Also, not a good start to the day because I awoke to a flat tire. Upon fixing it, I discovered that my old bike pump is stuffed, and the compressed air shots had run out. All bike shops in Burnie are shut this day – even though it’s officially a working day. I’ll have to look for bike shops on the road.
We headed south out of Somerset going into old-style rolling country. Real Shire type land, for Lord of the Rings fans. We stopped and bought fuel at a genuine old style general store. Not only were they selling fuel and other normal stuff for a servo, they were also the post office, the bank, a travel agent, and the local restaurant.
We gradually moved out of the rolling mixed farmland into more forestry dominated land, mostly mixed pine and gum, and the land was gradually becoming more hilly.
This was our gentle introduction to West Coast Tasmania roads, where the roads are tight and windy. The speed limit is officially 100 km/h, but that’s sort of some distant fantasy. They don’t even put warning signs on slow corners unless the warning speed is 45 km/h or slower. And when you’re driving a motorhome with a high center of gravity, and bald front tires, you take the corners slowly indeed. It’s a good thing that we both like manuals, because in our six-speed manual diesel, we found ourselves changing gears every 100 meters or so.
Our gentle introduction ended with a bang when we entered Hellyer Gorge.
We’d never heard of this, and there was only a small sign announcing that we were entering Hellyer Gorge State Forest, but we’d already noticed – it’s a crazy (and very slow) descent, followed by an equally crazy ascent. But really beautiful. We noticed this a number of times – things that would be outstanding features elsewhere don’t even rate a mention on the West Coast. At the bottom of the gorge, there’s a little park and a great little walk along the river that runs at the bottom of the gorge. Highly recommended.
Eventually we made our way to Cradle Mountain. What a beautiful place. And what an incredible mountain.
(aside: We found Cradle lake very confusing. There was no sign that explained how the bus system works, and why you do or don’t need the bus. Do research in advance). We got a bus to Dove Lake, and walked the shortest walk they had, the Lilla Lake walk. It was a light workout for Kath, Melyssa and I, but a substantial challenge for Tali – small steps for us are very big for her. Eventually she finished up on my shoulders.
Then we had a long wait for the bus back to our motorhome, but it was a lovely day, so we didn’t mind. There was a lot of people at Cradle mountain. From either the car park or Lille lake we could look across the mountain top and see many people walking the tracks.
The long wait for the bus at Dove Lake left us running behind schedule, so we were a bit pushed for time as we drove south from Cradle mountain deeper into the wild west coast of Tasmania. It’s really amazing how desolate and sparsely populated the whole area is. We passed through two very picturesque towns nestled in small valleys with steep mountains all around, Roseberry and Tullah. I really would have loved to stop, but time was running against us – as it was for the two guys on bikes riding south out of Tullah as we passed. I guess they were going to sleep in a tent on the side of the road because I couldn’t see how they’d make the next town before nightfall, given the number of crazy uphill sections in front of them.
Finally we arrived at Strahan, docked the motorhome, and bought our first dinner at the camping ground diner. After that we chilled on the local beach, chatting another family from Newcastle who’d made their way down the wild road from the far north west (I’d love to do that 4wd only road, but there was no way to fit that into this trip). Then Kath finally get on-line for her Facebook fix at the Diner.
cool jump Melyssa!
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