The Forth Week 12/02/2012 to 18/02/2012

So after some time of free camping it’s into a caravan park for a few nights to catch up on the washing etc, and flushing toilets. We picked a small park in Bicheno, not very big, not very new but all the same it was a pleasant park. We had a very nice spot under a lovely big shade tree, and the take away had the best fish and chips we have had since arriving in Tassie.

BICHENO BLOWHOLE

We booked in to Freycinet National Park Camp Site, $16/night for power and water, not big sites but very nice all the same. The camping area is located on Coles Bay - just a very short walk to the beach. Gaila did venture into the water, I on the other hand rested peacefully on the beach. The last time I went for a swim was in Borneo almost 12 months ago - the water was considerably warmer there. This is a very popular area and your stay is limited to 10 days – more than enough for us. Apparently this place is so popular with the "natives" that they have a ballot system for the major holiday periods of Easter and Christmas/New Year. As I said in an earlier blog, I did a very good walk to Wineglass bay. Gaila and I did a smaller walk around the Cape Tourville Lighthouse which gives you brilliant coastal views up and down the coast and also into Wineglass Bay. In fact we did this walk twice, the first time it was brilliant weather, sunny, calm and clear. You could see the dolphins in the water etc., the second time was a few days later with the weather not so brilliant and it was a really interesting contract between the two days. The wind was howling so the sea was somewhat more aggressive and the coastline just looked more rugged.


VIEW NORTH FROM CAPE TOURVILLE



WINEGLASS BAY FROM CAPE TOURVILLE

WINEGLASS BAY - BAD DAY

As I have said previously the distances travelled to get around this place are not what we are used to on the mainland. A point being, we had a day where the weather was a little unpleasant at Freycinet so we decided to take a run up to Campbell Town for the day, a round trip of about 200kls. Campbell Town is on the Midland Highway, the main road between Launceston and Hobart. As much as I generally like coastal areas, I find that the older areas through the centre of the state that we have visited have more character and personality to them. Don’t get me wrong there is nothing wrong with the coastal towns but, they don’t seem to have the same “soul” and history as the places we have seen through the middle. Campbelltown has the obligatory "old bridge", named The Red Bridge, this bridge is built from 1.25 million red bricks manufactured on site - hence the name. The Red Bridge was finished in 1838, then they had to move the river course about 200 mts in each direction to flow under the bridge, interesting concept. The town has tree carvings similar to those seen in many other towns. I suppose that it is a good way to use an otherwise condemned tree.

RED BRIDGE - CAMPBELL TOWN 1838

It is really interesting the different people you meet at these camp sites. As an example the first van that was next to us at Freycinet was a couple from Beenleigh in Qld, they were doing something very similar to us, the second couple were from France, near the alps between France and Switzerland who were out here visiting their daughter and her husband in Brisbane and took 2 weeks to see Tassie. The daughter and her husband came out here backpacking about seven years ago and have since taken Australian citizenship. The third person I met was a guy from Launceston who comes to Freycinet every year for ten days in early February. He was in the Forestry industry in Tassie putting $850k per week into the Launceston economy and then with a govt decision it’s gone. So he has moved his equipment to Victoria and spends most of his business’s money in Victoria (I’m not saying its right or wrong but just commenting on the people we meet).

We have finished our stay at Freycinet and we are heading off to Port Arthur for four days. This is our biggest travel day with the van since we arrived here. Six hours with stops in Swansea for coffee and Sorell to do some shopping, the larder was getting very empty. We are staying at White Beach, about 12 kls past Port Arthur.

Gaila and I visited Pt Arthur with Simon about 20 years ago, but we didn't see any of the other "attractions" in the area. We settled into our site at White Beach, again a pleasant c'van park, reasonable prices and under a shady tree. Again just a short walk to the beach (no swimming this time - not the best weather), the usual washing etc carried out on the day of our arrival.
The second day we headed out and visited The Tessellated Pavement, the Dog Line, Tasman Blowhole, Tasmans Arch and Devil's Kitchen.

