Welcome to North West Tasmania!

Here's Penguin's big concrete penguin, welcoming me to North West Tasmania the other week, complete with pink McGrath Foundation T-shirt.

Penguin, like all the rest of Tasmania these days, is very welcoming of tourists. It's a great place to visit, and all the creature comforts are in good supply.

Forty years ago Tasmania was a somewhat different place, but it still welcomed me quite warmly when I went to live there. Here's a picture of the place I first lived in, and the view from there of Penguin with the moon over Bass Strait.

What really welcomed me to the North West Coast though was the North West Walking Club. They were a terrific bunch of people, and I'm still in touch with some of them even today.

Here's a pic of possibly my first walk with the club, to Crotty, an old mining settlement down the West Coast.

I was introduced to some magnificent wild places over the following few years. And the other week I was able to revisit some of those places.

Leven Canyon, for example, and Gunns Plains, looking very green relative to most of eastern Australia's rather brown, drought afflicted appearance these days.









And Black Bluff, a nearby 1300m peak which always made you feel you'd earned your evening refreshment.

And here's Ferndene, a very pretty nature reserve bordering onto the Dial Range.