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.
God's fireworks perhaps? ;-)
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