Day 15: Boat home.

Last day! Get up early for the boat, then wait in line for a couple of hours. Today is Melyssa’s birthday. For the second year in a row, we are travelling on her birthday. She’s been complaining, so we’d been teasing her that she’d got absolutely nothing. She’d begun to think that we were really serious, so she was pretty surprised to a get a camera. She’s been hanging out for her own, and she got right into it too – 253 photos, and 2 pairs of flat batteries, and that just on the boat alone.

Today was a beautiful day, and a nice quiet boat trip, the boat not quite so full as last time, and we were a little better prepared with things for Tali to do. She got the facepainting woman to paint on her arm:

Finally, nearly there – view out the back of the boat with the Port Philip bay heads in the background.

And when we finally got home, Grandma and Grandad were waiting with a cake for Melyssa’s birthday.

Well, we’re home, and this diary is done. We really enjoyed Tasmania, even though we didn't really get to relax, and even though we missed so much. We’d love to go back for more, but there’s so much else to see in the world too. I guess we’ve got at least a full year to figure out what comes next.

Day 14: Grindelwald to Devonport

Our plan was to spend the morning at the Resort enjoying the reosrtness-  all the activities such as the boats, the minigolf, the jumping pillow, etc.

Well, it wasn’t to be. The whole resort just wasn’t quite right. In the movie Shrek, he goes to the village Duloc, where everything is just absolutely perfect, but nothing is actually right. The more time we spent in the resort village, the stronger we saw the likeness.

I think it must have been built by a project manager – it had everything that a resort should have - all boxes ticked. But nothing was actually right. The playground was broken, and not maintained. The boats were dirty and smelly, and, really, not the right kind of boats.

Tali was not having fun here, as I think you can see. Everything was really expensive. But the mini-golf was ok.

The kids did get another swim, but in the end we bugged out – it just wasn’t worth it. As we were leaving, I spotted something that summarized the whole experience for me. The toilet had a button that you turned to flush the toilet. Under it was a sign that said “Push”. And to top it all, we lost the key to our chalet.
We won’t be going back. And we don’t recommend this place.

We made our way to the head of the Tamar Valley. I had thought it was possible that some of the roads we wanted may have been closed by the bushfire, but it was well under control and we had no problems. At the head of the Tamar River, we went to Sea Horse World.

This was pretty interesting. They farm sea horses here, for research and sale as pets. Highly worth a visit – they are strange and interesting beasts. In this photo, there’s a bunch of pregnant sea horses.

(No flashes allowed). The pregnant ones with the big swollen bellies are the males. They give birth to thousands of young, which take about 6 months to grow to full size.

From here, we made our way to Devonport, ready for the boat trip home, and Kath went shopping for a digital camera for Melyssa. Surprise – it’s Cup Day, and all the shops in Devonport are shut. Fortunately, except for the chain stores, so we could still get Melyssa’s birthday present for the next day.

Day 13: Port Arthur to Grindelwald

Today we turned back towards home, and we started to feel that our holiday was coming to an end. Possibly not before time – it’s been full of things, and it may be that we need a holiday from our holiday.

The day started with a bang. I got up before the rest of the family and went exploring. Have 4wd, will explore the side tracks. I took a small dirt road that I thought might lead to a surf beach – I did take my board, but there’d never been enough waves to go out. The road eventually ran out before it came to a beach, but on the way back I saw a farmer riding a wheeled sled – kind of like a double size skateboard – and being pulled along by 3 dogs. Sorry, didn’t have the camera with me. I stopped for a chat, and she said that they’ll only pull her downhill, but both she and they enjoy it a lot. She was a slight lady in her 40s from Yorkshire - accent clear as a bell.

After packing, we headed north. Our first stop was the Tasmanian Devil Conservatory just before Eaglehawk Neck. The devils are dying from some parasitic cancer that spreads and kills them all. It started in the north west and is slowly making its way through the whole population. It’s quite a disaster because the devils eat the foxes, and the foxes eat the rest of the animals. No devils = problems for the rest of the species.

