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.

 

Day 5 Somerset to Strahan

Well, so much for internet access. They shut the room up at 7:30 – while we were still cooking dinner – and when it finally opened the next morning, I found that the internet speed as approximately slow modem. Facebook, a waste of time. Posting trip diary on blog – timed out after 20 minutes, and I gave up. The blog will have to wait until we can get on-line properly again.

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.

Day 4: St Helens to Somerset

At the outset, we knew this was a down day – a long drive today. We needed to get from St Helens to Somerset, so we could start the West Coast part of our holiday. But this day turned out to be not so good for a couple of other reasons.

It started first thing in the morning when we found that the girl’s scooters had been stolen overnight. We had left them outside the door of the motorhome, along with our seats and a few balls. This is nothing unusual – everyone else leaves these things outside overnight. But they were gone, and we saw no hint of them. The girls were naturally pretty upset.

Then, when we were checking out of the park, I wound the drivers window down (electric window), and it refused to go up. Nothing we could do would budge it. We ended up checking the fuse, and I stripped the door down later at lunch, but I couldn’t see anything. So we drove through the day with the window down (both noisy, cold and insecure), while the motorhome company tried to figure out what to do about it – no easy task, this whole state really is completely shut down over this Christmas weekend.

In fact, that was a problem for a different reason – we needed fuel, and service station after service station was shut. I was starting to get pretty concerned when we came to our last chance town (Avoca) but fortunately it was open.

On the first day we had discovered Longford, and we liked it so much we went back there for lunch on the way past Launceston. Then we followed the Bass highway down to Burnie, stopping at a series of farm shops: Raspberry Farm, Cheese Factory, and Chocolate Factory. Yum.

After the chocolates, Kath decided to drive. Shortly after pulling out onto the road, she found the window annoying, and pulled the button to make it go up. Something I had done many times myself. Well, this time it went up. Apparently, according to Kath, this is a woman’s touch thing. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The girls certainly laughed. Lots. Seriously, I guess it’s a loose contact – we won’t be touching that window for the rest of the trip.

Tonight we stopped at Somerset – a lovely little camping ground just across from a gentle beach. It has internet access!

Day 3: Bicheno to St Helens

We started this day with a Glass Bottom Boat tour in “The gulch”. The gulch is a narrow channel that forms Bicheno’s natural harbour, about 30 metres wide and 100 metres long. Initially, I didn’t expect much, compared to the equivalent tour on the Great Barrier Reef at Green Island, but I was very wrong. Just in the gulch and a little to the south, we saw a wide variety of seaweed, and fish. In addition, we saw squid, an octopus, and a couple of different kinds of rays. We all enjoyed this trip greatly – very good value for money. We also bought some fresh fish from the fish factory at the dock.







From there we headed north towards St Helens. Many of the attractions we were interested in were still closed – for Boxing Day – rather to our surprise. One stop that was open was the Eureka Farm at Scamander. In the approach to Scamander, we’d been looking at mile after mile of burnt out forest – a real huge bush fire, and we’d been guessing at how long ago it was. Eureka farm is an orchard that sells apricots and berries and derived products, such as Jam and Ice Cream. It only just survived the fire, which was in 2007 – they had a copy of a newspaper article about the fire on the wall of the barn, and the burnt trees were all around. But enough survived for them to go on, and the fresh fruit and ice cream we bought from them were just sensational – highly recommended.

After lunch at St Helens, we made our way to Binalong Bay. This comes highly recommended, and while we could see its potential, a stiff northerly breeze was blowing, and the girls did not enjoy this beach at all. The huge jellyfish drifting up the river didn’t help at all either. So we abandoned that and drove around to the Bay of Fires. This was pretty fun in our big RV – fun for the drivers, at least, but not so much fun for the passengers, and by the time we got to the Bay of Fires, the northerly had picked up to at least 40 knots. Not fun at all.



Kath drove on the way back, and dropped me off so I could ride my bicycle back to St Helens. Not as far away from St Helens as I’d originally hoped – the wind was too foul for that, but far enough that I found a detour into a forest, crazy enough to come off on a hill and get a flat tire in the bargain. Fortunately I had remembered to pack my repair kit ;-)

Finally, we made it to our camping ground, managed to mostly unwind (except it was a washing stop). For dinner we had our fresh fish with salad, followed by a sensational fruit platter from Eureka Farm.

We really are on holiday now. But the internet – where’s our internet access? Some members of our family are pining for the internet, and it’s not the one you’d expect (though the iPhone may help!)