Hartz National Park

Hartz National Park is a part of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area - something Tasmania seems to be very proud of. I's something the island is indeed world-famous for. But Suzy was less euphoric about that. According to her, this is only where nothing financially valuable is found, so the industry can gracefully do without, taking all the rest of Tasmania instead. And it is not like one would expect in Europe, with some maybe restricted access. The Tasmanian Wilderness is pretty much no-go. There is one track for hardcore hikers and of course the shoreline for boats, but that's it. It is REAL wilderness.

Hartz National Park is only a very small part of the wilderness and it's tamed, too. There are a couple of tracks trough the bog. But as the weather was not too nice that day, we took the short one to lake Osborne.

And by the way I am an admirer of the really outstanding Nationalpark Harz in Germany. So it was my pride and joy to wear my Harz Nationalpark shirt in Hartz National Park Tasmania :-)

The area is mainly bog and shrubland. The species living here have the typical appearance of bog dwellers, still, most of them are totally different from what one would find in Europe. I was pretty clueless about the species and could only find few of them in my book. But a friendly visitor of this website, Michael Horton, helped me out with some names. So the shrub on the right side pic is now identified as Mountain Rocket for the shapes of the flower stalks. Maybe one day I will find out the names of the other shrubs too, but for now, I only can provide a bit of their beauty. If you can help, this is the link!

There is one inhabitant of the park that is remarkable enough to get identified by the information plates, it's the Pineapple grass that is no grass at all, but received it's name for obvious reasons.

Lake Osborne is not really in a trough at the bottom of something, it's pretty high in the hills with very clear water that is very short of nutrients. So there is no riparian vegetation, it's pretty much pure water without anything in it. Well, there certainly is something, but nothing we could observe. But a lonely King Billy Pine provided a scenic foreground for the first picture. The second one became of course much more romantic with David posing as Kopenhagen mermaid.