NO ESCAPING THE
DOG LINE

The Tessellated Pavement is an area of rock on the shoreline that with the ingress of water and salt over the eons have caused the rock to split into tiles. The Dog Line was at Eaglehawke Neck, this was were during convict time they place rather ferocious dog every 15 mts to alert the guards of escaping convicts. The area was only about 150mts wide. The Blowhole, Arch and Devil's Kitchen are all well known rock formations around Eaglehawke Neck area.



BEING LOWERED INTO THE MINE
SHAFT



RUINS AT COAL MINE SITE

During the afternoon I visited the Convict Coal Mine ruins - Tasmania's first operational mine. Work at the mine commenced in 1839 with a contingent of 150 convicts and 29 officers from the Port Arthur settlement. A large sandstone prisoner barracks was constructed from sandstone hewned on site along with officer quarters, a bakehouse and chapel.
The miners were lowered into the shaft (by 1847 the shaft was about 100mts deep) two at a time astride a steel pole via a winch operated manually by convicts, the coal was raised out of the mine the same way in buckets. Initially the water was pumped out again manually by convicts until a steam driven pump was installed in 1841. The Govt closed the mine on both "moral and financial" grounds in 1848, it was then leased to private operators with limited sucess until final closure in 1877.

See ya all next week...

The Third Week 05/02/2012 to 11/02/2012

Big4 caravan park St Helens – damned expensive. No wonder people look for free camp sites. We stayed three nights, the second night we thought we were going to get blown to the other side of Tassie, my god the wind was so strong, in came the awning, chairs folded up under the van, the rather large gum tree behind the van was making all sorts of noises. I was thinking, great where will I get a new solar panel when the branch breaks off this bloody tree. The tree, caravan and us survived the night and we live to go on another day. We had planned after our few nights at the Big4 that we would moved up the coast a little and stay in the Bay of Fires Conservation Area. (The area was called Bay of Fires by young Jimmy Cook on his voyage up the coast. Apparently the red lichen on the rocks looked like fire, that's the Poms for ya.) This plan was successfully scuttled by the amount of people that were still in residence as the school holidays are still in full swing in Tassie. They only have 3 terms of school so most of them don’t return until around 15^th Feb.

BAY OF FIRES

On our way to St Helens from Scottsdale we saw a sign for a cheese factory a Pyengana. So, a tasting we will go, and taste we did a very pleasant range of cheddars they were too.

Talking to one of the local next to us in the park and he told us of a pleasant area down the coast a little that he had stayed at a couple of nights earlier. The area was a lot better than Bay of Fires.

Off we go to Lagoon Beach about 30kls north of Bicheno, a free camp site, just off the beach in a lovely bush area. A camp fire each night, pleasant surroundings with nice people in the adjoining vans and motor homes.

LAGOON BEACH CAMPSITE

During our stop at Lagoon Beach we took a drive up Elephant Pass to St Marys and on to Fingal. Elephant Pass has of all things a Pancake Restaurant – yep we stopped, they were great. Fingal is a coal mining town (current) and has some very nice old buildings in both restored and how should I say “in need of some tender loving care”. One in particular took our fancy was a convict era stable in need of a “Grand Design” make over – Kevin would have been impressed. It was only a mere $130,000. The only problem was that Fingal itself wasn’t terribly appealing. On our way to Lagoon Beach I spotted Iron House Brewery so on the way back from St Marys we stopped in for a taste. They had some very nice brews on tap and were only too happy for you to have a tasting. So with a small selection purchased it was off to the camp site for a more in depth tasting.

We enjoyed the rest and relaxation before heading off to Bicheno for a few days.

Freycinet National Park 14/02/2012

Hi all, I know that this is out of order, but I thought that an early post was in order. Today I took the 11kl Wineglass Bay/Hazards Beach circuit (I want to find the wine bottle that goes with the wineglass). An absolutely exhausting walk but on the other hand some magnificent scenery. The view from Wineglass Bay lookout is all that the postcards show it to be, the walk up to the lookout included three hundred steps, boy it didn't do my the knees one bit of good.

