With so much to seek in Tasmania, platypi are just the beginning. Photo / 123rf
With so much to seek in Tasmania, platypi are just the beginning. Photo / 123rf
Searching for an elusive quarry leads Briar Jensen back to Tasmania's Central Highlands
I'm on a quest to see Australia's weirdest, but arguably cutest, creature in the wild. Covered in fur the platypus has a duck-like beak, beaver-like tail and webbed front feet for swimming. They are such an oddity that the first specimen sent to the British Museum in 1799 was thought to be a taxidermy hoax. They are monotremes – egg-laying mammals – and suckle their young by secreting milk through their skin. There are only two monotremes in the world, echidnas being the other – Aussie scooped the pool in this category.
Platypuses are notoriously hard to spot. Inhabiting freshwater rivers and lakes in Australia's east and southeast, they hide in burrows and mainly feed in the water at night. Dawn and dusk are purportedly the best times to see them, but they're sometimes spotted during the day. The water needs to be calm though. Very calm.
I've only seen one, fleetingly, in the wild, at Lake Dobson in Tasmania's Mt Field National Park. It's one of the best places to see them, so I'm returning to Tassie's Central Highlands, staying at Rathmore Farm, an hour north of Hobart. Not only is it close to Mt Field National Park, but owner Cally Lyons assures me there are platypuses in Dew Rivulet, which runs through the property.
Sunset canapes while staying at Rathmore Farm. Photo / Briar Jensen
It's late afternoon as I turn off the quiet country road at Hollow Tree into Rathmore's driveway, past what looks like a dam. Dew Rivulet! There's a variety of accommodation here from shearer's quarters to farm cottage, but I'm staying in a room in the Georgian sandstone homestead.
"Well, hello!" beams Cally. Sporting beetroot-coloured Merry gumboots and matching jumper she bustles me into the farmhouse kitchen with its aromas of roasting garlic and fresh rosemary. Husband Richard sits at the enormous timber table peeling potatoes and prepping creme brulee for dinner.
Cally is a font of local knowledge and by the time she's told me all the must-visit places nearby it's cocktail hour. I join another guest for hors d'oeuvres on the deck outside the stables. As we tuck into carrot and lovage tarts, watching sunset-soaked clouds reflected in the calm waters of Dew Rivulet 50m away, we spot activity in the water. Radiating concentric ripples are a platy's calling-card and we see several. I'm desperate to jump the fence and dash down to the water's edge, but dinner is ready and Cally assures me they'll be there tomorrow.
Rathmore's dining room is intimate and moody in a Downton Abbey way. An enormous gilt-scrolled mirror hangs above the fireplace and I admire Richard's great-great-grandfather's grandfather clock, which came out by ship from England. The mahogany table is set with Waterford crystal and candelabra, and herb sprigs sprout from linen napkins. Richard and Cally join us for roast lamb and conversation flows as easily as the wine.
In the morning Dew Rivulet is whipped into wavelets by a wickedly cold wind. With no chance of seeing platy in the disturbed water, I head to Mt Field National Park, part of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area. It's early autumn and I'm keen to see the "turning of the fagus". Not a secretive Scottish ritual like it sounds, but the changing colour of Tassie's only deciduous native tree, nothofagus gunnii, a beech with roots back to Gondwanan times. Come April its tiny pleated green leaves, like crinkle-cut chips or miniature fans, flare golden yellow, deepen to burnt orange then blaze rusty red. Taswegians are so captivated by the "turning" they have a festival to celebrate. It's a tad early, but I'm hopeful for a tinge of colour.
Mt Field National Park is part of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area. Photo / Briar Jensen
A 16km gravel road snakes up from Mt Field visitor centre to Lake Dobson at over 1000 metres. I take the Pandani Grove walk beside the lake where 1000-year-old pencil pines lean precariously over the water. I'm not expecting to see platypus at this time of day but keep an eye out anyway. Pandani, an alpine version of coastal pandanus, look incongruously attractive in this alpine environment. Some are so tall they hug other trees for support, their spent brown leaves hanging like grass skirts beneath their strappy green tops.
Veils of lichen drape from overhead branches and delicate fungi sprout from rotting wood, but most beguiling are the snow gums, whose shrivelling strips of chestnut and charcoal bark reveal striated trunks in on-trend shades of mustard-yellow, pistachio and smoke.
Snow gums feature strips of chestnut and charcoal bark that reveal colours like mustard-yellow, pistachio and smoke. Photo / Briar Jensen
I climb up to Tarn Shelf, a wind-battered ridge of lichen-licked boulders, stunted shrubs, and tortured trees. With a view for miles, it's the best place for spotting fagus on the turn, but the steep-sided slopes dropping down to the glacial tarn Lake Seal are still dark alpine green.
