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WONDERS OF NATURE
Island of Tasmania. Nature miracle
The climate of Australia, from the point of view of a European, cannot be called fertile. The interior regions of this continent are dry savannahs and deserts; on the slopes of the Great Dividing Range facing the sea, there is an abundance of rain and damp stuffiness. And everywhere - heat, heat, heat ... And only the island of Tasmania can be considered a truly paradise, where a traveler who has arrived from the Old World will find both the desired coolness and the usual mountain-forest landscapes, spiced, however, with a fair amount of purely Australian exoticism. Australia would not be Australia if it did not amaze at every turn with the unusualness of its flora and fauna, and Tasmania in this sense is no exception.
This huge island, larger than Sri Lanka and only slightly smaller than Ireland or Haiti, is separated from the mainland by two hundred kilometers of Bass Strait. Two chains of islands in the west and east of the strait connect Tasmania with the rest of Australia. When you look on a sunny day from the southern tip of the mainland - Cape Southeast - towards Tasmania, the sight of these islands, rising like two intermittent bridges over the blue expanse of the Bass Strait, reminds you that Australia and its largest island once formed a single landmass . The shores of Tasmania are indented by narrow deep bays, similar to the fjords of Norway. The mountainous terrain, an abundance of forests and lakes, combined with a cool climate, sharply distinguish Tasmania from the arid plains of inland Australia, as well as from its east coast overgrown with tropical rainforests. For European travelers, this island is most reminiscent of highland Scotland. And some European tourists even call Tasmania "Switzerland in miniature". On its mountainous shores, indented by bays and washed by the breath of the sea wind, wonderful verdant valleys open up leading to the center of the island, on a plateau where lakes shine, wooded hills and their peaks rise, covered with a snow cover for half a year. The highest of these peaks is Ben Lomond, which raises its crest one and a half kilometers above sea level (by Australian standards, this is not so little: above Ben Lomond there are only the "Australian Alps" with Australia's highest mountain - Kosciuszko). Numerous lakes, giving rise to rapid rapids, give the Tasmanian landscape a completely alpine look. Almost in the center of the island there are lakes? Great Lake. It, like the neighboring lakes of St. Clair and Eco, serves as one of the sources of Tasmania's lava river - Derwent. All these reservoirs are hidden in the depths of the mountains, surrounded by wild rocks with jagged ridges and really very similar to Scottish or Swiss lakes. And the rivers of Tasmania are also unlike those of Australia, sluggish, muddy and dry for ten months a year. They are born from pure mountain springs or always full-flowing lakes and all year round noisily rush along their rocky channels in deep gorges washed in basalts and schists, among dense forests of tree-like ferns and meadows strewn with bright flowers, until they finally flow into narrow bays. . In the lower reaches, they are even similar, and along the Derwent River, for example, motor ships rise forty kilometers from the mouth. Despite the dissimilarity of the climate, the flora of Tasmania and Australia is one. Of the more than a thousand plants living on the island, only three hundred are not found on the mainland. And here, as well as on the other side of the Bass Strait, the mountain slopes are covered with eucalyptus forests. One of the species of these amazing trees, the spherical eucalyptus, reaches one hundred and twenty meters in height, competing in growth with the recognized champion of the green kingdom - the American sequoia. Giant tree ferns and Franklin pines, famous for their luxurious red wood, grow in the damp gorges. There are enough flowers in Tasmania: there are more than eighty species of orchids alone here! In the forests of Tasmania, however, there is not such a variety of tree species as, for example, in the tropical rainforests of Queensland in northeastern Australia. Five or six, maximum eight species of plants dominate here, but the abundance of moisture and mild winters allow them to develop to gigantic sizes. Eucalyptus and tree ferns coexist here with southern beeches and pines, so that the Tasmanian forests are a kind of mixture of tropical vegetation and trees of the temperate climate zone. The fauna of Tasmania, this fragment of Australia, of course, is very similar to the Australian one. True, some animals and birds live only on the island, but only because on the mainland they were destroyed by man or driven out by animals brought by him. First of all, two of the three predators of the Australian fauna live only in Tasmania: the marsupial wolf and the marsupial devil. Only marsupial marten is found on the mainland. Once upon a time, the marsupial wolf was widespread in Australia, however, apparently, in the Stone Age, it lost in the struggle for survival to the dingo brought here by the natives and the feral dog and died out, leaving the plains of the continent to their more friendly and aggressive competitors. This short-legged animal with a striped back, like a tiger, hunted mainly kangaroos, not disdaining, however, also rats, echidnas, lizards and birds. In Tasmania, difficult days came for him when farmers from England began to master the island. The predator that attacked the sheep was exterminated mercilessly, and now its traces are occasionally found only in the most remote mountain gorges. The marsupial devil is still preserved in many of the highlands of Tasmania. Unlike another common predator here - the marsupial marten, which is easily tamed and often lives in houses instead of a cat, the devil has a vicious and indomitable nature. Mad fury, combined with a terrible, howling roar that is heard at night when he goes hunting, and became the reason that the animal, not so large (with a small dog) and not at all dangerous to humans, received such an unsympathetic nickname. The menu of marsupial devils consists mainly of lizards, rats, small tree kangaroos, parrots, frogs, crayfish. The harm it brings to man consists for the most part in raids on chicken coops and occasionally in attacks on a gaping lamb. Despite the gloomy and even unpleasant appearance, the marsupial devil amuses the zoologists watching him a lot with his funny habits. For example, he washes himself (the only one of all animals!) in an absolutely human way: folding his paws with a ladle, which neither a cat, nor a raccoon, nor a monkey can do. In recent years, more and more tourists are seeking to get to Tasmania. Due to its proximity to the mainland, it is easily accessible for the traveler who has already crossed half the world to reach Australia. And everyone who has been here will agree that getting to know this picturesque and unique island is no less impressive than meeting with the other two island pearls of the Southern Hemisphere: New Zealand and Tierra del Fuego. Each of these three places is unusual and interesting in its own way, none is similar to the other, but Tasmania has more of some kind of "European" charm, and therefore it becomes closer and closer to the heart of the traveler from the Old World, although the exoticism of the other two southern islands worlds may seem, at first glance, more spectacular. Author: B.Wagner
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