The Phoenix Tour

A beautiful warm, sunny morning.

I was booked on the Huon Jet which I was really looking forward to. Unfortunately, they had some technical issues and had to cancel. 

So I headed out to find a new adventure. 

Rode through the stunning Huon Valley, hills lined with apple and cherry orchards. On past gorgeous little towns along the Huon River.

Franklin was so pretty, established 1848, it’s lovely old houses look out onto the glass like surface of the Huon.

Stopped at Frank’s cider bar and Café. A bit early for the cider part but had some yummy French toast with poached pears.

Onwards towards Geeveston, a nice little forest town. Lovely old buildings and a great park full of grey nomads and their vans…..

Saw a sign to Tahune Adventures with a treetop airwalk. 

Sounded fun so off I went.

Down a winding forest road that seemed to go on forever. It must seem like that to a lot of people, going by the multiple signs along the way with things like “Nearly there”, “Not far to go now”, “Just a bit further”.

Got there and saw that I could do a cable hang glide across the river. Sign me up!

This was a fun experience, zipping 50 metres above the espresso coloured Huon River, looking across the fire ravaged forest below.

Unfortunately, not long enough, it feels like it’s over very quickly. I said something to that effect to the guy controlling it and he let me have a second go for free as there was no one else waiting at that stage.

Moved onto the airwalk. This is a platform 30 metres above the forest floor with a cantilever section that is 50 metres high.

From here, you get an idea of how gigantic the trees in the Tahune wilderness are.

Massive stringy barks and mountain ash tower at around 50-80 metres high. The tallest of all is the Centurion Tree which is a massive 100 metres tall.

Here’s a couple of photos with some adults standing near them for scale;

2019 saw a monster bush fire tear through the Tahune forest, burning over 63,000 hectares of the Huon region, devastating a lot of what I was walking through. Signs encourage you to look up and notice how far up the fire had damaged some of the trees. Flames had reached higher than 80 metres in some areas, evidenced by the blackened tops of some of the most immense trees.

You could see the regeneration in action just as Australian bush is designed to do.

I then did the swinging bridges circuit. Got my Indiana Jones on crossing the two sproingy bridges.

Then came the thunder. And me, at least 2kms away from the exit…remembering I had no wet weather gear with me (I was just supposed to do the Huon Jet and be home well before the storms)

So I got to do a little running. Wearing motorbike pants and boots, in the sweaty heat. Beat the rain and headed back along the forever road out of the forest.

One of the places on my list to visit was Willie Smith’s Apple Shed. The home of Willie Smith’s Cider and, apparently famous Apple pie.

I saw the turn off, looked at the approaching storm and thought, bugger it, and pulled in.

A glass of their Bone Dry sugar free cider (delicious) and a slice of apple pie.

The Apple pie was very good, packed with apples (as you would expect) in a nice thick pie crust. Not the best pie I’ve ever eaten but still very yummy.

A wall of apple varieties that are used in cider making;

Probably shouldn’t have stopped as the rain caught up and dumped on me for the next 40 minutes but the air was warm and there was no wind so it wasn’t too bad.

A nice cruisey day.