They’re going to build a fence across Eaglehawk Next to stop devils getting through, so that the small
population on the Tasman Peninsula will survive. For now, they’re breeding that population as hard they can, and the Devil Conservatory is part of that. It’s open to the public as a Devil Zoo, and also has local kangaroos and padmelons.

Here they are fighting – you can see why a facial cancer can spread so easy.

This is Kath’s favourite – she took this from a glass bubble people can get into inside the Devil’s enclosure.

From there, we had a quick run up through Tasmania, stopping at Ross for lunch, and then we went to Visit Andrew and Jenny Taylor. Jenny is some distant relative of Kath’s, and Andrew has been friends with us for a long time – drove Kath’s car for our wedding, for instance, and once I flatted with Andrew when I first came to live in Melbourne.

It was lovely to catch up with them, and we stayed for several hours. Andrew, btw, works in the opium poppy factory maintaining the equipment. Yes, that’s right – one of Tasmania’s mainstream crops is the opium poppy. They have a license to grow the poppy for medicinal use – they supply the world. There’s a lot of poppy fields too (they’re quite pretty, and were in flower while we were there), and they’re not particularly high security – just a fence with a notice saying to keep out. But apparently, if you stop and cross the fence, you’ll be visited within minutes by the police.

Finally, we ran up to the resort we were staying at for the night. We couldn’t find our normal budget accommodation, so Kath had booked as at the Tamar Valley Resort at Grindelwald. The kids were just hanging out to get to this place – it had a swimming pool, the first in Tasmania. So as soon as we checked in, they were changed and ready, impatient for their swim.

While they were swimming, I went out for Takeaway. The resort restaurant prices were …. Well, what you’d expect from a resort. But takeaway – I don’t think they really understand this concept in the Tamar Valley. I went down to the highway, and in a series of shops and shopping centers, I only found 4 takeaways. And they were all shut. Huh? And finally, when I found a thai place, it was empty. But nice. Yum.

After tea, we walked up a little hillock above the resort called the Tamarhorn, which has a good view down the Tamar Valley.

Also, it had a view north to the bush fire that was threatening to close our road for the next day.

Day 12: Port Arthur

Visiting Port Arthur is a bit of an Australian rite of passage, in a way. Australia’s convict past is such a big part of our history – both explicitly and also by denial, and it’s most possible to grasp the history here. For fifty years or so, Port Arthur was the disciplinary point for the Australian convict system.

A brief background: England was suffering the effects of the industrial revolution on the lower class: dispossession, hopelessness, poverty. This lead to a crime wave (surprise!). Serious criminals (murder, highwaymen, etc) were hung, but repeat trivial offenders (thieves, fences, Irish terrorists wannabes) were shipped to Australia because prisons were full. Shipping convicts to Australia was expensive, so the state had to get a pound of flesh out of them in the form of labour, and the convicts were worked hard. Much of Australia’s original infrastructure was built by convicts (such as Richmond bridge above).

Initially it was a dreadful punishment to be sent to Australia – very few convicts ever came home, there was a pretty good chance you’d die on the way, and when you get there, there was a good chance you’d die working. But as the infrastructure fell into place, the lot of convicts improved, and most convicts were freed with a grant of land within ten years or so. From being a homeless street kid to a landed farmer who could read and write…. A real step up in life. Towards the end of transportation, criminals wanted to be sent to Australia. One reasonably reliable way to be sent out was to burn a haystack. Hence an unexpected proportion of later convicts were arsonists.

Then gold was found, and there was no longer any point in rewarding criminals by shipping them to Australia…..

One thing I’d never appreciated before was how hard the convict system worked to reform the convicts, not merely discipline them. They got taught the 3 R’s, a good trade or two, a strong dose of religious education. If they were able to keep their heads down, they came out of the system much improved. If they couldn’t…. the system would relentlessly crush them.

Port Arthur was the decision point for convicts who had sinned outside (mostly this seemed to mean giving cheek to their overseers).

