Dateline: Friday 21st March 2025. Day 3 - Macquarie Harbour Cruise - The Gordon River

The Gordon River, according to Wikipedia, rises below Mount Hobhouse in the Franklin-Gordon Wild Rivers National Park draining the eastern slopes of the King William Range. The river flows generally south and to the west of the Gordon Range before flowing west through the Gordon Gap and spilling into Lake Gordon, a reservoir created by the Gordon Dam. Together with water fed from Lake Pedder, the principal purpose of the reservoir is for generation of hydro-electricity at the Gordon Power Station.

From source to mouth, the river is joined by 25 tributaries including the Franklin River and yes, you guessed, this is the Sir John Franklin who captained HMS Erebus, in the search for the North West Passage that I described in my Reykjavik to Churchill travel blog last year.  This coincidence will not go amiss since I will be referring to Sir John Franklin again in later posts.

The river descends 570 metres (1,870 ft) over its 172-kilometre (107 mi) course; much of which is located in an uninhabited wilderness area, contained with the Franklin-Gordon Wild Rivers National Park (Yes, it's him again!) and Southwest National Park. The lower part of the Gordon River flows through the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area and contains the cold-climate rainforest and rare trees that I have been trying to describe. As with many rivers in western Tasmania, the water is fresh and drinkable, yet has the colour of weak tea due to the absorption of tannin from button grass growing in the catchment area.  Button Grass plays a significant role in the restoration of the Tasmanian landscape following fires and will feature in a later post too!

Additional dams were proposed for the lower part of the river, however, these were changed as a result of significant opposition and public opinion. In particular, the Franklin Dam was proposed just downstream of the junction with the Franklin River, and would have flooded much of both rivers.

The first photo shows the tea-coloured water, the next two showcase the reflections of the dense forest in the water and the last screenshot photo is an aerial view of the Gordon River to add greater perspective to the description above taken from the internet.