Trees and grottoes

18/02/09
Chelle has today off, so the three of us are going to have a girly day out at Hastings.
Not, perhaps the most fun ever, you might think, what with the locals being ‘orrible and the seafront so…
But that is English Hastings.
Hastings in Tasmania is a treasure trove of natural wonders, which I am about to explore!
We stop off at Banjo’s in Huon first to get snacks for lunch – I have a vegetable roll (I’m reedy so I start it now and it’s very tasty!) and a Vegemite and cheese scroll… an, I would get soooo fat if I lived in Tasmania. They really know their food here; know it and love it. It’s not complicated stuff, but it is seriously good. The pancakes are great, the pastries are amazing and the ice cream is unbelievable! France and all its gastronomes have nothing on this little island…
We carry on to Hastings, through various little towns, most of which seem to have a wayside fruit stall or two. Not the dodgy dusty little boxes you might get if someone with a few trees found their freezer was full, but well-organised little sheds with fridges in them and nicely packed, glossy fruits in bags just waiting to be tasted. Cherries, apples, nectarines, potatoes, raspberries… All local produce, something on which Tasmania is very keen.
On the way, we have a good natter. Some of which is about possums:
“Weren’t possums introduced to New Zealand for economic reasons for their fur? To breed with merinos for wool?”
“But wouldn’t you get sheep dangling from the trees by their tails?”
I’m not sure that’s quite what she meant…
;)

We pass some red hot pokers growing wild; they seem to do well here, flaming their blooms in the sun. We also pass a sign that says ‘Welcome to Dover’… Hooray for a day on the south coast I say! We arrive at Hastings…
It’s very peaceful here, a long drive from anywhere else. The sun is warm and it is a pleasant day. We buy tickets for the Caves and spa, and find we are just in time for the next tour, so we drive up to the top-most car park and set off. There is a walk through the trees to get to the caves first. When I say trees, you may be thinking deciduous woodland, or lofty pines… Nope – this stuff is rainforest, raw, lush, wild, verdant, and booming loud with the sounds of various odd birds. And we’re right at the bottom of all this, light dappling us through the canopy, ducking huge ferns and cobwebs and trying not to get nibbled by the various insects dancing in the shafts of sun. It’s rather fun, though somewhat like Bilbo Baggins' Mirkwood. It also feels like walking into a cathedral. We whisper. Apparently, the caves were only found after people started to clear some of this forest for industrial reasons, at which point they stopped and decided to keep it as is to protect the caves.

Our tourguide arrives, a large, friendly, confident girl in ranger’s uniform. She herds us carefully down some stairs into the glimmering darkness below. Apparently the stairs were just as they were made originally, but with additional handrails. My stomach drops; the stairs are a good 20 feet or above the floor of this great chamber and the first people here would have been climbing them with no help – eek!
However, that aside, the place is quite, quite beautiful. The Great Hall (which I would love to sing in, but couldn’t quite pluck up the courage to!) is a huge vaulted chamber with every conceivable formation. As we walk through each subsequent chamber within, we see glittering wonders of untold beauty (and also have to mind our heads at one point!). Stalactites and stalacmites, millions of years old, dangle from the ceiling and rise from the floor, glossy with water, dripping delicately to each other. Some have met and form pillars, organic and oddly shaped. Some look like fantastical tiered wedding cakes, others like the organ pipes of some subterranean cathedral. One formation is called the Angel. This one is eerie, I find, for these great half-furled wings stretch out over the passageway, flat to the rock above, but seem almost too real, as if some great winged beast had landed there for a moment, and been dripped, by millennia, slowly into the rock. Everywhere, there is an echo, of us, of the water. It is clear and soars away into silence. They hold concerts down here each year – they must be fantastic! Other formations dangle from the rocks above. This rock is clearly alive, and has been growing for millions of years. ‘Straws’ are formed when the water keeps dripping down the inside of a stalactite and leaves a slim tube. Sometimes these ‘straws’ will block up and overflow sideways, creating a strangely angular spicule from the original drip. These keep growing sideways and form outlandish prickles in clusters over patches of the ceiling. ‘Shawls’ slide from the ceiling too, just as if someone has left a large wave of wind-blown silk to transform there. One is backlit and gleams redly in the light, its natural colour. My favourite cave is Titania’s Palace – it is long and low, and nicely lit. Delicate stalactites drop in waves from the low roof, meeting shawls and other filigree rocks. There is a delicate echo here, not booming, but a slimmer sound, dancing down this little cavern. One can almost imagine a fey creature dancing swiftly behind rocks as we approach, peeping at us with glittering gem-like eyes, and leaving behind nothing but a tinkling laugh in this ethereal space.
Drunk with the beauty of it all (and several degrees colder; it is only 9 degrees in these dripping caves), we are led out up the stairs again. We are shown a young male cave spider on the way out. He has not yet been munched on by his female peers, and is only the size of a large daddy-long-legs spider.
He will grow.
Lots.
And then, unless he is very quick, be eaten on his wedding night. The male Tasmanian Cave Spider has an extra pair of elbows in his front pair of legs – these are for dealing with the wife. I am intrigued…

