14^th April 2018.

Stanley to Launceston to Brisbane

  My hair was blowing in the wind – can’t you tell ?

View from our balcony this morning. It was blowing a gale!

Lex writes: Stanley weather certainly entertained us overnight. It came in waves of wind and rain. The rain blew in as far as the back of the verandah outside our room. The wind went one better and, after rattling the century-old French doors right beside our bed, crept in underneath. I solved the rattling problem by shoving folded up pieces of paper between the doors.

The morning dawned cold and windy, but dry. Just down the main street is a breakfast café – Moby Dick’s. It opened at 7:30, and we went in a few minutes later. The coffee was hot, the food was good, the service friendly, and the serves generous.

After braving the wind, again, we made it back to the hotel and packed. I managed to get two heavy bags down the steep steps and into the car without injury. The first leg of the journey was to Burnie, via a rainy grey, windy coastline. It was lovely to see it from the car with the heater suitably adjusted. Outside temperature varied between 11 and 14 degrees.

At Burnie, we did a quick lap of the town, stopping for a picture of the port. The main attraction at Burnie, however is the Hellier’s Road Whisky Distillery. It is located on the outskirts of town, overlooking green fields and the local railway line. In the modern building, it was warm; we had tea (not whisky), and admired the paper sculpture of the man and his dog (featured on the label of their bottles). We bought gifts for various people. I gave myself a small bottle of peated whisky as a parting gift from Tasmania; appropriate I think.

 Hellyers Road Distillery for a cosy, warm cup of tea!

 

Through the rain squalls we drove until we reached a penguin in Penguin (the town). Robyn took a picture of it.

The next stop was to be Devonport. Getting to the town centre took us through several suburbs strung out along the coastline. Everyone here builds for a view of the water, and today the water was performing. The wind drove the waves crashing onto rocks, retaining walls, cliffs and beaches. Curiously, there was a railway line running along beside the road, on the beach side! At times it was not far above the high-water mark, and only several metres from the water. We never saw a train though, so we still don’t know what type of trains run along it.

At Devonport, we found the Drift Café which supplied us with lunch. Nothing special today, just burgers and (sweet potato) chips. The view of the sea was grand though. The wind again whipped up the waves, and caused the girl who went for a dip to retreat after about 2 minutes. With the temperature at 12 degrees, she ran back to the change shed with the cold wind chasing her.

Impressive sea views from the Drift Cafe at Devonport



To use up some time, we had a look at the nearby Bass Straight Maritime Museum. As usual for these places, it was very interesting and informative. The place also had five ships bells, and perhaps forty models. They ranged in size from about 30cm to about four metres. All were professionally made and very detailed. There were models of three of the four boats that brought passengers across Bass Straight to Devonport. Among them was the Spirit of Tasmania

 

As time was moving on, we left Devonport, headed in the direction of Launceston. By the side of the road was a chocolate shop…..  Well, we just couldn’t go past. The product was delicious and we bought just a few samples.

 So much cheese - the Dairy factory

 

Thirty kilometres past this little haven of sweetness was a cheese shop; Ashgrove Farm. It too displayed some stuff we just couldn’t resist. I finally got some Tasmanian blue cheese. Robyn gave in to temptation and bought herself a beautiful teacup – with Tasmanian animals and scenes on it. We also got to see racks and racks of cheeses in the maturing room. There were Havartis, Red Rubicons, Mild Cheddars, Vintage Cheddars, Edams, Blues and more. A pleasant stop, if a short one. We drove on through downpours and wind.

Back on the road, I pointed the car towards Launceston once more. On the way into town, we diverted to the small town of Carrick for a look. There was a ruin at the top of a hill. Not a romantic ruin, but an art studio which was burnt out in the 1970s. However, before that, it was a family mansion owned by the Archer family (John Archer) and originally built in 1847. Apparently there are no plans to restore it but it is National Trust listed.

 

Again, there was spare time to play with, so as the rain had actually stopped, our next stop was the city park in the middle of Launceston. This was actually the ground of the first governor’s residence. Hence, it was planted with English and European trees. They are now giants; and beautiful specimens. The park also features a colony of Japanese Macaques. There would be about thirty of these monkeys in the enclosure, and they are never still. They were good entertainment for ten minutes.