On the drive out I stop at Wombat Moor and take the boardwalk across a knobbly carpet of cushion plants, boronias, heath myrtle and pineapple grass. The interpretation is excellent, but I need to get a wiggle on for my date with the Derwent River.
Fiona and Liam Weaver have been running Tassie Bound Adventure Tours for about 10 years, but only started Paddle with Platypus tours on this section of the Derwent about six years ago, after Fiona and a friend floated downriver on a lilo with a bottle of wine and saw loads of platys. As we gear up they tell stories of platypuses coming right up to the kayaks for a closer look. I'm beyond excited and barely listen to the instructions should we fall off ("toes up, nose up and hang on to the paddle!").
Paddle with Platypus tours take place on a section of the Derwent River. Photo / Briar Jensen
Liam explains that the wind is usually behind us and we go with the river's flow so hardly need to paddle. Just not today. The river is low, the flow is slow and we're battling a headwind. It's pretty though, with blue gums and poplars edging the water. We paddle past hop farms and pharmaceutical poppies, spot a sea eagle's nest and a white-faced heron.
Taking a break for chai tea and Fi's chocolate brownies Liam tells us the highest tally of platypus sightings on the three-hour tour is 26, the worst three. With so much wind on the water, I'm expecting to break that lowest record. But we do spot three, just at such a distance it's hard to distinguish them from a bobbing log.
It's a different story on the drive home in the dark, where I dial down the speed to dodge the wildlife, from wallabies and wombats to pademelons, possums and owls. It's a relief to reach Rathmore without hitting anything.
With the wind still up next morning I jump in the car with Cally's list of recommendations and drive to and fro, leaving a track like a moth larva on a scribbly gum. The sandstone buildings in the hamlet of Hamilton, including coffee at Jackson's Emporium, then Lawrenny Distillery on the banks of the upper Derwent, one of only three paddock-to-bottle whiskey distillers in the world, who also make a range of gins and a cold brew coffee liqueur.
Lawrenny Distillery sits on the banks of the upper Derwent. Photo / Briar Jensen
At cute Possum Shed Cafe in Westaway are photos of their resident platypus, Flossie, but sitting in their willow-shaded garden it's the antics of wild ducks cavorting in the river that bring a smile. I buy berries for Cally at Westerway Raspberry Farm and pick up apple and ginger jam at Bushy Park Market, where a mini museum dedicated to the hop industry explains the paddocks of timber poles I've driven past.
Possum Shed Café in Westaway is a cute spot for refreshment. Photo / Briar Jensen
Behind the hawthorn hedge at the Salmon Ponds Heritage Hatchery is a 19th century English garden with manicured lawns and exotic trees of golden ash and elm reflected in the gravity-fed ponds. The oldest trout hatchery in the southern hemisphere, they still supply trout for Tassie's lakes and dams. The hatchery's history is intriguing and there are rooms full of angling memorabilia. Platypuses supposedly proliferate in the Plenty River behind the hatchery but dawdling at the viewing platforms fails to bring them forth.
On my last morning, when Dew Rivulet still resembles a rippling ocean, I explore the farm instead, meeting Hercules the humongous steer and checking out stables and barns used for art retreats, long lunches and mini country music concerts. But it's the dilapidated woolshed that tugs at my heartstrings. The smell of lanolin-soaked timber and old machinery oil brings back memories of my childhood on a South Auckland farm. Wind whistles through holes in the walls and rattles loose roof iron as I try to capture sunlight angling through cobweb-laced windows with my camera. Gusty weather may have thwarted platypus close-ups, but I'm grateful the quest has brought me to this idyllic rural retreat in Tassie's Central Highlands.
Rathmore woolshed and its smell of lanolin-soaked timber and old machinery oil brings back memories. Photo / Briar Jensen
CHECKLIST: TASMANIA
GETTING THERE
Air New Zealand flies direct from Auckland to Tasmania twice a week. Airnz.co.nz
Rathmore's accommodation includes four guestrooms in the Georgian Homestead, four ensuite rooms in the Shearers' Quarters and a rustic cottage that sleeps four. All options include breakfast provisions. You can self-cater, order pre-cook meals and picnics or request dinner in the homestead kitchen or Georgian dining room. rathmore.com.au
Tassie Bound Adventure Tours runs 3-hour Paddle with Platypus tours every evening from October to April. tassiebound.com.au