This building – the most famous and obvious in Port Arthur – was originally built as a flour mill, but that was a spectacular failure due to engineering reasons. Then it was converted to a prison, though it’s always called “The Penitentiary”, I don’t know why. Nearly a thousand convicts lived in this building, in small cells not quite big enough to lie down in. But don’t think that this was unusually brutal – there was a mutiny amongst the marines because the convicts had more space to sleep in than the marines.

Our start to the day was a brief boat trip around the harbour. Port Arthur really was a port – there was no land access. Across the harbour there was an island they used as a cemetery, called the Isle of the Dead.

From some angles, some tombstones are visible. The convicts didn’t get tombstones, of course.
There was also a boys prison on Point Puer. Convicts as young as 9 years old were shipped to Australia.  Any convict under the age of 16 went straight to the boys prison, where the focus was on education more than discipline. There’s not much left of that:

In fact, there’s not much left of Port Arthur or any other convict infrastructure. Thanks to some idiot Lord named Molesworth, there was much concern that the convict system was fostering and/or breeding gays. Though it surely happened, in actual fact, one of the quickest ways for a convict to die was for another convict to suspect him of such tendencies. There was such a huge stigma associated with this that the ex-convicts and other settlers did their level best to destroy the evidence of the whole system. Only recently (my lifetime) has having a convict ancestor been considered a good thing.

Later in the time of Port Arthur, the focus moved away from physical punishment (for instance, one convict received over 1000 lashes from the cat-o-nine-tails in his ‘career’) towards silence. Behind the famous old penitentiary is the Seperation Prison.

Convicts held in this prison had to maintain complete silence as long as they were here. Each had a small cell, where they could read and work.

If they were unable to maintain silence, then they got locked into the isolation cells. These were completely dark and silent, and the convicts could make make as much noise as they wanted – no one could hear. You can go into these rooms, and we did: completely terrifying, even with the doors open (no photo, of course). The convicts seemed to fear the silent treatment more than the lashing. More than a few simply went crazy.

Note that needing to maintain absolute silence was no excuse for not going to church. They purpose built the craziest church I’ve ever seen:

You stand in these pews, unable to see anyone but the preacher. This is what the preacher saw:

Did this whole system work? Well sort of. It didn’t achieve what the British Lords wanted – creating a better class of underling who understand their place in life. Instead it created a class of tough larrikins, utterly disrespectful of any hobnobs, but brutally honest and hardworking and with a high value on looking after one’s mates.

By this time we were tired – it’s a lot of walking, and we stopped for lunch. After lunch, we caught a play that was performed on the lawn behind the grand old penitentiary, the convict story of a boy who struggled to adapt to the convict system. Then we wandered the old buildings for a couple of hours.

There’s some lovely gardens at Port Arthur, planted for the nobs by the convicts. They’ve stood the test of time well.


That was enough for us. It’s interesting, but it’s a lot of walking, and it was a hot day. We went and played on the beach around the point for an hour. Melyssa built a castle she insisted on getting a photo of.

In the evening we had dinner at a genuine old English pub, and then the girls played with a huge collection of sparklers that Kath had accumulated. I had to buy matches so we could light them, and while doing so, I met the English cyclist again – he’d popped down to Port Arthur for a couple of days with a mate.

Day 11: Kingston to Port Arthur

We checked out of the cabin and made our way to Richmond, just north east of Hobart. Richmond is by no means the oldest settlement in Australia, but it is the most well preserved, and markets itself based on the age of its buildings. For instance, Richmond boasts the oldest usable bridge in the country.

The bridge was built by convicts, and the pick marks from shaping the stones are still evident. After checking out the bridge, the girls and I tried the Maze, while Kath chilled with a coffee.

The maze has two parts, and the second has no dead-ends. It’s actually a simple maze, just very windey and disorientating.

After that, we checked out the 1:16 scale model of Hobart from 1840. This was much more interesting than it sounded, and thoroughly recommended.