We emerge into the sun and the warm, dry air and meander back through the rainforest to the entrance again. We photograph some of the cobwebs and then head towards the Spa. I have no idea what to expect here; I wonder if it is a warm cave with bubbling water or perhaps a subterranean pool. We enter through the shop and wander down through the rainforest to find out. The walk is pleasant, designed to show you the hot springs and the cool stream, and where they meet, which makes the water so perfect for bathing in. It is a walk directly through the bush and rainforest, so it is buzzing with enormous flies, each determined to taste your eyeball or chew on your leg. They seem to be kept at bay with a certain amount of repellent, and I realise that they’re fine as long as you can hear them. If they stop buzzing you’re in trouble! But for that, the walk is very pleasant. Warm in the sun and between the reassuring bulk of the soaring trees, we investigate the winding boardwalk and the hot and cold springs, dabbling our fingers in and saying ‘ooh’ as we realise that the water is pleasantly warm. We spot a fish – a trout perhaps – and I find a lovely little ladybird. It looks like a melanic variation of the local yellow and black with fused spots to my eye, but I may be wrong; I will have to look him up. [I believe he may be ‘cleobora mellyis’]
Trina finds me a pretty wood wasp too, on a huge old tree (which looks as if it needs hugging!), he has a russet bottom and legs, and long, white-banded antennae, which he waves constantly as he scoots busily up and down. The silence in the rainforest is extremely noisy; buzzing, falling, growing, slipping, dripping, clicking, popping, creeping, rustling, striating, chirping… So much business!

The spa itself is laid out like an outdoor swimming pool. It is very blue, and the warmth is just right. Not too deep, it twinkles invitingly, and we change, shower and get in. This is fun – the water is not unpleasantly chlorinated, and it constantly moving through as fresh hot water comes in. It is, however, full of flies, attracted by the glittering water and bouncing wet swimmers. They seem to like sitting on hair, so we spend a happy half hour bouncing about the pool, slapping each others’ heads…
It’s very funny.
;)
Flies aside, it is lovely just being out in the sun in the rainforest, and quite a peculiar feeling. It is, despite being a tourist attraction, peaceful and green, and feels very close to nature and the pull of the earth. I think this could be a healing place; there is certainly something special about it.

