The final stage of the Tassie trip was an ascent of The Acropolis, another three day event but on this occasion staying in a hut. Careful study of the weather forecasts had indicated another wonderful day in the offing so off we went. This trek involved a 16km ferry trip on Lake St Clair, followed by a 10km walk in to the hut and the reverse to get out. All went exactly according to plan, except for the biting cold on night one.

Here is the plateau above Pine Valley, The Acropolis in the background, with its columns silhouetted, above the Snow Gum woodland:

 

And on the very top at 1471m, with Mount Geryon (1509m) in the background. Somewhat surprisingly this is also climbable without special equipment but time and weather prevented an attempt:

 

The columns of The Acropolis. Note Ali & Heather standing on the top right:

 

And the columns up close:

 

These things are just stunning. They are made of dolerite, intruded in the Jurassic about 180 million years ago. ‘Intruded’ because this is magma injected under softer surface rocks which have subsequently eroded away. Because it was not exposed at the surface the magma cooled slowly allowing the rock to crystallise into these gigantic columns. Tasmania has the largest dolerite exposure in the world at 30 000 square kilometres and a volume of 15 000 cubic kilometres. It’s huge.

And this area was unusually heavily glaciated during the Pleistocene, only a few thousand years ago, resulting in the smashed piles of jagged boulders on all the mountain tops. A truly wonderful place on a good day. Sadly they’re all too rare. We’ve been lucky; these tops are clear for less than 100 days per year normally.

And then the walk out through the Snow Gums:

 

At Kosciuszko the treeline was at 1800-1900m. Here, so much further south it is at about 1200-1300m with a superb range of primitive survivors from Gondwanaland. I’ll resist the temptation to do too much botanising this time, but here is a really special Australian tree:

These are the leaves of Nothofagus gunnii, known locally as fagus. This is a southern beech, closely related to the beeches of NZ and South America. It is endemic to Tasmania, forming a low or creeping shrub at the treeline and a small tree up to exceptionally 9m lower down. It is particularly special as Australia’s only native deciduous tree forming brilliant carpets of red and gold in the autumn. As you can see it has very beech-like leaves to the British eye, much more so than its close relative the Myrtle Nothofagus cunninghamii which is a huge and beautiful upland forest tree.

And so the VS’s Tassie road trip comes to an end. Now it’s back to Hobart and the hard work of getting ready for the Southern Ocean in a few days’ time. Our American friends have departed for warmer climes by plane today and we’re on our own again.