South Lea 2020

 Today the walk was led by Bob. Peter supplied the photos and commentary and Ron supplied the GPX track.

South Lea Walk 26 Aug 2020.

Today started cold and sunny with a cloud cover the top of Mt Wellington.

We parked in one of the rear car parks at Hobart College and as Chris commented 

on arrival “I think the quality of the students cars has improved a lot”.

 

Ready to go

We headed off down the hill in a southerly direction taking a number of tracks and fire-trails that crisscross this area until we commenced the first descent where we proceeded with an off track experience avoiding a new house that has been constructed across our original entry point to the area.

Mountain reflections

 

Mt. Nelson Dam

Wet under foot

Hut remains but whose?

Off track

Really off track

Looks like a track

Our path then took us over three “foothills” being up and down with a creek crossing after each descent.

 

Creek crossing 1

 

Climbing hill 1

 

 

Morning Tea

Descending hill 1

Creek crossing 2

 

 

Climbing hill 2

Crossing creek 3

Crossing creek 3 with Bob's help

Climbing hill 3

Climbing out another creek

The climb back to Mt Nelson took us via and old dam and the radio transmitter for the recreational sailors and boaters and then back to Hobart College.

 

Jelly Fungi-Tremella fuciformis

Where to now?

 

Climbing hill 4

Looks to me like someone had an early wallaby lunch on the way up. - Jack

Lunch

This was not here last time

It was interesting to note the amount of flowing water in the area as we have visited it a number of times but never with the ground being as wet as it was today.

It was a pleasant walk on a sunny day with 13 walkers over 11.2kms taking us close to 4 hours.

Click here to download GPX file

 

 

Sabre Place to Goat Bluff 2020

 Today Peter is taking us from Sabre Place to Goat Bluff on the eastern shore of the River Derwent and return.

We park at the top of Sabre Place just off Gellibrand Drive above Ralphs Bay.

Plenty of parking at the top

We're greeted by a pair of noisy locals

Heading down towards Ralphs Bay

The weather has been very wet for the past few days

Today, however, it's just overcast and very muddy. We've turned off onto a track that runs parallel to the shoreline.

Told you it was muddy

We're passing between private properties on our left and the shoreline on our right

We're going to head down to that unnamed beach for Morning Tea

Mount Wellington is somewhere behind that cloud

I don't think it's particularly cold today as we reach our break spot. It helps that it's not windy as we setup for Morning Tea.

We'll have Morning Tea here

Just needs a touch of paint

A couple of likely dens for local wildlife

Break over, we make our way around to the beach we saw from above earlier

We continue along the foreshore until we turnoff onto South Arm Road for a short walk to pick up another track that will lead us to Goat Bluff.

I first thought this was an embedded, rusted iron strip, but it's a form of secondary sedimentation in the base rock

It's not too far before we turn off onto another wet track

Told you it was wet!

This track leads us through the bush to the Goat Bluff lookout. You can also drive there.

View from Goat Bluff lookout. You can see Black Jack Rocks with Betsy Island behind

We make our way along the track and down the steps to the end of Hope Beach where we have lunch.

Top end of Hope Beach

Lunch spot. We've come down that track above

As we reached the beach Bob set off to see if there was another way back. There wasn't, but someone left this message for Bob on the beach.

A couple of photos of Black Jack Rocks and the navigation light.

Back in 1994, William Edward Burton took this photo of Incat Condor II parked during its sea trials.

Lunch finished, we walk back up to the lookout and down the other side to Calverts Beach.

Calverts Beach looking back at Goat Bluff

After a while we turn inland into the South Arm State Recreation Area. This unnamed road leads us to Calverts Lagoon.

Calverts Lagoon

We make our way around the Lagoon to a point where the track crosses South Arm Road, leading around properties and up hill to finally reach Gellibrand Drive.

Perhaps this is suitable transport for that boat we saw at Morning Tea

Reaching Gellibrand Drive we turn right for a short walk back to the cars.

We had 15 walkers and covered 11.34km in 4 hrs. Not a bad day for a walk, overcast but only had a couple drops of rain while at Goat Bluff.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Click here to download GPX file