When I got to the top I thought that only took about 30 minutes, so why not go on and do the rest of the walk. Well the down hill to the beach was worse than the uphill trek to the lookout. The steps going down weren't anything like the ones going up. The view from the bottom was as good as it was from the top. From bay it was a half hour trek across the Isthmus Track to Hazard Beach.

Once you hit the beach its a one kl walk along the beach to join the track that skirts around the base of Mt Mason, in the brochure they call it an undulating track. Undulating my bum, to me undulating is smooth, easy rolling hills, these were anything but smooth and easy rolling. There were however great views across to Coles Bay. A very tiring day but well worth the journey. We are staying at the national park for a few more days before we head off. Standby for week three coming soon. I'm slowly catching up.



                                                             

The Second Week 29/01/2012 to 04/02/2012

Well here we are at the start of our second week in Tassie, we are still is Hadspen. Our plan was to leave here on Monday but I wanted to visit the Mole Creek area to check out the caves, and we were told of a place at Chudleigh that sells 50 varieties of honey – interesting. So it’s Monday morning we head back west through Deloraine and on to Chudleigh, the countryside from Deloraine through to Chudleigh was really nice, green fields with the obligatory poppy fields. We get to the honey shop and they did have 50 varieties of honey, all the usual – Red Gum, Manuka, Ironbark, etc. and then came chocolate flavoured honey, lime flavoured creamed honey, ginger creamed honey, and the list was almost endless. I got the boring old Red gum and Gaila went for the Creamed Lime, goes really nice in her tea. The owner told us of a new shop in town that sold silk products, oh well silk in Tassie. We paid a visit and yes it was full of silk products, but up the back of the shop was a Fudge Bar, forget the silk let’s try the fudge. So we had to have a tasting, mmmm, yumo, we tried, Mint (just like after dinner mints), orange (just like Jaffa), sticky date, chilli chocolate and plenty of others. You guessed it some of that made it back to the van. On to Mole Creek, guess what, another converted church – it looked very nice too. As some of you may know I love limestone caves – Gaila not so keen on the caves. So while she sat in the car and read a book I did a tour through the Marakoopa Cave. Marakoopa is aboriginal for something but I can’t remember, but what is interesting is how the cave was discovered by the white folk. The story goes that in the early 1920’s the family who owned the property were missing some sheep, so two of the sons went a looking around the property  and they stumbled upon this cave. The young boys kept their find a secret for about four years. After that time the family opened up the cave to visitors, giving tours. In the 1930’s the Tasmanian government acquired the land from the family to protect the caves etc, as all good governments do. I hear you asking, “what about the sheep?”, I don’t know.

Tuesday morning, pack up and off we go to Scottsdale. Just on the edge of town a pleasant free camping area. It looked like an old caravan park. Free cold showers, $3 for a hot one, taps around the area to allow the filling of water tanks, they ask for a donation to assist in the upkeep of the area. A lot of mainland councils could take a leaf out of their book. Everyone I spoke to said that are quite happy to leave a donation in the box and to spend money in the town. We stayed for four nights, left a donation and spent with fuel and food about $200 - $250

During our four days in Scottsdale we did a couple of trips around the area – first one took us though Derby (another converted church) to Gladstone (an old church for sale). Between Derby and Gladstone there is the Blue Lake, it gets it blue colour from the white clay from a previous tin mine reflecting the blue of the sky through the water.

SCOTTSDALE CAMPSITE

On to Tomahawk Bay (an out of the way little seaside village with a collage of old seaside shacks and new 2 storey corrugated iron beach houses) and onto Bridport. The town of Bridport, even though we didn’t stay there was a welcoming town right on the coast. The shopping strip was across the road from the beach parkland, heaven forbid we even looked a business in the area. The real estate prices were also reasonable – but it was too early in our travel to consider such foolishness.