After lunch at the bakery, we headed off for Port Arthur. On the way to Port Arthur, you must cross Eaglehawk Neck.

Port Arthur, for non-Australians, is famous as the most well-preserved Convict settlement, and preserved as a tourist attraction. It was only a small part of a quite large system – over 150,000 convicts were shipped to Australia. Port Arthur became famous because it was a secondary destination – where re-offending or troublesome convicts were sent. As such, it was known throughout the system, and featured fairly harsh treatment of the convicts. Really bad ones that Port Arthur couldn’t “reform” were sent on to either Norfolk Island or Sarah Island, truly terrifying places. So Port Arthur kind of become the hub of the system. One reason was because it was hard to escape from – a day’s travel from the prison camp was a small neck of land, less than 100m wide, which had dogs across it – they could touch but not fight, but there was no way through.

We checked out several interesting features of the shore around Eaglehawk Neck:

The tessellated rocks

The blow hole

The Tasman Arch

And the devil’s kitchen

The last 3 represent 3 consecutive stages of the sea wearing the cliff face away. First it tunnels under the rock, then a big section falls out, and finally the whole lot falls in.

Finally, we checked into our cabin, and discovered that we had been allocated an “exploding” stove. Each time we tried to use it, after a minute or so, there’d be a loud woof, and the circuit breakers for either the stove or the cabin – or both – would go.

This brings up a consistent pattern that we observed – the better the place is to stay at, the less good the camping ground is. Somerset was just the best by far, but as the places get more attractive, the quality or features of the camping ground go off. The best place to stay by far was Lake St Clair, but here the camping ground was very basic (not low quality, just missing features due to being in a national park).

Day 10: Hobart (Quiet Day)

We got to sleep in today. Well, it is holiday after all.

Eventually we surfaced and made our way to Salamance markets, which we’d heard all about. Salamanca markets are a real institution in Hobart – every Saturday they shut off a couple of streets and fill them with stalls. It was certainly crowded – not even elbow room. The day was generally nice – occasional clouds, but fairly windy.

The stalls have a reasonable amount of variety, though there is a strong Tasmanian flavor, which we appreciated. What was good about It was that it just kept going and going and going and going….

More yummy lollies, btw. Our favourite is the sour apple licorice. I suspect we shall have to find a Victorian supplier.

We finally finished at the market at 3pm, and needed lunch desperately. Not knowing Hobart, we figured that we should just head down to the seaside, and we’d soon find some suitable café. Well, no. Eventually we did find a bakery, and sat on a cold and breezy Sandy Bad shore eating a small lunch.

After the disappointment of the Kayaking on Bruny Island, we’d booked an evening paddle for Melyssa and I, around the docks in Hobart, and finished by a sea-borne fish and chips. I was really looking forward to it, but just as we got back to our cabin and were packing to get ready, the kayaking folks rang us up and told us they’d had to cancel due to the wind (and fair enough, it really was).

Sigh…. We think that Tasmania is misnamed. It should really be called Kayakmania – there’s kayaks everywhere. Maybe 1 in 20 vehicles have them, many more than surfboards.

We took it easy for the rest of the day.

Day 9: Bruny Island

An early start this morning – dragging ourselves out of bed for the 7:45 am ferry from Kettering to Bruny Island.

We ended up being glad we caught the early ferry; the next ferry is at 9:30 and we’d have been rushing for the rest of the trip. Bruny Island is split into two parts, north and south by a narrow strip of land called the “Neck”. Just as we entered the Neck, there was a short walk to a penguin viewing platform, and a walk up to a lookout. Like fools, we went up to the lookout. The view was magnificent, but that’s 200 something steps (Melyssa counted them) and it took some of us several days to recover proper use of our thighs.

There were no penguins to be seen, of course, as they were out at sea hunting. We were surprised to see penguin burrows all the way to the very top of the hill.

Our next stop was Adventure Bay. No, it’s not called Adventure bay as some kind of advertising gimmick. Captain Cook named it after one of his boats or something. It was the regular stop for all the big name adventurers back in the 18th Century.

