Detours

After a frustrating new year’s morning spent reading a resubmitted PhD thesis I decided I was entitled to escape for the afternoon, so I called Mum and Dad to ask if they were up for a (possibly small) adventure. We decided to go in search of one of the roads that runs between Judbury (near Glen Huon) and Plenty/New Norfolk. It doesn’t exist on Google maps, but it does on other maps and there are caches hidden along the way with descriptions indicating that the road is readily navigable.

And thus it turned out to be. The only tricky bit is knowing which turn off to take at the start; after that it is fairly straightforward, and, since it is a forestry road, it is wide and well-constructed (and in better condition than the Lake Dobson road we’d driven a few days earlier). Of course, the down side of being a forestry road was the abundance of monoculture forests and denuded hillsides, but there were a few pretty spots and some good views.

The road crosses the upper reaches of the Plenty River, where it is a wide creek surrounded by tea-tree and cutting grass and other wet sclerophyll species. We stopped here to enjoy the clear waters of the creek and to find — eventually — a couple of caches.

We spotted some Blechnum wattsii (otherwise known as the “hard water fern”), but with very fresh fertile fronds. The Blechnum wattsii ferns are dimorphic, having infertile leafy green fern fronds and, in addition, skeletal fertile fronds that are not leafy at all. On most of the occasions when I have found Blechnums the fertile fronds have been brown, fuzzy and almost dead-looking (see the second photo below, taken some time ago on Mt Wellington); the newly uncoiling frond we found today and shown in the photo below has a definite reddish tinge with a softness I’d never seen before.

Having reached New Norfolk we took another detour before heading homeward, and visited Tynwald Park. I think I may have played hockey at the sports grounds here, once, when I was a teenager (and, if I recall, it was probably cold or foggy or both at the time!), but I haven’t been here since then. There is a short walk out to the bank of the Derwent River with dramatic views of the cliffs on the other side (for those of you who don’t know the area, there is actually a road which you might be able to make out, running along the base of the cliffs). It was a glorious afternoon and, with such a good view, I was forced to wonder why on earth I hadn’t been here before.