Convict built Spiky Bridge, Tasmania, Australia

Hi everyone. I hope you are all doing well. Today for my post, I have travelled to Australia's island state of Tasmania, the worlds 26th largest island, lying 240 kilometres off the south eastern tip of Australia.

At least one-fifth, or 20%, of Tasmania is a World Heritage Area. The area which covers 1.58 million hectares includes national parks, marine, and forests reserves

Here is a map to orientate yourself. The red dot on the map shows the location of Spiky Bridge.  I live way on the other side of Australia between Perth and Margaret River. 

Just over seven kilometres south of Swansea on Tasmania’s east coast is Spiky Bridge, a curious relic of Tasmania’s convict era and one of many convict built bridges in Tasmania. In fact you will find many buildings, bridges etc built by convicts throughout Tasmania and Australia during the convict period.  Between 1788 and 1868 more than 162,000 convicts were transported to Australia.

 Listed on the register of Heritage Places, Spiky Bridge was built by convicts in 1843 along the old convict-built coach road connecting Swansea to Little Swanport and the east coast road to Hobart. With its location opposite the beaches and seascapes of Great Oyster Bay, you need to be careful you don’t miss the turnoff while admiring the ocean views.

 The bridge was built from local field stones without mortar or cement and a small arch allows water to pass beneath the bridge. The parapet was constructed using jagged field stones stood vertically on end – hence the name Spiky Bridge.

Looking at a side view of the bridge you can see a water channel running down the wall from a slot at the base of the roadway to the arch beneath the bridge, allowing water to drain off the road.

By the 1820s European settlement was pushing northwards along the east coast from Hobart, drawn to the area by farming and whaling. Workers were not abundant in the area until the Rocky Hills Probation Station was constructed in 1841, providing free convict labour to build roads, bridges, clear land, and construct station buildings including the prison.

The reason why the bridge was decorated with these upright stones is the subject of speculation. One theory says it was to stop cattle falling into the gully or to prevent suicide jumpers. Another suggests that the convicts building the bridge used it as a form of revenge. It is questionable how they could do this whilst under supervision.  Either way, the Spiky Bridge is now a curious stopping point for tourists.

Popular history says the bridge was built after Irishman Edward Shaw of Redbanks gave his friend Major de Gillern, Superintendent of the Rocky Hills Probation Station, a ride home one night after a game of piquet (pee-kay).  Shaw had repeatedly requested that improvements be made to the road between Swansea and Little Swanport, particularly the steep gully south of Swansea. His requests had evidently fallen on deaf ears so to prove his point Shaw drove his gig and his passenger, the Major, through the gully at full gallop. It must have been a thoroughly uncomfortable trip because the bridge was erected shortly afterwards.

Initially the bridge was called Lafarelle’s Bridge after surveyor and civil engineer Thomas Lafarelle who was Assistant Superintendent at Rocky Hills Station between 1843 and 1845 and who probably supervised the building of the bridge. On the nearby hill overlooking the bridge are the remains of the Governor’s cottage.

The Rocky Hills Probation Station only lasted eight years, coming to an end during an economic depression in the late 1840s. Under the convict probation system during the 1840’s, all convicts had to serve time in a government work gang. Previously, convicts had been assigned to work for private settlers when they first arrived in the colony, clearing land and planting crops.

Swansea is Tasmania’s oldest seaside town.  It was first settled by the Welsh in the 1820s who named it Waterloo Point.  It was renamed Swansea in 1842. 

There are many convict built bridges in Tasmania, which can be explored on Tasmania's Convict Trail. 

Below are three of them - Red Bridge at Campbell town which was built on dry land and then had the river diverted under it; Richmond Bridge, 25 kilometres north of Hobart, built in 1825, is Australia’s oldest surviving large stone arch bridge; and Ross Bridge built from sandstone in 1836, according to a 2006 Engineers Australia report, the only example of a stone bridge in the World that includes carvings along all of its arches

Where is it?

Turnoff is on the western side of the Tasman Highway, 7.5km south of Swansea on Tasmania’s east coast, 127km north of Hobart.

Piquet – (pronounced pee kay) – is a trick-taking card game for two players, using a 32-card pack consisting of the seven to the ace only.

More information at:

Discover Tasmania – Tasmania’s Convict Trail 

Tasmanian Expeditions- Fascinating Facts About Tasmania

National Museum of Australia-Convicts

Thank you so much for stopping by. I hope you have enjoyed this little visit to Tasmania. 

You might also like on my blog: 

Searching for Platypus - Great Short Walks in Australia

Wombling with Wombats in Tasmania

I value your comments and look forward to hearing from you. I will try to visit your blogs in return. Have a wonderful week. 

I am linking up to the link-ups below. Please click on the links to see fabulous contributions from around the world - virtual touring at its best!

