All good things must come to an end! Today was the end of my VK7 National Parks activations. Our holiday is over. We set off from St Helens this morning over gravel roads, in good condition generally, for Mount William National Park. This park is in the north east of the State and includes Eddystone Lighthouse. The Parks brochure suggested that the Park has a great diversity of wildlife, including Tasmania’s only kangaroo species, the Forrester, although the other iconic species, the Tasmanian Devil is now not common due to the facial tumour disease which has been devastating. The Parks authorities suggest ‘that the large population of marsupials has combined with previous farming practices to maintain large areas of open lawn‘. We did not find any of those areas probably because they are away from roads.

We travelled to the day area and boat ramp, but too many people were present and I thought taking over a picnic table, together with my voice, might be too intrusive, so we back-tracked down the road for about four kilometres to a disused gravel pit.

Reflections at a water hole: a river crossing in the Park

This became my base. I set up my full QRP station with tripod and squid pole. I was fortunate to make over ten contacts on 40 metres: 23:15, VK5LY/P3, Larry in Chiltern-Mt Pilot National Park; VK2TWR/P2, Rod on VK2 SW 001; VK3FQSO, Amanda; VK3AFW, Ron; VK3PF, Peter; VK5ZLT/P3, Alan; VK2FALL, John; VK3HRA, Allan on VK3 VS 014; VK5PAS, Paul; VK5HCF, Col and VK3ZPF/P3, Peter in the Point Nepean National Park.

Mount William National Park: note the blue signs