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.