishes at The Gardens. The first is an Insta-worthy rock pool near Sloop Reef called Mermaids Pool, which only reveals itself at low tide. The next is Honeymoon Bay, another protected arc of frosty white beach close to a tumble of orange-crusted granite boulders strewn along the water’s edge at The Gardens, named by the colonial governor’s wife Lady Jane Franklin for the wildflowers growing in the fields beside the beach.

Returning to St Helens, Mark Locke, a one-time rough rider turned mental health advocate from Warwick in south-east Queensland, greets visitors at the fishing port’s wharf with pedal kayaks and fishing tackle to take them out on the water chasing flathead and striped trumpeter or whatever else is running. “I came down here for work as a drug and alcohol counsellor,” he explains. “I haven’t been on a horse for 20 years, but I’m still a cowboy inside. I started taking fishing tours and that became so popular I quit my day job.” His other passion is for gem fossicking, and he loads his guests into the Secret River Tours 4WD to go hunting for sapphires and zircon up in the hills around Weldborough.

The Tasman Highway wends its way through forestry reserves for 65km from St Helens to the former tin-mining town of Derby, now a mecca for mountain bikers, with a network of more than 85km of trails through the hills. Once the only action in town was the annual Derby Derby, when all manner of floating vessels raced on the Ringarooma River. These days Derby is chockers year-round catering to cyclists, with cafes, bars, a brewery, massage shops and even a floating sauna on Briseis Hole to soothe muscles tested by the trails.

From Derby, it’s 97km via the mining town of Branxholm and the agricultural centre of Scottsdale back to Launceston, but there’s one last dip to be had below the Mount Paris Dam wall. Detour from the main road on the unsealed Mount Paris Road and look for the turnoff at Forestry sign 11. From there, it’s a couple of hundred metres to a carpark and a short rock scramble to a spot where a hole in the Depression-era dam wall built for the tin-mining industry allows the Cascade River to tumble through and fill a waterhole on its way. 

Apart from a couple of intrepid Singaporean tourists, this remarkable remnant of hand-built engineering and the swimming hole are deserted. It’s a summary, perhaps, of the entire north-eastern experience – pockets of wilderness with loads of options for a refreshing dip in splendid seclusion, easily accessible to anyone with the urge to venture just a little off the beaten track.