Mosaic Monday @ Soul & Mind & So On

Saturdays Critters - Viewing Nature With Eileen

Inspire Me Monday

Travel Tuesday

Pictorial Tuesday 

Talking About It Tuesdays @ Slices of Life

ThroughMy Lens 
Image-in-ing
My corner of the world through my camera 
Wednesday Around the World at Communal Global hosted by Randomosity. 
       and Little bird - Pienilintu
Thankful Thursday 
Welcome to Nature Thursday

Skywatch Friday

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Until then, enjoy your day... it won't be back.

Wombling with Wombats - Tasmania, Australia

Hi everyone, this week for a change of pace, and to get away from news of "the virus", I decided to go back to Tasmania - that little island off the eastern south coast of Australia - and go wombling with wombats.

I wrote about Great Short Walks and searching for platypus in Tasmania on my blog way back in 2012. You can see it here - Searching for Platypus - Great Short Walks in Tasmania

Tasmania is an island of stunning scenery and a long, not always happy, history. 

Here are a few scenes from Cradle Mountain - Lake St Clair National Park where we stayed in a cabin for a few days. We were thrilled during our visit to see and walk in snow - as we don't have snow in our part of Western Australia.  There are lots of great walks in the park, and a shuttle bus to drive you around, and we didn't mind the snow a bit!  
The walks are varied in terrain and distances, you can walk right around the lake, and there are these cute tunnels kid size with pictures for littlies to learn about birds and animals in the park.   That green mossy walk you can see second row below, looked like something from "The Hobbit".

Cradle Mountain and Dove Lake

Australia has some amazing unique animals - including the platypus and wombats - both of which we saw in Tasmania in 2012.

We had only seen wombats before in zoos - bored and sleepy - like in the photo below, and never in the wild until we went to Tasmania.

My apology in advance of the quality of these wildlife photos.....

 My son will tell you that it was the "wombat's fault" that I broke my arm at Cradle Mountain. 

We went on a late afternoon "wombat womble" guided walking tour along a board walk with a park ranger guide. The wooden board-walk was narrow and raised above the tough tussocky grassland and we were walking one behind each other because of the narrowness of the boardwalk - and it didn't have railings.  

A wombat was up ahead of us and the guide stopped to tell us about wombats. She then turned and said "where is our wombat", and I stepped sideways to get a better view - silly me forgot I was on a boardwalk - and I stepped off the boardwalk. I fell of course and my hand went out and I broke my wrist. Thankfully I managed to keep a good grip on my camera. 

I convinced myself it wasn't serious though it was very sore! and continued with the walk. Unfortunately I didn't take any photos of that wombat womble - or should I call it the wombat wobble?  I strapped up my wrist when we got back to the cabin and it wasn't till a few days later when we returned home that I had my wrist X-rayed and found that I had a small crack in one of the bones. My son will never let me forget that story!

 

I have just finished reading Jackie French's fascinating book "The Secret World of Wombats", illustrated by Bruce Whatley.

Jackie French is a much loved Australian author of childrens, teens, adult and non-fiction books. 

According to her web page  Jackie's writing career spans 25 years, she has studied over 400 wombats, written over 200 books, published in 36 languages, and has over 60 awards in Australia and overseas.

 So I guess after having met her first wombat over 30 years ago and since then studied over 400 wombats both in the wild and in her garden, she is well qualified to impart some of that knowledge through this book. Mixed with delightful short tales of wombats she has had living in her garden, it is a very enjoyable book.

Here are are few fast facts: 

* Diprotodon optatum (a megafauna - two metres tall and living thousands of years ago) is a close relative of modern wombats.  

* Wombat fur is coarse and stiff and was used by indigenous Australians to make string.

* Southern hairy-nosed wombats live only in a few places around the Nullarbor Plain and in South Australia. The northern hairy-nosed wombats are nearly extinct, surviving only in one colony in mid-north Queensland.

* Bare-nosed wombats - the common wombat - can be found in forested land in south-east New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania.  

*  Wombats can weigh up to and over 40 kilograms, are about a metre long but stand only about 30 centimetres tall. Their coloring can be grey, black, brown, or golden, depending on where they live and their age. 

Wombats in Tasmania - sorry for the not great photos!

* Wombats live in a burrow and sleep during the day.  Wombat holes usually have several bedrooms - chambers with soft, dry dust or a bed of dried grass or bracken. These rooms are usually big enough for the wombat to sit up in. They usually go to sleep on their side, and when they roll onto their back they are very sound asleep.  Wombats take over abandoned burrows and renovate them.  These burrows could be over a hundred years old.

