Time since accident: 5 weeks | Anticipated return to trail: 3 weeks

My time in Tassie with my family is flying by. It’s now been almost five weeks since the fall, a little over three of which have been spent in a cast. I’ll see the doc again on the 15th, at which point I’ll hopefully be able to have the plaster removed. Then I’ll head to NSW for a couple of weeks before hitting the trail in early July.

The calendar has been jam-packed and the next week looks set to continue in much the same vein. I’ve been doing my best to catch up with folk, but there remain a few friends down here that I’m yet to see.

Since returning from the shack, Mum and I have done some lovely Launceston walks, one of which was a 15km ramble from the Tailrace in Riverside to Hoblers Bridge Reserve in Newstead. We met Mum’s sister Trish for coffee at the Inveresk Uni campus about an hour into the walk, then again for lunch at Glebe Gardens.

The university has built swanky student studio accommodation beside the river which looks fantastic.

For maps and other information about this and some of the other great walks that you can do in the Launceston area, check out the ‘Your Voice Your Launceston’ Trail Guide pdf. The guide has been compiled by the Launceston City Council and be downloaded for free.

The walk we did, which pieced together a series of shorter walks, followed the course of the Tamar River to the point where the North and South Esk Rivers converge and flow into it, then travelled upstream along the North Esk for a couple of kms. The trail continues here for several kms beyond Hoblers Bridge, but we made that our end point for the day.

The walk included a stretch atop the newly upgraded system of levee banks, which has been built up in recent years as Launceston is prone to pretty serious flooding.

The Launceston Flood Authority project, which only saw completion in late 2015, would be seriously tested within two days of our walk, when Tasmania experienced statewide flooding. Much of where we’d walked ended up underwater but the levees held, protecting thousands of homes against rising rivers and tide. There is now talk of extending the network of levees to Newstead on Launceston’s eastern side, where 50 homes were impacted by the flood.

 

When I did one of my favourite walks at the Cataract Gorge last Friday it looked like this:

By Monday, with the South Esk spilling over the Trevallyn Dam, it looked more like this:

Mum, Dad and I watched the water rise from our vantage point at the fish & chip shop at the seaport as the tide came in on Tuesday:

Four seaport restaurants situated outside the levee-protected area had succumbed to flooding by the time the rivers reached their peak on Tuesday afternoon, and though the levels were receding by Wednesday afternoon, the cleanup was yet to begin:

I’m currently in Hobart and about to jump on a ferry so will label the pics from this post & put up some pics from the south of Tas at a later date.
Xo