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Blackboy-Mathinna circuit.

Having once climbed Mt Blackboy by the easy route, I was not all that interested in a repeat, but today we took it head on and did a traverse along the high rocks, and that made it a totally different and really fun experience.

Fingal Valley

Not only did we attack the boulders from their most challenging angle, we also began way, way down at Mathinna Falls, giving us a climb of over 500 ms in the process, and not from the nearest road access as is normally done if you only have bagging in mind.

Hypholoma australe – these were near the carpark, before the real fun began.

The actual climby bit was probably only about 2kms horizontally. Do your maths: that’s STEEP. People from our small group were falling and slipping the whole time. It only counted as a fall if you landed on your bum or worse. I was relatively unscathed with only three falls. Several of my friends got into double figures. One specialised in quite spectacular landings.

Delvin Ck track to falls

Even just standing talking waiting for the rear to catch up, you kind of slid down the slope unless you grabbed a sapling to prevent the descent. I was sure I spotted a flat bit of ground somewhere down below (and John backed me up); this became a source of many jokes as we tumbled our way downwards.

Russula viridis – very pleased to find this one! You don’t see them often.

Sorry for the lack of photos of rocks and forest: when you are above your head in ferns, it’s hard to get a shot, and the rocks were reached in midday glare, which I don’t find conducive to pleasing photography. I leave the massive and alluring boulders to your imagination. Meanwhile, if you know me, you know I love fungi.

Dermocybe canaria. I have also not seen very many of these in my hunting.

I was quite proud of how clean my pants still were at the finish – ripped and muddy pants were the norm by the end of the day – until I got home and discovered a huge red patch base right, courtesy of a hitchhiking leech.

Blackboy Falls from above. We could see them, even if you can’t. This was as good as it got today. Work in progress!

We also visited the top of a waterfall en route, which, given its location and in order to be able to talk about it, I have dubbed Blackboy Falls. (It is an unnamed blue line on the map). We lacked time to visit the base, but at least we have now seen it, and have also (of course?) plotted our route for a more extensive, close-and-personal visit some other time. As it was, we didn’t get back to the cars before 5 pm, and it was more than dinner hour by the time we returned to Launceston. It’s worth being hungry to have had such a fun day. Very little beats real bushbashing, with its engagement with nature, and its total workout value. Keep Tassie Wild.

Traversing the ferns back near the bottom. Thanks for the photo Phil Andrew, who, being taller than I am, had a little less trouble taking a shot in the jumble.

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Mathinna Falls 2018 Tiers 1, 2, 3 and 4.

Mathinna Falls 2018. Tiers 1, 2, 3 and 4.


Mathinna Falls Tier 1.
Carrie and I were having such a fun day, having bagged two falls that were just marks on a map with no documentation (see URL below) – plus Evercreech Falls – in the morning, and now here we were to photograph Tiers 1-3 of Mathinna Falls, and then try our luck at Tier 4. I had tried for Tier 4 on my first visit, with very little light left in the day, and wearing only my gumboots. Both aspects were calculated for failure, and being alone that day – apart from having Tessa who could possibly be a liability rather than an asset – I retreated before catastrophe became the headlines.

Mathinna Falls Tier 3
Happy with the normal Tiers 1-3, up we started on 4. There were a few erosion aids, where water tumbling off the cliff left ground a little smoother than the thick scrub around, so I tried to follow these patterns as much as possible. The almost vertical land was very cliffy when not just plain steep with loose rock that did not hold. We grabbed like daemons, clutching any saplings or small bushes that would give us purchase as we hauled ourselves up the slope, both delighting in a full-body workout for the day. The cliffs drove us away from our destination somewhat, but I figured that we were going up the only possible way, and that we could traverse later if ever we got past the really steeply contoured bit. To our disappointment, although we did get up beyond the contour-crowded section, the very second the contours relented a little, thick scrub took over the battle to drive us away. We did what we could in the time we felt like devoting to the exercise, and pushed our way through the junk in the direction of the falls, which we could hear quite clearly, even if our vision was rather veiled.

Mathinna Falls Tier 4. This waterfall is absolutely massive. We were blown away by its height, which seemed never-ending, reaching below into regions we couldn’t see, and above, beyond our visual plane.
Once we did get a goodish sighting (photo above), we called it quits. There was no promise of a utopian view, so we contented ourselves with the one we’d achieved, and took some record shots before beginning the descent, the idea of which was causing a little trepidation for both of us. Coming up had been challenging. How would getting back down be? Were we about to plummet out of control, speedily downhill to a bash with a rock? Would I actually find  a safe way down? (Not sure if Carrie asked this question, but I sure did). And how would Tessa the Brave cope, heading down such a slope nose first with nothing to hang onto to break a possible tumble?


Mathinna Falls Tier 2

Mathinna Falls from the top. Carrie shooting, hiding behind bushes to the left..
On the way up, we’d shot Tiers 1 and 3. On the descent, we celebrated safety and a return to “normal forest” with a dallying in the area of Tier 2, climbing this and that interesting rock to get some angles that pleased us on this shapely fall. It was a great day.