* Female wombats have a pouch for their baby, with the entrance facing backwards so sand doesn't go in when they dig. They have a baby about every 3 years. A baby wombat is twenty days old when it first crawls as a hairless pink creature into the pouch and will normally stay in the pouch for 7-10 months. They stop drinking milk around 12-15 months. The mother may discourage them by laying flat on the ground. At about 18 months they take off on their own and by 2 years they are independent.

* Wombats leave hundreds of droppings in a night to mark out their territory.  During a drought when there isn't much grass, or the grass is tough and brown, wombat droppings will be dark brown or black and will be square.

* Wombats dust bathe in dry dirt or sand to clean their fur and help get rid of ticks and mites.  Wombats love freshly dug dirt. Wombats are built for borrowing with tiny eyes (to keep out the dirt), small ears, broad dry leathery noses with big nostrils (great for smelling), a short neck, a strong stocky body and powerful shoulders and legs. They have two giant lower teeth and two big upper teeth, five front claws and four back claws on each foot. The front feet dig and the back shovel out the dirt behind them.

 * Wombats see and learn about the world by the way it smells.  They also hear very well, but it takes them a while to work out what they are hearing.  Evidently this accounts for why they are often killed by cars on the road, because it takes them a while to work out a car is coming. Sadly we saw many dead wombats by the road during our trip through South Australia last year. I imagine hitting a wombat would do a lot of damage to your car.

* Wombats love lush green grass, but can also chew tough sedges and tussocks, bark and dig up roots. Hand reared wombats also like carrots, sweet potato, corn on the cob, rolled oats and 'wombat nuts' - a bit like a grain and lucerne biscuit. 

* Wombats love to scratch and will rub up against posts, trees and rocks.  

Wombat scratching on a post in Tasmania

* Wombats live in the burrow by themselves but they don't have territories and will feed together as long as they stay two metres from each other. (they have obviously heard about the social self isolation policy LOL)

* Wombats do make a few sounds but mostly don't use sounds to communicate, though they do growl or snarl and can be vicious fighters. They know each other by their smell and the smell of their droppings.

These are just a few wombat facts. You can learn more about wombats, living with wildlife and Jackie French's books over on her web page -  Jackie French
A few of Jackie's illustrated children's books about wombats, beautifully illustrated by Bruce Whatley, include:  Diary of a Wombat, The Hairy Nosed Wombats, How to Scratch a Wombat, Baby Wombat's Week, and Christmas Wombat.

Jackie has also written many other books including historical fiction, sustainability and ecology and gardening books.  I might have to order this "A Year in the Valley" from my local library. 

 You can learn more about wombats here - Australian Museum

Recently I heard a very interesting interview on the radio with Jackie French, and late last year I read her adult novel "Clancy of the Overflow" - inspired by Banjo Patterson's poem by the same name. There was a wombat in that book too! I'll be on the lookout for more of Jackie's books. 

 Thank you so much for stopping by. I hope you have enjoyed this post today and it has taken you for a little while away from the news of the Corona Virus that is currently plaguing our earth. I value your comments and look forward to hearing from you. I will try to visit your blogs in return. Have a wonderful week. 

Also by Jackie French

I am linking up to the link-ups below. Please click on the links to see fabulous contributions from around the world - virtual touring at its best!

   
All Seasons
MosaicMonday at Letting Go of the Bay Leaf

Our World Tuesday

Pictorial Tuesday 

ThroughMy Lens 

Image-in-ing
My corner of the world through my camera 
Wednesday Around the World at Communal Global hosted by Randomosity.

The Lovin' Life Team over at: Deep Fried Fruit

Hello there! I love reading your comments. If you scroll down to the bottom you can comment too! I would love to hear from you.

Searching for Platypus - Great Short Walks in Tasmania, Australia

Below is an excerpt from my latest published article - "On the Trail for Platypus and Other Great Walks in Tasmania" - published in On The Road magazine, November 2012 edition.

Evidently convicts on notorious Sarah Island in Macquarie Harbour on Tasmania’s wild west coast would sometimes eat platypus to supplement their meagre food supplies. Or so we were told when we visited Sarah Island on our Gordon River cruise. The story must have captured the imagination of our youngest son, as he still relates it to whoever will listen.

But walking along the Enchanted Walk at Cradle Mountain we were not searching for dinner.  We could have gone to a wildlife park to see the elusive platypus but looking for them in the wild was more of a challenge.  Stopping beside the river bank a sudden plop and a ripple of bubbles drew our attention.  Then another ripple as a furry head glistening with water emerged, and then disappeared again just as quickly. It was a platypus! He appeared again, snuffling around the edges of a fallen log with his sensitive bill.  We watched him as he swam upstream, surfacing and diving, finally disappearing under the far bank. Perhaps he had heard about convicts and platypus pie!

Enchanted Walk, Cradle Mountain - where we saw the platypus

Can you see the platypus?