We had a lovely coffee & muffin at the Pennicott adventure base, but decided that at $300 a family, the boat trip was too steep for us, though the pictures of the otherwise inaccessible southern end of the island were spectacular. Instead we decided to try the kayaking rental a little futher along the beach, so’s I could finally get my kayaking fix – but no, they were taking the day off.

So we abandoned that and went berry picking instead. It’s the first time that we’ve done that with Tali, though Melyssa has picked strawberrys before. A good time was had by all – though we didn’t try eating Tali’s strawberrys. We ended up buying about 3 kg of berries for later consumption. Just up the road, there was a chocolate shop. And a cheese factory further along. Berries | Chocolate | Cheese – a familiar pattern ;-). The chocolate shop was okay. Worth stopping in if you’re going by, but nothing special.

From the Chocolate shop we wandered around to the other side of the island, to Alonnah and Lunnawanna. We checked out Australia’s most southerly winery, and bought a bottle of chardonnay for later. By now it was lunch, and the only place open was the general store – by now this had become a familiar refrain. But the general store had beautiful home made pies – real good, including the Tasmanian classic, Curried Scallop Pie.
From here, we chose to go back to the other side of the island by following the forestry track over the top of the mountain in the middle of the island. This wasn’t quite a four wheel drive track, but it was certainly rough. I’d planned to find a side trip that was a real 4wd track, but I’d also planned to ride the downhill portion on my bike, so Kath ‘volunteered’ to drive the track. I’ll have to plan that better next time. Because we did find a little side trip that probably was 4wd only, to a little lookout with sensational views across the western side of Bruny Island, and onto the Tasmanian mainland.

Riding my bike downhill was quite an experience – the track was rough and steep (about 10% gradient). I had to hold the brakes on firmly the whole time, and towards the end I began to fear that my wrists weren’t going to survive to the bottom, given the pounding they were getting. Fun though, lots of fun.
After this we hung around on the beach at Adventure bay for a couple of hours, letting the girls play in the sand and the waves while Mum and Dad slept on the beach.

One of our daughter’s magically transformed into a mermaid.

On the way out of Bruny Island we stopped at the cheese factory. This is the best cheese factory I’ve ever been to. Worth the visit to Bruny Island all by itself. I particularly liked their t-shirts: “My Life is all about the Cheese”.  The names of their cheese are quite creative  - we bought “Tom” (named after a mate), “Bastard” (so named since it’s a mix if cow and goat’s milk), and “Saint” – balances out the Bastard, apparently. These are seriously nice cheeses.

Finally the ferry trip home, and dinner, and then we chilled out over Bruny Island wine, cheese, berries, fudge, and chocolate.

This was our favourite day so far.

Day 8: Lake St Clair to Kingston

It was with sadness that we sad two good-byes today; the first was to the Cauderys – they were heading north to Cradle Mountain, and the second to the Moterhome. Once we packed up, we headed onto the road for Hobart. I should’ve brought fuel at Derwent bridge, first stop after Lake St Clair, but I was distracted, and decided to get fuel at the next stop. Bad mistake. It might be Dec 31, and a working day, but the few service stations we passed were shut.

Eventually, in desperation, I pulled off the road into Tarraleah. Here we found not only a dramatic view:

We also found an unattended pump, with no apparent place to pay. Much to my surprise, it worked, and I filled up with diesel. Eventually I found someone who could tell me where to pay – over the hill and second left. It’s been a long time since I saw an arrangement like that. Anyway, over the hill and second left turned out to be a lovely little café so we stopped there for morning tea.

Not long after Tarraleah, we passed the English cyclist – this was now our third sighting, because we ran into him at Lake St Clair while waiting for the boat. He had a long ride today, down to Hobart, which he had to complete, and the day was starting to get very warm indeed.