200 year old pear tree

After a relaxing stroll through the park, we finally headed for the airport. The second last stop was for petrol to fill the tank of the rental car. Even though the tank was dangerously close to empty, I could only squeeze 45 litres into it. Still, I’m not complaining, because $1.48 per litre is more than enough. Only 200 metres up the road is the East Coast Car Rentals depot. We drove in, and took ten minutes to put all the loose stuff into our bags. Then the nice man drove us the 1 kilometre to the airport in his minibus. So here we are.

Our flight leaves at 8.10, and doesn’t get into Brisbane until quarter to 11, so poor Cait and Mikeal will be waiting up for us…..we are having a rather indifferent meal in the ‘James Boag’ restaurant here. At least there is alcohol, though! A ‘Wizard Smith’s’ beer for me and a 42 Degrees South Pinot Grigio for Robyn, both local and both excellent.

Postscript:  Robyn writes:  Finally, around 8 o'clock, we were loaded onto the plane through a last chilly Tasmanian evening (at least the rain held off!) It seemed to take forever to take off, but three interminably long hours later, we arrived in Brisbane to a warm evening. Lex managed to doze a bit, but I can never sleep on planes, so we were sooo grateful to finally get off. Cait and Mikeal were at the pick up point to meet us, so we were soon home at their Nundah flat and finally fell into bed around midnight. A long day!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Friday, 13 April 2018                                       Moina  -  Stanley

We’ve had an excellent day today for our last full day in Tassie! Travelled a lot, did heaps of things and saw wonderful sights. Unfortunately, these did NOT include the fabled Cradle Mountain – alas, it was not to be third time lucky with it.

 Lovely view from our verandah

Time to pack up and leave Wombat Cabin, sadly

We were up and about in our lovely little chalet at Moina bright and early – and it WAS bright – the sun was shining through the trees, the sky was blue and from our little verandah we could see the wallabies having their breakfast and the mountains in the distance – just lovely! We hurried to sort and pack before setting out about 9. We’d debated which way to go, as we basically had a choice of two ways – to go north to Burnie, then west, or to head back past Cradle Mountain then up to Wynyard. We ended up deciding on the Cradle Mountain route as tomorrow will take us right along the highway from Stanley back to Launceston, so we figured this way we would see more countryside. We also thought that we might just have a chance to glimpse the ever-elusive Cradle Mountain itself while the sun was shining….

 Raining again  :(

 The waterfall in Waratah

Looking towards Hellyer Gorge from Waratah

However, inevitably as we headed towards it, the clouds rolled on in (giggling softly to themselves, no doubt) and of course by the time we got to the national park, it was beginning to gently rain. We thought we’d try our luck with the boom gate to see if we could drive closer, but the lights were flashing, indicating No Access,  so we gave up and headed north-west! The highlight of this part of the drive was when we noticed a wombat ambling happily across the road ahead of us. I lunged for my camera but was too late to photograph him.

The road headed higher into more mountainous territory. We stopped in the little town of Waratah, an old tin mining town, for a look, and admired the waterfall there, then decided to go via Hellyer Gorge, as it wasn’t far out of our way. I knew had visited this in 1978 on my school trip, but couldn’t remember any of it! Anyway, we had a nice walk through the forest down to the gorge and along the creek before coming back to the parking area. Then we drove through miles of forestry areas. A bit further along, we just had to pull over as we had noticed the most incredible bright red toadstools. I think we’ve mentioned the spectacular Tasmanian fungi before, but these were straight out of the pages of Enid Blyton – they just needed some fairies or elves to make their homes in them. We have never seen anything like them before! To make things even more bizarre, there was a stirring in the bushes….and a lovely little chook walked out. It seemed quite happy to see us, especially when I got out some of our biscuits and threw them to it!

 Hellyer Gorge

 

Amazing fungi  -  and chook!

