Adamsons Falls

A different niece; a different destination.

The Australia Day holiday gave me an opportunity for a day walk with my eldest well-and-truly adult niece. We’d originally thought about climbing Adamsons Peak (apostrophe in “Adamsons” not included due to official nomenclature board policy), but timing, weather and some other factors, such as a strong disdain for extended upwardnesses, meant that we/I changed our minds and we went to Adamsons Falls instead, where there were upwardnesses, but not of the extended type.

The early part of the track appears to follow an old logging haulage way: it is wide, gently sloping, and bordered by massive tree-stumps with the tell-tale traditional loggers’ notches where they’d embed planks to make a platform for sawing from (photographs unhelpfully not included, sorry). There were also a couple of massive fallen trees, with exposed and rotted root systems that were abstract and gothic (photographs helpfully included, so you can see what I mean by “abstract and gothic”).

The track then climbs gradually and then more steeply and awkwardly, passing just about all of my favourite rainforest species: celery top pines, mosses, lichens, blechnum ferns, leatherwood, and sassafras, with its characteristic sarsaparilla aroma (aroma not included here due to technical difficulties, and I didn’t include a photo either … so have a cute tree stump instead).

Eventually we reached the gully where we could hear tell-tale sounds of a waterfall, and, after some more awkward and slightly precarious scrambling, we arrived at the main level of the falls … to discover that the “tell-tale sounds” had rather exaggerated the amount of water actually tumbling down the face of the 50m high cliff (“tell-tale sounds” and actual water also not included here, the latter in the interests of keeping your keyboard dry).

For the geologists out there, note that the top of the falls appear to be sandstone (with fossils, judging from rocks at the base), with Tasmania’s famous Jurassic dolerite dyke comprising the lower half of the falls (no, rock samples have not been included here; don’t be ridiculous).

There is a pool at the bottom of the main drop, and we had lunch here (lunch not included, as we ate it all), before exploring and taking a few photos and time exposures.

From the main drop, another series of cascades continue downwards, and I took a few more photos (which turned out not quite so well as I had hoped, but I have included them anyway since I have failed to include so many other things).

While we were at the falls, a breeze came up and blew through the leatherwood trees, causing them to drop the petals from their flowers in a gentle snow-like shower. The white petals drifted in the amphitheatre of the falls, and fell on the ground and in the pools like a natural confetti (too much description included in the absence of any movie footage of the phenomena). It was quite beautiful.

And on the way back, this lizard stayed still enough for a photo … only I didn’t and so he is slightly blurry. Sorry. Apology included.

It was a very enjoyable trip, with our time at the falls being very peaceful. Although the water flow was disappointing, I suspect if there had been more water the track might have been more slippery. On my last visit, over 30 years ago, it was very muddy indeed (a representative sample of mud from that time has not been included, because keeping mud this long would be totally weird).