By the time we stopped at New Norfolk, it was just plain hot. I’m not sure what the temperature was, but it felt like near 40C to me – far hotter than Tasmania usually gets. Stinking hot. And windy too. By now, we were on our home straight down to Hobart Airport. And I was still looking for a bike shop – we passed a couple of closed ones, but eventually found one that was open, where I got a new back tire and tube, and a new pump. $50 – see, bikes *are* cheap!

Finally we got to Hobart airport to change over from the motorhome to our own car. Hot work – too hot for the kids, who were just wilting in the hot wind. Not too fun for us either.

It gave us mixed feelings to say goodbye to the motorhome. It was mostly pretty fun, and we loved the convenience of having everything with us all the time, and all in the right place, but it was rather inconvenient – once we stopped, we were stopped, and we couldn’t really go anywhere, like whipping down to the corner store (in the futile hope that it would be open).

This starts phase two of our holiday, back to cabins in camping grounds. The first cabin is in Kingston, an outer suburb of Hobart. Kath found it online, it’s part of the Hobart scout cabin, and surrounded by dense bush.

As the temperature finally cooled down in the evening, we were treated to a tremendous lightning show – there was lightning at least every 30 seconds for a good hour and a half. Most of the lightning was between the lower layer of clouds and the one above – and produced no thunder at all – but every so often there’d be a powerful ground stroke. We watched as the storm passed nearly over the top of us. Far more impressive than any New Year’s fireworks show. 

Day 7 At Lake St Clair

Started today by discovering that my tire is flat again. It’s a slow leak that I can’t find under water. And I still haven’t found a bike shop….

Today we had an extra daughter. Danielle, Bernie and Alison’s youngest daughter – who’s nearly the same age as Melyssa – didn’t want to do the superman walk the rest of her family were going on, so she asked to spend the day with us instead, since we weren’t being quite so active. And because Melyssa and her are friends anyway ;-)

We started the day with a cruise on Lake St Clair. The boat was a tiny little thing – not quite what we all imagined.

The skipper was equally unexpected. She was in her mid-twenties, casual, somewhat of an in-doorsy type. Kath says she was a bit of ditz too. I kind of expected a big guy on that boat to handle the backpackers packs and so forth. Once we were finally going, the engines cut out several times. Each time she gave us some unintelligible reason, assured us they’d be fine, and restarted them. No problems. She’s the kind of person they say, if she was any more laid back, she couldn’t get up in the morning.

She took us to Echo Point. No, it doesn’t have an echo, instead, all the land features around the lake are named after Greek mythology, and she told us the legend of Echo. Here’s a photo of us at Echo Point:

 

Danielle isn’t in this photo. The captain – who took this for us - asked us whether we wanted our other daughter in the photo. This caused general hilarity, and for the rest of the day, Danielle called us “Mum” and “Dad”, and later in the evening, she called her own parents “Auntie” and “Uncle”. They were as weirded out as we were!

The final stop on the boat trip was to pick up an overflow of backpackers coming off the Overland Track (Lake St Clair is the end of this 4-6 day trail that comes down from Cradle Mountain – the walk we did there is the start of it). The captain threw the fully loaded packs around as if they were empty. I was impressed. Kath sniffs and says, it was rude when the men offered to help her.

After this we had lunch at the visitor’s centre, and then we went on an aboriginal culture walk. The walk itself was a nice walk – just a bit too challenging for Tali, who ended up on my shoulders, but there was hardly any actual aboriginal culture in evidence – which I suppose is fitting given how hard Tasmania tried to expunge it in the 18th Century. At the end of the walk, we spent half an hour playing in the creek.

In the afternoon, it was windy – like almost every other day here in Tasmania – so we took it easy, and the girls played in the lake. Our campsites were checked out fairly thoroughly by a rather friendly Padmelon, with a joey in the pocket.

 At the end of the day, Kath went on the platypus walk with the girls while I bedded Tali down. They didn’t see any platypii either. After the walk, Danielle had a sleep over in the motorhome with us – sure beat sleeping in the tent again.