 

 

The chook was explained when we resumed our drive, and very shortly found ourselves out of the forest and into dairy farming country, almost abruptly. We arrived in the fairly large coastal town of Wynyard in time for an early lunch. A perusal of Trip Advisor brought up the name of ‘Bruce’s Café’, right on the beach at the eastern end of town. It was very popular, and our meals and drinks showed us why. Lex had the salmon and quinoa salad, and I had soup of the day (a delicious potato and bacon). Then I succumbed to the cake fridge and a piece of Banoffee Pie that would inspire poets! Absolutely delicious. After lunch, we wandered across the road to the beach, dominated by the impressive headland of Table Cape, for a look, then headed west once more.

 Lunch at Bruce's

Beach at Wynyard across the road looking towards Table Cape

 

 

Here, we got a bit distracted when we saw a sign towards a historic lighthouse and lookout up on Table Cape, so we just had to go and check them out. Although it was very overcast by this stage, the view was incredible, and we could look in several directions. Far in the distance to the west, we could just make out the shape of ‘The Nut’, the huge ex-volcanic plug which dominates the town of Stanley, our destination for the day. We continued westward, only being distracted a few more times by things like stopping to photograph a field full of deer, lovely scenery etc. The day had turned quite warm by this stage – a heady 16 degrees so very pleasant!

Looking west from Table Cape lookout

 

 The old lighthouse, and looking east (below)

 

We finally got to Stanley a bit after half past two, and drove in marvelling at the huge shape of ‘The Nut’ which looms over the town. It’s a very old settlement dating back to the 1820s, with some absolutely beautiful old buildings. Our hotel, The Stanley Hotel, was built in 1847. We have a lovely room upstairs with the verandah outside looking towards The Nut.

As soon as we’d booked in, we got ourselves some warmer clothes (not liking the look of the clouds rolling in yet again) and headed up the hill to the chair lift, as we’d been advised that it closed at 4.15. Here we paid $16 each for a return trip up the hill – excellent value! At the top of The Nut, we had an hour or so to do the 2km walking track which took us right around the top. Some absolutely stunning views up there, plus quite a few of the lovely little wallabies feeding just near the track and pretty much unconcerned about us. Excellent views of the sea and the land, and over the fishing docks – you can see that seafood is a huge industry in this area. Of course, it decided to rain occasionally, but generally we were very lucky and had a lovely walk before getting the chair lift down again just after 4.

 Chair lift to The Nut

Our hotel seen from The Nut

After a visit to the gift shop there, we went for a drive around the town, then came back and parked again at the hotel before going for a wander up the street in search of a café for afternoon tea. We found ‘The Brown Dog’ which gave us tea, coffee and some lovely scones with home-made raspberry jam. After this, we had to go for a longer stroll to walk that off. The terrace above the main street in town is an almost unbroken row of beautiful heritage houses, some dating back to the mid-1800s. It was lovely to walk along it and see all of the different styles. Then we followed the main street down, turned past the old Catholic ‘Star of the Sea’ church and very early burial ground to the beach.

 No penguins here, sadly

 The Nut

 Late evening sunshine in Stanley

History AND wine.....how could it get better?!

Here we discovered that apparently, Stanley is famed for its Little Penguin colony! Sadly for us, though, penguin season has ended. We did look hard for quite a while, but I’m afraid that penguin-spotting will have to be right up there with platypus-spotting for us…..we returned to the hotel and visited its historic (1840s) wine cellar. I, of course, thought this was sheer bliss – two of my favourite things combined! We bought a bottle of Tassie Pinot Grigio to souvenir.

View from our hotel balcony this evening

We’d made a reservation for dinner in the hotel’s dining room for 6.30, as we’d been advised that it books out quickly (like Strahan – lots of diners and not that many places to dine!). Just as well we did; the room was fully booked by the time we got there and turning people away. We smugly ate our delicious meals (chicken and camembert pie for me, crumbed local scallops for Lex) then returned to our room for the dreaded final pack. Ugh! The wind is howling around outside and rain is forecast again for tomorrow, so I’m so glad we got here in time to do the chair lift today.

Tomorrow, we head back into Launceston and fly out tomorrow night to Brisbane, where poor Cait and Mikeal will be staying up late to get us from the airport! Then Sunday it will be home to Emerald. Sigh. It’s been a wonderful holiday! Stay tuned for the final Tassie blog   😊

Thursday, 12 April 2018                                   Strahan  -  Cradle Mountain  -  Moina

Oh, the mist-covered peaks of Cradle Mountain! Sadly, she remained swathed in mystery (and cloud) today and we did not see her at all ☹ Alas, our lucky streak with the Tasmanian weather has come to an end quite decisively!

