Taking a mini-vacation to Leven Canyon

I have always enjoyed reading “armchair travel” books, as they have allowed me to do things like climb Mt Everest (and other high peaks) without altitude sickness or oxygen deprivation, trek through the Andes with a donkey without enduring bed bugs at night, and to visit remote and isolated corners of the world without the expense and the danger – all, of course, in my imagination.

So I thought I would take you on a walk on a special day to one of Tasmania’s awesome places, minus aching calf muscles and damp clothes, and hope that you can use this to take a mini-vacation from mundane tasks.

We begin by enjoying the ice scattered across the grass of the car park after a very recent hail storm, and as we begin our walk along a fairly level track into the rainforest, we notice piles of ice by the side of the track and in the centre of tree ferns.

Continuing on through the beautiful rainforest, which is crowded with tree ferns sheltering other ferns, we regularly pass sturdy wooden bench seats with the distances in metres, both to the lookout and back to the car park, carved into their backs, and this gives us some sense of progress.

When we reach the lookout over the Canyon, it is raining lightly, but we are dressed in wet weather gear and stand in awe of the views around and below us. Wisps of mist decorate the upper canyon walls and deep below us the waters of the Leven River roar in a brown swirling flood over rocks, leaving patches of white foam at its edges.

Now we walk down more than 600 steps, and this time the wooden bench seats have the numbers of steps, both up and down, carved into their backs. The rainforest continues to surround us, still thick with ferns and moss, closing us into its enchanted world.

We reach another lower lookout over the Canyon and a closer view of the wild cascades, leaping in freedom around the bends in the river.

Having come down all those steps, the track now takes us upwards through more rainforest, where we can take a closer look when we take puff stops along the way. We notice:

                         The mist in the forest at the edge of the Canyon

                          Water dripping from the ends of palm fronds

                            Moss covered rocks

                             Small ferns growing on tree trunks

                             And tiny fungi

Back at the car park we observe that most of the hail has now melted, and realise that we have just experienced this place in a special moment in time.