January 2-5, 2020
Bronte lagoon we passed by on the way to the West Coast in December and this time decided to detour off the highway and check the camping area.
On the way however we stopped first at The Wall in the Wilderness. This is an exhibition, in a specially constructed building, of stunning timber sculptures in Huon Pine by Greg Duncan. The array of 100m of panels depicts the history of the Central Highlands of Tasmania. With an admission charge of $15 it’s truly a stunning work of art, as yet unfinished, partly deliberately , so that the viewer can see the work in creating these panels. Photography inside is strictly prohibited for copyrght reasons but a few images are portrayed on their own website (link above) and this is a sample of the postcards created for the visitors
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Bronte Lagoon
The camping area at Bronte Lagoon is on both sides of the low dam wall and the area to the South side has more flat space for just a handful of campers, more so than the boat Ramp side. We arrived to find only one other there who was in the process of leaving and mostly had 2 to 3 for our three days here. We parked next to an old gravel boat ramp and the Kayak came off the roof and into the water for the first time in Tasmania; the weather was almost perfect for paddling around and the water was not very cold, largely due to the fact that this is a shallow lagoon being just one of the chain which feeds the Tugatinah Power Station. It is this that feeds the Slalom Course that we camped at on the way West.
We also were visited by a Possum in the late evening and found this Echidna wandering along the driveway on the Saturday afternoon (videos at right)
The Centre of Tasmania
At the Northern end of Bronte Lagoon, beside the Lyell Highway, is a monument erected in honour of the surveyors of the past and marking the geographical centre of Tasmania.