After we travelled almost two weeks through the Tasmanian wilderness, made a lot of hikes and overcame many meters of altitude, it’s time to travel back to the coast. Before we set off, however, we had to replenish our supplies. Launceston is the second biggest city in Tasmania and it was also on our way. We needed about 2 hours until everything was packed and stowed in the car. Afterwards we took care of our campervan “Wolly”; he needed a bit of love so we took him to a car wash and took care of that.
Narawntapu National Park
Narawntapu National Park is located in northern Tasmania on Bass Strait, which separates the Australian mainland from Tasmania. Its real name used to be – I am not kidding – Asbestos Range National Park. But as this probably not a visitor-magnet, it was then renamed to its original name of the local indigenous people. As we were not sure how to pronounce it, we asked at the visitor center. Na / rawn / tapu was the answer; the emphasis is on the middle syllable.
The national park is mainly known for its wildlife. Especially in the evening hours you can meet numerous pademelons, wallabies, kangaroos and countless birds. They feed directly on the campsite or the adjacent grassland ?.
Springlawn Visitor Center Campground
Right next to the visitor centre there is the Springlawn Visitor Center Campground, a very nice campsite. There are sites with power, flush toilets, a shower area (warm showers – $2 for 4 minutes) and water supply. They use probably ferruginous (and for this reason quite brown) groundwater and rainwater. Warning signs also indicate that rainwater should be treated (e.g., by cooking for three minutes). We also let the water run through our Sawyer water filter to be on the safe side. Right next to the campsite there is also a covered picnic area with BBQ facilities.
The visitor centre is also the starting point for various hikes and the sea is only 1 km away. The price for a campsite is quite fair with $16 per night (about 10,- €). Because we wanted to take it a bit more “slow” in the next days, we wanted to stay for 4 nights.
Wolly at the Springlawn Visitor Center Campground
Toilets and showers
As already described above, the highlight of the national park is the wildlife. And so, shortly after we parked our campervan, the first pademelon visited us. It didn’t take long and the first wallabies jumped around between the camping sites 🙂 Some of them also have a joey with them, who looked curiously out of the pouches. After our dinner we visited the adjacent grassland. Here we saw the aforementioned animals as well as countless (more or less peaceful) kangaroos. For us the perfect ending of our day.
Bird Hide Walk / Archers Knob
At the end of the campsite a path starts towards the viewpoint at Archers Knob. Of course we didn’t want to miss this walk and after a slow-paced start into the day, we started the hike around noon. A sandy path leads first through denser vegetation and after a short time you have the possibility to make a small detour to a freshwater lake.
We continued following the path in the direction of Archers Knob. We quickly climbed the 100 meters of altitude and were rewarded with a fantastic view from above.
View from Archers Knob
View from Archers Knob
Then we walked along the Bakers Beach back to the campsite. Here we had the beach almost all to ourselves and only two other couples crossed our path. In the evening we walked to the meadow again to check what our bouncing friends were doing.
Bakers Beach
Sundown à la Narawntapu
There are evenings when everything is just perfect 🙂 Due to a little rain, we had made ourselves comfortable in the campervan already and were chatting happily when I saw the clouds in the sky shining orange through the window. So we went out again and the scenery really took our breath away. It was just awesome!
