Day 13 – Lake St Clair Rest Day

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I don’t sleep too well on the mattress in the Bumlin Drunkhouse, though I’m glad that I have the three-bunk room to myself. I don’t understand how you people sleep on mattresses. Is it a masochism thing?

I enjoy the novelty of eating my muesli from a bowl and my coffee from a mug in the small but cozy mess room attached to the bunkhouse.

I feel a strong aversion to brushing my teeth in the amenities block. I want to feel dirt under my boots and stare at trees while I do it, not cinder blocks. I do it anyway, in supplication to civilised society.

It’s 5km of road walking to Derwent Bridge. It’s nice walking on the flat with no pack.

Glancing over a map Tasmania it would be easy to assume that the massive lakes pock-marking the topography are a natural function of the island’s ‘recent’ glacial history, mountainous terrain and massive rainfall. In fact, few of them (as they currently lie) are more than a century old.

In 1895 the world’s first hydroelectric dam was built at Niagara Falls. Two years later,  Launceston City Council built one on the South Esk River. There then followed a about a hundred years in which the state government repeatedly tripped over its own dick in an effort to dam everything in sight, claiming that the energy generated would attract power-hungry industry, like aluminium smelting. It did, but they charged so little for the power and so few jobs were generated, that it did little of value for the state.

Lake St Clair is the first and smallest of four mind-bogglingly massive hydro dams I’ll walk alongside on this trip, though this one is mostly natural. Carved by glacier, the lake (now technically a reservoir) is 13km long and at 215m deep is Australia’s deepest lake. The area from Cradle Mountain to Lake St Clair was declared a scenic reserve in 1922 and a wildlife reserve in 1927. This proved to offer little impediment when in 1937 the HEC (1) dammed the outflow and raised the water level by two and a half metres; a modest increase well worth the loss of a number of beaches that had just been lying around, minding their own business. This would serve as a tantalising glimpse into the later fate of Lake Pedder, further south. The dam allowed water flow to Tarraleah Power Station to be controlled, causing the lake’s level to fluctuate by up to 6m, eroding the shoreline. In the 90’s the HEC got bored and stopped doing this; presumably there was a fly somewhere that needed its wings pulled off. (2)

Hydro Tasmania operates 30 power stations across more than 50 dams. I can only hope the other twenty are useful to the effort in some way. and weren’t just dammed for shits and giggles.

The pumphouse at the south end of the lake was built in 1940 (by a Batman villain, going by the looks of it). Jammed full of massive turbines, it was meant to pump water to nearby St Clair lagoon. For fifty long years it waited patiently and eagerly for the moment to come in which it would be called upon to fulfil its purpose. It was decommissioned in the early 90s, unused. Now, converted to upscale accomodation, it serves foie-gras and chablis to overdressed patrons while they laugh derisively at the weary hikers across the lake. Probably.

I stick my thumb out on the walk back to the visitor centre and am soon picked up by Beyatt and his wife from Switzerland, who are astonished that I’m familiar with the name. They save me an uncomfortable walk with the hefty resupply bag slung over one shoulder.

I go through the process. Repack the food, resupply the consumables. I wander down to the visitor centre and run into Daeil from my bubble, who’s just walked in from Echo Point and finished his Overland. I buy him a beer in exchange for the dollar coins he carried from Cradle Mountain, and we chat about other walks he could do with his remaining month in Australia. After he leaves, he plans to cycle across Europe then do a Camino. We wander through the visitor centre exhibits and marvel at the heavy canvas gear they used to carry and the taxidermied wildlife.

Daeil wanders off to catch his bus, and I treat myself to another scorching hot shower, then take Daeil’s dollar coins and the ones from my food drop, and do a load of laundry while wearing only my thermal leggings and puffer jacket. I grit my teeth at the top loader, certain it will eat my beloved clothes, but it seems to go okay.

I have another delicious pizza for dinner, and go over my plans for the next section. The easy part is over, and the most challenging section is directly ahead. There’s a bunch of off-track walking and scrub, a small river and a big river to cross, and potentially more rain on the way (this is relevant to the aforementioned river crossings). I’ve been pretty lucky so far with mobile reception, but you can expect there to be stretches of days coming up where this blog doesn’t get updated.

Well, I didn’t come here to fuck spiders, as they say.

1. Stands for Hydro Electric Corporation. Or Hydro Electric Commission. Or Heinous Ecocidal Cunts. Now Hydro Tasmania.  
2. For a depressing, but exhaustive and elucidating history of the ratfucking of Tasmania’s natural landscape and the massive-testicled men and women who stood in its way, see the book Tasmania’s Wilderness Battles by Greg Buckman. And not just because I sometimes walk with the guy.   
3. Some or all of the information about Lake St Clair may be incorrect. I found some of what I read to be contradictory.

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