Mathinna Falls …. the joy goes on and on and up and up … (steeply).
For the morning’s waterfalls, see  http://www.natureloverswalks.com/trickle-and-dry-falls/

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Trickle Falls and Dry Falls 2018

Trickle Falls and Dry Falls 2018 Sept


With an inauspicious name like “Trickle Falls”, don’t expect too much. If you use a powerful magnifier, you might find the trickle that elevated its name from “Nothing Falls”.
Trickle Falls and Dry Falls. Do these names excite you in a waterfall? No? Well, I guess the falls didn’t excite us much either, but one visits waterfalls for many reasons. I think all three modes of waterfall visiting have their place, either to please three different kinds of people and capabilities and desires, or even one person in three different moods. Sometimes you go just to see something beautiful to photograph, but that involves no adventure at all (Russell, Nelson, Horseshoe, Liffey, Lillydale and more). Sometimes, you visit something that has a little bit of an adventure, and a beautiful waterfall at the end as well, like Machinery Creek Falls, or Tin Spur Falls or McGowan Falls, to name just a few of Tasmania’s many treasures in this realm. These falls usually have a pad of sorts, so the adventure aspect is minimal, but you still feel a certain sense of reward for having got there, despite the prevalence of seemingly ubiquitous pink tape that you possibly try to avoid in order to have the adventure you feel like having that day. Other days you don’t feel like thinking, you are in zombie mode, and the pink tape means you can zone out for a while.


Hygrocybe cheerli, I believe (near the later visited, Evercreech Falls.
But if you are up for a real adventure – if you wish to satisfy that primaeval spirit of ‘the explorer’  that still lurks inside some of us, and which, being the lucky, lucky denizens of a place like Tasmania that still has places that remain essentially wild (whether called wilderness or not), then you can get a map, spot a little line on it, and navigate yourself off to that waterfall, not having a clue what you will find. Such was the case for Carrie and me – and Tessa – on Sunday, when I decided our waterfalls for the day (well, the first two of our seven) would be two marks on the map in between Mathinna Falls and Evercreech Falls, up on a ridge to the east of Evercreech Road (and Evercreech Rivulet).


And of course, to be dubbed Dry Falls gives you no chance, ever.
We both imagined beautiful rainforest like the forest surrounding the two falls of the big names. Not so. This forest was as dry as a bone, with fallen timber everywhere, and not at all appealing. Oh well, luck of the draw. We also expected falling water at such a mark on the map. Wrong again. As you can tell by the names we have given these falls so we can talk about them, the first had barely enough to get wet if you needed a wash, and the second would leave you utterly parched if you were thirsty.


The consolation prize for the morning: Evercreech Falls.
But we are not sad. We took photos for the heck of it, but rejoiced in the adventure we’d had playing at being explorers. It’s a fun adventure, a fun life. However, we then moved on to our consolation prizes of Evercreech Falls and Mathinna Falls, which Carrie, living as she does way to the west on the NW coast, hadn’t yet seen. Evercreech and the first three tiers of Mathinna were repeats for me, but I never mind that.


Fallen sassafras blossoms litered the ground and settled on the moss, like confetti at a wedding. It was wonderful.
The real adventure of the day turned out to be waterfall number seven, which was Mathinna Tier 4, a fun climb – a little scary – and a real feeling of triumph when we looked across at them. Omg, they are absolutely HUGE. We had that wonderulfly spooky feeling that very few humans on the planet today can have – the feeling that perhaps you are standing where maybe no humans have ever stood. The bush was very thick; the climb had been very steep on quite loose ground; we had pushed through rubbish to be where we were (with me breaking down several dead shrubs to enable our progress), and the view was not utterly brilliant, but we were seeing something very special, and it thrilled us. (For photos and report, see the blog on this that will be posted within the next day or so).


To get there, we hung a right (east) off Evercreech Road, climbing up to the left of the ridge of the knobble there. The road was dodgy. I was grateful that we were in my Subaru Forester and not in a 2WD. … And then the road became even dodgier, but we pressed on, and parked up the top. The cyan route is the walking part. You can see where we dropped down to the two falls concerned. They are “waterfall baggers only” type falls.

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Mathinna Falls 2018 Aug

Mathinna Falls, 2018, 1st Aug


Tessa and I didn’t set out for Mathinna Falls until after lunch (in Launceston). The days are winter-short, but google said it would only take two hours to get there (correct), and about ten minutes to walk from the carpark to the falls (also correct). We were thus at the falls by 3.30 pm, which should have been just about perfect. The day was sunny, but the valley which cuddles these falls is steep and closed in, so no sun was present to glare up the water. It was actually quite dark and gloomy in there, even at that hour, and seemed much later. My early shots have a slightly golden tinge up where the sun could reach.


I chose gumboots for this journey, figuring there’d be a lot of water, and off we set. Good choice: water burst the banks and spilled out over sections of the track. The falls could be heard thundering and crashing up ahead. I was worried about Tessa being stupid, but she was frightened, and stuck very close to me the whole time. Just a quick drink was enough for her to feel the mighty force of this water.


I was worried that the force of the water might pose tripod problems, but, well, that’s the reason I chose sirui, and it didn’t let me down: my tripod stood as solid as a rock in the rushing, pounding stream. There is no problem with sharpness in my images. My problems are mine alone, and have to do with the enormous dynamic range between the very dark foreground and side frames, and the overly light falls, made very bright by the massive volume of water. I had a similar problem in Iceland. You need to do exposure blending, and you need to have photos of very different exposures. I didn’t go fast enough on the falls part of the shot. I need to be more extreme next time in this situation. I thought I had it covered, but I wasn’t quite right.


My boots were an interesting choice when it came time to climb up to the next two levels of falls. I found they were very slippery indeed on the rocks, and, as I didn’t feel like packing everything away for that climb, I negotiated the tricky climb with my camera and its filters plus tripod in one hand, leaving only the other hand for clinging to obstacles to stop me sliding backwards. I’m afraid I looked (and was) cumbersome and clumsy – not for the first time in my life. Anyway, I got there, and I saw a beautiful waterfall, and learned some valuable lessons for next time. Sunset behind Stacks Bluff on the way home was a treat.


I chose the longer but faster (for me) route via Fingal. From there, I headed north to Mathinna, and took the road over the bridge heading for Ringarooma. After that turn, there are signs to the Mathinna Falls. It’s a pity they’re not signed from Mathinna itself. The cyan line above begins at the carpark.