LITTLE BLUE LAKE

Another trip was to take us to Bridestow’s Lavender farm, Gaila tried their lavender ice-cream, she loved it, I on the other hand felt that it tasted like it lavender smells – over the top and not pleasant.

LILYDALE

Onto Lilydale – noted for its painted poles in the main street – they all depict the life and times in the village, and then onto Georgetown, via the Tamar Valley highway (stopping off to check out the Batman Bridge – a very interesting structure. To us Georgetown has not been our favourite place to visit – you know you can feel the “vibe” of a place when you enter it; well the “vibe” was not too good. However on the other hand just to the north is Low Head on the mouth of the Tamar River and it was a lovely little place. Low Head gave magnificent views of the coastline north and south, it was also the start of the semaphore system to Launceston.

LOW HEAD LIGHT HOUSE

It was use to notify Launceston of the arrival of the ships into the river mouth before the advent of telegraph, a distance of some 45ks as the crow flies. We the returned to Scottsdale through Bridport, you can get a nice coffee at the take away cafe.


LEGERWOOD CARVED PINE TREE

We were planning on a rest day; it turned out to be a half rest day. We visited the village of Legerwood. It like many small towns throughout Australia lost a number of men during WW1 and like many towns they planted an avenue of pine to commemorate their lives, and like many of these avenues over the years the trees became diseased and there was a decision made by the local council to cut the trees to ground level for safety reasons. After much lobbying and fund raising by the local community they commissioned chainsaw artist Eddie Freeman to carve statues out of the trees.

The cafe owner in Bridport suggested that we take a trip further on from Legerwood to visit Ralphs Falls, so after a drive up the side of a Mount Victoria and a 20 minute trek into the rainforest we saw not only a magnificent view back to the coast but a water fall plummeting hundreds of metres to the valley floor. Even Gaila thought the forest walk was worth the view.

RALPHS FALLS AREA

OLD BRIDPORT JETTY

RALPHS FALLS

So here it is Saturday morning, 4 days worth of dirty washing in the machine and it’s time to hook up and head eastward via the Weldbourgh Pass for St Helens, to a caravan park with power and mains water, a drive of just over 100ks. You really do get spoilt here with distance between the towns.

The second week has now past hopefully the post for week 3 will be closer to the end of the 3rd week. Tale care all and we will talk later.

21/01/2012 to 28/01/2012 Getting Here and The First Week

Who said my wife was not a sailor? We loaded onto the Spirit about 5.30pm Saturday evening, found our cabin, Deck 7 cabin 7010, a lovely little 2 berth cabin it was too, with a port hole, well a “bigish” window anyway. A light diner of pasta was the go, well you guessed it, it did go for one of us and consequently only one of us will be making the sea voyage back to the mainland while the other has had a change of mind and is going to fly back a day earlier. They tell us it was a reasonable crossing, ha I say, our cabin was the second from the front on the port side and when I went to bed I could hear and feel the bow of the ship bashing through he waves, and I would suggest that anyone considering the trip take your own pillow to your cabin.

OUT THERE?

SPIRIT HILTON

Arriving in Devonport at 6.30am does not give you too much scope for breakfast, so it was the good old standby of Macca’s, food for me and tea and toast for Gaila, someone was still not feeling the best. We met two couples on board, one from Gympie in Qld – they had been coming to Tassie regularly for the past four years. They had bought a property at Beauty Point and were doing it up with the plan to make it into a B and B. The other couple, younger, they were from WA, he worked in the mines – fly in fly out, she studied. The really weird thing is that I used to work with her father when I was in the RAAF. Any way they left WA and have rented a place at Greens Beach and he will continue to fly in fly out to the mines in WA.