Day 6 Strahan to Lake St Clair

Somewhat to our surprise, we couldn’t really find much to do in Strahan, even though there’s an absolute heap of activities. Either the activities were booked out, unsuitable for a 4 year old, or psycho expensive. So after a brief exploration of the main shopping village, we headed out – but found a delightful little lolly shop on the main road into the hills. Some advice: do not go into here: they even do lolly tasting. Each of us had our own favorite – fizzy apple licorice was mine.

No bike shops yet; I pumped the flat tire up at the service station, we’ll see how that goes. It was raining in Strahan – the first rain we’d seen since picking up the motorhome. The roads out of Strahan are just as twisty and steep as the rest of the west coast roads, and it was a little scary to drive them with the rather bald tires on the front of the motorhome (the front tires certainly did not have enough tread to be legal).

The first place after Strahan  is Queenstown. Just like the books say, Queenstown is a mining town and far from picturesque. The hills are all bare, and the place is ugly. Even the soccer and cricket pitches are some kind of gravel not grass (because it rains so much, grass doesn’t work. The fine gravel drains faster).

Queenstown is home base for an historical railway, and we stopped to have a look at the station. We’d love to have gone on the train from Queenstown to Strahan return but cost and time were prohibitive. The little old stream train did arrive while we were having lunch at the station.

The road onwards from Queenstown starts with an amazing hill climb with incredible views back down over the city. It was a real struggle for the motorhome – I wasn’t sure we’d make it to the top without overheating. Buy the time we cleared the saddle at the top of that hill, the rain and clouds had gone, and it was a lovely warm day. We stopped for two short walks along the road.

The first walk was a short (10 min each way) flat hike to a waterfall. This walk was perfect for Tali, she really enjoyed it, and the waterfall was thoroughly worth visiting.

The second walk was a much steeper walk down to a swing bridge over the Franklin river. The walk was long – maybe two km return – but it dropped at least 200 metres in that distance. It was our first and only sighting of the famous Franklin river.

For those unaware, Kath’s maiden name is Franklin, and the river is named after an early governor of Tasmania, who is believed to be a (somewhat distant) relative. In addition, you can raft the Franklin river, a ten day trip. We were looking at the river just above where it becomes navigable for rafts. Note that the river is quite brown – this is tannin leaching out of the trees into the water. It’s still clean and drinkable.

While waiting the kids and I to play in the river, Kath struck up a conversation with and English fellow who is riding around Tasmania. He’d come over from UK for a wedding, arriving a month early, and picked up a hire bike at Hobart airport. From there he’d ridden up the east coast, across the top of Tasmania, and then down the west coast to Hobart (roughly the same trip we had taken). When we returned to the car park, I checked his bike – the bike was light – but I could barely lift the pack off the ground. I sure wouldn’t like to ride it up a hill – and he had no shortage of massive heart-busting hills to climb. We’d see him several times again.

We finally made it to Lake St Clair just before the camping reception closed. We hadn’t really appreciated this before arriving, but Lake St Clair is not a normal camp ground; there is no shop, and no fresh or dirty water service for the motorhome. This meant that we had to use the toilets and showers for the camping ground, instead of ours – the motorhome is good for overnight, and we had two nights in Lake St Clair.

As Kath was standing behind the motorhome, guiding me as I reversed it into place, I saw, in the mirror, a young girl run up to her from behind and jump all over her - rather to Kath’s surprise. We had run into the Caudery’s again, and that was how we found out.

That evening, Melyssa and I went for a twilight walk with the Cauderys while Kath got Tali bedded down. The destination of the walk was called Platypus Point, where we were supposed to be able to see platypii. Where the point was, the walk as a series of walls that you’re supposed to wait behind very quietly, so as not to disturb the platypii, who live in down in the grass in the picture, and hunt in the water.

We waited nearly an hour, watching as the twilight deepened, but other than fish jumping out of the water, there was no sign of any platypii. Then some fools decided that the reason they couldn’t see them was because they were too far away, and went down to walk around the grass below. That was enough for us, and we walked on to a great little beach which had some spectacular views of Lake St Clair.