The 20 minute circuit Enchanted Walk, is great for small children as it features child size walk through shelters along the way with drawings depicting animals, birds and plants. Wombats, Pademelons and Bennetts Wallabies are often seen along this walk. 

It was October and the Enchanted Walk is one of the many walks available in the Cradle Mountain Lake St Clair National Park in Tasmania’s Wilderness World Heritage area.  It is also just one of the 60 walks outlined in the booklet 60 Great Short Walks Tasmania. These walks bring Tasmania’s natural beauty within reach of just about anyone, especially families, or if like us you are limited by a two week holiday time constraint. We had travelled across Australia to Tasmania, and it was our first visit to this beautiful island state and we wanted to see as much as we could.

View from Cape Tourville

Tasmania is overflowing with natural beauty. Packed into its compact size you can experience a diversity of unspoiled habitats and ecosystems, pristine wilderness areas, dense cool climate rain forests, towering waterfalls, 2000 year old trees, thundering rivers, alpine snow covered mountains, windswept rocky cliff faces, sheltered beaches, unique wildlife, beautiful wildflowers, and stunning views.  Added to this is enough history to leave a history buff swooning.

Huge log bridge and tree ferns in the Sandspit Forest Reserve

For the bush walking enthusiast, Tasmania boats over 2000 kilometres of major walking tracks, 19 national parks, over 400 reserves, 1.5 million hectares of forest and 7 marine reserves along its 5,400 kilometres coastline.  Walks for the more adventurous include the 5-7 day Overland Track from Cradle Valley to Lake St Clair, and the 2-3 day circuit of the Freycinet Peninsular National Park.

St Columbia, Nelson & Hogarth Falls are only a short walk away

A good place to start your planning is by visiting a Tasmanian Visitor Information Centre for information on walks and to collect a copy of 60 Great Short Walks Tasmania. This excellent booklet outlines 60 walks, ranging from only ten minutes to eight hours. The booklet gives a short description of the walks, how to get there, whether the roads are sealed or unsealed, estimated walking return time, facilities, whether fees are payable, degree of difficulty, recommended clothing and any hazards.

For us Western Australians, this was the first time we had ever see snow, so we were happy to go walking in it! Although our son didn't think so!

Walking in snow at Cradle Mountain's Dove Lake

On our two week trip around Tasmania we did a number of short walks which added significantly to our enjoyment of Tasmania, took us to some wonderful places and gave us a welcome break from driving.  There is something special about walking along a quiet forest path immersed in its natural beauty and sounds.

The tulip fields at Table Cape were a feast for the eyes. Such dazzling display of colour I had never experienced before.  To see them you need to visit in October. 

The dazzling tulip fields at Table Cape, Wynyard

Of course a trip to Tasmania will invariably include history. Driving down the centre will take you to the colonial towns of Campbell Town, Ross, Oatlands and Richmond, whilst a day trip from Hobart will take you to Port Arthur.  But with so much history on show, that will have to be another story. 

Some history is curious - like the convict built "Spikey Bridge". Popular history says the bridge was built after Irishman Edward Shaw of Redbanks gave his friend Major de Gillern, Superintendent of Rocky Hills Probabtion Station, a ride home one night after a game of piquet. Shaw had repeatedly requested that improvements be made to the road between Swansea and Little Swanport, particularly the steep gully south of Swansea. His requests had evidently fallen on deaf ears and to prove his point Shaw drove his gig and his passenger, the Major, through the gully at full gallop. It must have been a thoroughly unpleaant trip because the bridge was erected shortly afterwards. The mystery is why the parapet was constructed using hundreds of jagged local fieldstones vertically stood on end. 

Please see On The Road magazine January 2013 edition to read the rest of the story. 

 

Tasmania has so much to offer the visitor - bushwalks, snow covered mountains, wilderness areas, dramatic coastlines, history and heritage, galleries, museums, wineries and gardens.  Make sure when you visit you take a short walk to some of them.  

and of course there are wildflowers! -

Alpine wildflowers at Cradle Mountain

To learn more about Great Short Walks in Tasmania, and to read the rest of this article please go to - "On the Trail for Platypus and Other Great Walks in Tasmania" - published in On The Road magazine, November 2012 edition.

Useful references: please click on the links -

Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service:  Tasmania National Parks

“Tasmania’s National Parks & Reserves” and “60 Great Short Walks Tasmania” booklets – go to the link, then click on the “Recreation” tab, and then “Great Walks”.

Tourism Tasmania – Discover Tasmania

Great Walks Tasmania - Great Walks Tasmania

You might also like - Walking the Capes, Western Australia


I am joining Mary and the other wonderful photographers from around the world at Mosaic Monday at Little Red House - please click on the link here to go there - Mosaic Monday