Wooley: Turns out, you can buy a slice of paradise

Even for those who have been everywhere and seen everything, there is nothing in the world like this, writes Charles Wooley

Tasmania’s London Lakes, one of the world’s top fly fishing estates, is up for sale. Picture: SUPPLIED

The global travel industry reports more people are on the move than ever before. At any given time, there are something like 10,000 commercial planes in the air.

Apparently if you multiply a conservative 200-person capacity for the average airliner there is a city of about two million people perpetually aloft.

Aviation is commonly assumed to account for 2.5 per cent of global CO2. It would be a lot more, but the good news is that only about 10 per cent of the world’s population ever flies.

I always thought I wasn’t an environmental threat because as a reporter I was a professional traveller rather than a tourist. I even convinced myself that I was travelling so that others wouldn’t have to.

Such sophistry aside, I’ve been everywhere man: more than 100 countries and more places than I can immediately recall.

But just off the top of my head, the Rocky Mountains, the Sahara Desert, exotic towns like Kathmandu, Marrakesh, and Timbuktu (how about that travel trifecta), the Everglades of Florida, the French Alps, the Himalayas. Everywhere.

So much travel confuses the mind. I have just remembered both the Antarctic and the Arctic and once jokingly described my travelling self as “bipolar”.

(Today, I fear such puns might be politically incorrect)

I’ve marvelled at the great plains of Africa as well as its deepest,
darkest jungles.

In his role as a reporter for top-rating current affairs TV show 60 Minutes when it was in its hey day during the early 1990s, Charles Wooley travelled the world.

Been up the Amazon and the Yangtze.

I’ve seen most of Europe and all the great cities.

I’ve enjoyed dramatic sunsets over the central Pacific while wafted by a gentle breeze faintly scented with hibiscus.

I’ve had too many Mai Tai sundowners: rum, lime, and curacao with ice clattering in cocktail glasses … But enough of the last bit.

Old reporters are given to some exaggeration along with their failing memory.

But I have seen much more than I can remember. And in the bad places of the world, more than I care to remember.

But let’s stick with the good bits, and the question I am always asked is, “Charlie, what’s your favourite place in the world?”

My answer is probably disappointing.

Not the OK Corral. Not the restaurants of Paris nor the beer halls of Munich. Those are all fun enough but mine is much closer to home and a place you might never have thought of.

London Lakes, which is widely regarded as one of the world’s top fly fishing destinations, is for sale for a mere $30m. Picture: Supplied

Unless you fly fish for trout. Then it is at the top of your bucket list.

London Lakes is slap-bang in the centre of Tasmania, in the high country of this island at the bottom of the world.

It is 15,000 sub-alpine acres of unspoilt native forest and grasslands with a healthy undisturbed population of native animals including quolls, devils, parrots, echidnas and wombats. And at its heart, like diamonds set in some exquisite piece of jewellery, are three gin-clear sparkling lakes comprising about 2000ha of the best trout fishing in Australia and perhaps the world.

That’s where I would happily live out my days in the magnificent six-ensuite-bedroom stone and timber guest lodge. Or in the nearby old-style farmhouse.

An old school-mate, Greg Beecroft is the head guide who manages the property and sometimes lets me loose when I need to see a trout taken on the fly for the camera.

These are not the usual docile hatchery creatures, but wild trout spawned naturally in the clear water gravelly creeks that feed London Lakes.

They are not easy to catch and on an invisibly thin line, not easy to land.

London Lakes head fly fishing guide Greg Beecroft always catches the biggest trout. Picture Charles Wooley

I have hooked some fine fish but as you can see in the pictures, never as big as those caught by my old mate Greg.

He is the finest fly fisherman I have met anywhere in the world, and to my mind the luckiest man alive. He manages paradise.

The place is now for sale and if I buy it Greg will have to come with it.

Then surely I will get to catch the bigger fish.

It’s not the fish but the sublime peace that attracts me to these remarkable waters. On our noisy overpopulated planet, you cannot put a price on peace.

Unfortunately, I think the owners have and are hoping for $30m.

I’m hoping for a lottery win or how about some crowd-funding?

Rumours abound at the nearby township of Bronte Park that the Dallas-based American bioscience company Colossal Biosciences has been sniffing around.

Charles Wooley with a fine trout he caught in London Lakes. Picture Supplied

The famous “de-extinction” outfit is looking for a suitable property for its hugely expensive recreation of the extinct Tasmanian tiger.

Reportedly they have so far reconstructed about 99.9 per cent of the thylacine DNA and when completed they will need a suitable home for the new pups. It would be a huge project employing a large number of scientists, animal trainers, security and fencing contractors.

Forgive my scepticism here but I don’t want to cause a land rush in the highlands. I’ve known the Bronte area all my life. Since the Hydro left decades ago, nothing has ever happened there. The pub burned down, and the only shop’s for sale.

You might remember there was once an oil well scam at Bronte where it was claimed that God told one of the proponents, “Where the eagle shat on the rock there will you find oil. Drill, baby drill.”

Well, words to the effect.

Gullible investors did their dough, eventually leading to the only sound theological conclusion possible: that the over-enthusiastic salesmen had been taking God’s words in vain.

The most precious and rare commodity in the Tassie highlands remains peace.

Most people never get to enjoy such profound tranquillity. Fly fishers know it well as they move secretly and stealthily between the woods and the weedy margins of the lapping lake-waters, always at one with nature and without disturbing the wild black swans, the wood ducks and the platypus with whom London Lake’s immaculately preserved vestige of wild world is shared.

A self-portrait of this columnist hidden in the water margins at the London Lakes estate. Picture Charles Wooley

My friend Greg describes the property as “Quite simply the most peaceful and probably the most faraway and safest place on Earth.”

It is certainly as far as I can get from some of the most turbulent and unhappy places in the world which I have visited. My daughter Rosie was about seven when she echoed similar feelings in a favourite fishing spot: “This place is so beautiful and peaceful I can’t imagine anything bad ever happening here.”

Out of the mouths of babes.

Her words have always stayed with me because they are the heartfelt truth.

Unless you are a trout.

I’m assuming, sadly like me, you don’t have a handy $30m or so, but that doesn’t rule you out from enjoying this wonderful place while it is still available.

It’s not a cheap getaway but it won’t cost as much as a trip to Europe or America.

And trout the fishing is probably better.

http://www.londonlakes.com.au

Charles Wooley is a Tasmanian-based journalist