We reluctantly leave after having our lunch by the pool and head towards the Tahune Airwalk. We pay to go in, about $20. We walk through the greenery to the airwalk. It smells wonderful as we walk through the green trees. The musty spice of gum trees and myrtle wafts in the air and rises from the earth. It is a gastronomic scent. The rich loam of England smells of plum pudding, whereas the fragrance of the eucalypts here lends it an altogether more dumpling-like feeling. The airwalk itself is very high. It is strange to be at the top of most of the trees, though there are some giants which tower above us as we walk along the faintly moving sky bridges. They are little more than steel hawsers and chickenwire, which is very hard to walk on when you realise that most of where you are walking is technically fresh air. It is great to see the trees so close to though. We come to a t-junction in the airwalk, which says exit or cantilever. I, forgetting what a cantilever is, am halfway along the next section of airwalk before I realise it’s rather more wobbly than I am happy with…
This could, in fact, be because there is nothing underneath…
At all.
It is relying entirely on the tension in the hawsers pulling against the last steel pillar…
Once I get over my terror at being ACTUALLY on fresh air, I enjoy the view. It is liberating to be floating above all this sea of green with the river far below. It is peaceful here, with the sounds of the forest below and around, and the mountains in the distance. It is beautiful. A little lime-green creature flies past, wings whirring with effort so high up. It looks for all the world like a small green ladybird and it bimbles closer, but not close enough to see if it has spots; I forget my fear in my interest of the bug and begin to thoroughly enjoy the gentle sway of the cantilever, though I don’t think I’ll be bouncing it too hard any time soon. They do say you ought to do one thing each day which scares you… well that was fairly scary!

We head down and wonder about going to the exit, but decide instead to see what the swing bridges are – a round walk of about an hour. We assume this is for the fat tourists who toddle too slowly, so we stride off determinedly.
I get a fly down my top.
Argh!
I don’t want to end up looking as though I have three nipples!
I shake it out and stop dancing around as it buzzes off…
The trees here are huge and gnarled, tall and imposing. We are merely trundling along at their base, insignificant little creatures who happen to be part of a race which has carved out a small niche for itself on this verdant isle. Some of these giants have fallen, and their tall, patterned trunks have been sliced through to allow us to pass, their bark flaking and full of interesting webs and creatures. We press on, slaves to time.
Soon, we can hear the river, and Chelle and balk as we see what exactly is meant by swing bridge.
You know those bridges that always turn up in Indiana Jones just before he slashes his way through the ropes around the girl, kills all the masked guards and avoids getting squished by the traps in the temple before running away with the key to the treasure…?
Yup.
One of them.
Eek.

There are instructions; you have to be 10 foot apart to cross and one way you have to give way to pedestrians coming the other way. We speculate as to whether there ought to be a weight limit on here too, but come to the conclusion that the really fat American tourists probably wouldn’t have made it this far anyway! They are large and silver, though, rather than slats and vines, but they are still very wobbly! I try not to walk in step with the other girls to avoid it swaying. The easiest way, I find, is to step, step, step, step, pause, step, step, step, step, pause; that way the bridge doesn’t seem to pick up the rhythm so much. It is okay, I think, then I look down…
I hold on for a moment, gulping, then feel like Donkey from Shrek – ‘Yeah, but I know THAT half is safe!’ Still, I get distracted by the gorgeous view over the shallow, clear river, flowing gently and widely between the huge scented trees on the banks, with the mountains in the distance… It is lovely, and not too far above the ground either, which helps!
We get off the bridge; Chelle looks much happier now that she is on solid ground and I have to admit that I am relieved not to feel the sway beneath my feet. We head on further through the jungly walk. So our dismay, there is another one, higher up this time, which we cross, with more trepidation, but happier afterwards. I’m getting used to these, they’re not so scary any more! The growth of trees and ferns is like something out of a Rousseau painting; I half expect a red-tongued tiger to creep out from beneath a fern, or an alluring dark-skinned woman to lurk in the shadows with her snakes…
We head home; tired and sweaty but happy and greened!

The day is finished off by a lovely spud at Pratie’s and a session of Swing dancing in Hobart. This is fun; they are teaching the Charleston basic steps: back, kick, step, kick, kick, step… Sort of… It is a nice rhythm to dance and makes a change from the jive. We meet a couple of local chaps called Marcus and Kim and we have a drink and a chat before heading home.
I shall sleep well!
;)