GREENS BEACH

We travelled out to port Sorell about 18 Kim’s east of Devonport, stayed in a large but pleasant c’van park for a few days while we checked out the local area. During the 3 nights at Port Sorell we went to Beaconsfield (yes that Beaconsfield), the mine is due to close in June this year, on to Beauty Point and Greens Beach. Beauty Point ok, Greens Beach absolutely beautiful. Did a round trip to Sheffield, Latrobe and back to Port Sorell. Beautiful countryside, nice chocolate factory, tasted a variety of chocolate nougat – butterscotch, hazelnut truffle, vanilla and a whole heap more that I can’t remember (no purchases – tight eh, what more can I say) and cherry place in Latrobe(nice cherry and raspberry flavoured ice cream).

PORT SORELL

POPPY FIELD

I have been really amazed at the amount of Poppy fields in the area, apparently Tassie supplies about 75% of the world’s legal Poppy crop (opium poppy). Everywhere we go there are poppy fields.

After three days of brilliant weather we moved on to Hadspen (just outside Launceston). That journey took us via Latrobe (no stopping this time) through to Deloraine also stopping at Angove’s Cheese factory (didn’t buy any but tasted a heap). They have some really weird cows at this place.

ANGROVE'S COW

Deloraine – nice town visited the info centre and museum – they have a display of 4 huge silk murals to showcase the area (Yarns artwork in Silk). They are magnificent – textured embroidery (Mum you would have loved it). Done in silk by the local ladies. ("Words can't describe this beautiful community art project depicting the Great Western Tiers region. In four soft sculptured panels of hand-dyed silk, one for each season, YARNS was created by more than 300 people using embroidery, applique, cross-stitch, weaving and quilting techniques. Non-stitchers are just as impressed as those who understand the efforts that resulted in this amazing work. Created under the guidance of artistic director Niecy Brown, YARNS will entice the visitor to further explore the area's caves, waterfalls, walks, fishing, animal and bird life, rivers and mountains, history and lifestyle.") This bit was borrowed from a website – Google “Yarns Artwork in Silk”.

JOHN HART CONSERVATORY -
CITY GARDEN

In Hadspen we stayed at the Big 4 c’van park, not bad, but not as good as Port Sorell – no beach just over the hill etc – but it served its purpose. Arrived 25/01, they put on a Happy Hour on Australia Day evening, got to meet a few of the other travellers – one couple had been in Tassie for 9 months and still had about 5 weeks to go before they head back to the mainland. Anyway Australia Day we headed into Launceston for a look, the City Gardens were really nice with a conservatory and for some reason they had a troop of Japanese monkeys of some type on display in a rather horrible enclosure.

The Tasmanian Auto Museum next to the gardens, so I had to visit – cars were owned by car club members from all over Tassie and they volunteered them to the Museum for permanent and semi-permanent display, as well they have a showcase display that changes every three months. This one was of Alfa Remao’s – very nice they were too.

JOHN HART CONSERVATORY - CITY GARDEN

While at Hadspen we took a drive to Campbell Town (nice looking freebie), onto Ross to Oatlands (another nice freebie to check out later) and then to Interlaken through the Great Lakes Conservation area, to Cressy and Longford and back to Hadspen. Oatlands has a brilliant old Mill that has been restored and they have a companion shop the sells the flour that is milled and product baked with the flour.

There was an archaeological dig going on behind the mill by a group of UTas students and visiting PhD Students from Canada. They were looking for the old Tannery that was attached to the goal. There is an open day for the community on 11 Feb, maybe we will get back there and see what they have uncovered. The drive through Interlaken to the Great Lakes area showed more Poppy field and great scenery.

We visited the Design Centre Tasmania – they showcase woodwork from local artisans using local timbers. There were certainly some beautiful pieces on display and for sale. This particular piece you could have for just under $25,000 (between 5 and 6 feet tall)

 Well here we are at the end of our ten week journey through Tassie, so it has been great the people have been great, the scenery is really breathtaking at times. Feilds and fields of poppies, magnificent forests and woodlands. We are really looking forward to the next week, so say tuned in will be coming in the next few days.