We were up bright and early this morning in our little unit in Strahan – there had been some periods of heavy rain during the night which were quite loud on our roof, so we were woken a few times. But it was just heavily overcast when we got up, had our breakfast and packed up again. We could hear peeping noises from the steam train across the road, so I popped over to see it as they hooked it up ready for today’s full day trip to Queenstown. We were finally ready to leave by about 8.30 and headed off. There were periods of pouring rain and heavy cloud as we wound our way through the mountains to Zeehan. Here we stopped for a toilet break, then wandered across the road to look at the old steam trains outside the museum there, and to get a hot coffee/cuppa before heading on. You can see that it was a grand town during its glory days, as the town centre has some beautiful old buildings, but there are heaps and heaps of empty houses and shops in town. According to our friendly coffee-seller, Zeehan is also a victim of the ‘fly in, fly out’ curse.

Steam train about to leave

 Zeehan town centre and museum

 

We continued on our way through the mountains winding our way ever higher and higher, until we finally reached the Cradle Mountain Visitor Centre by a bit after 11. It was pouring with rain and FREEZING cold by this stage! We fought our way inside and considered our options. Because of road works at present, they are severely limiting car access to the park, so we had to take the shuttle bus which runs every 10 or 15 minutes. We paid to upgrade our National Parks pass of the other day to a 2-month pass – really only the same price as paying for another 24 hour pass, but it gives us Saturday as well if we want to go into a National Park on our last day. This also gave us access to the shuttle bus. So we had lunch at the café there, then rugged ourselves up and jumped on the next shuttle bus to go to Dove Lake.

 Lex on Glacier Rock. Somewhere behind him in all that cloud is Cradle Mountain. Allegedly...

 

 

 Cold! So cold and wet!

 Button Grass is the reason that the water on this coast is so brown - tannin from it leeches into the waterways.

Glacier Rock from the start of the walk

The bus took us about 20 minutes to get to the lake – unfortunately we arrived to find it was blowing a gale and raining. NOT pleasant walking weather! Anyway, we battled our way around the lake to Glacier Rock, a huge rocky outcrop about a ten-minute walk around the lake. Cold, freezing rain; howling winds….call me a sook, but that’s not my thing! I was bitterly regretting the fact that I seemed to have left my gloves behind (as is usual on this sort of holiday, you search your bag for five minutes and decide that you must have put them in another bag….then once you get home, there they are at the top of your bag, giggling at you!) Anyway, I wasn’t exactly cold, with five layers on, but it certainly was not pleasant.

After that walk, we headed back to the shelter to wait for the shuttle bus again, and were lucky enough to just fit onto it when it arrived some fifteen minutes later. By this stage, we were able to head on to Moina, about 20 minutes away, and book into our lovely chalet. It is quite big and roomy and has a lovely heater.

We settled ourselves in and unpacked the car before having a cuppa and enjoying the view from our verandah. A lovely little robin was flitting around, but I had very little luck in capturing a photo. To our amazement, the sky then cleared – there was actually blue sky above and the sun was shining!

 View from our veranda - below: the cute little robin just about to fly away!

We decided to go and see what there is of Moina, the little place where we are staying. It appears to consist of our accommodation and an inn, so it didn’t take long! Rather than go anywhere else, we figured that we might as well go back to Cradle Mountain and see if we could actually get to view the mountain, so headed back there.

Predictably, by the time we were half way there, it had clouded over again. But we decided to go to a boardwalk on the map, which seemed to be a place we could drive to and not have to worry with the shuttle bus. Unfortunately, this all came unstuck when we came to boom gates just outside the Ranger Station which blocked our way (bloody roadwork). So, we parked at the Ranger’s Station and went off on the ‘Enchanted Walk’, a really lovely 20-minute walk on good boardwalk and paths all the way through some fascinating rainforest. The variety of mosses and lichens that can grow on trees and everything is just amazing. It was a really incredible landscape.

 Enchanted forest. At least it wasn't raining!

Moss and lichen galore

 

After that, we were going to go and check out the ‘interpretive centre’ at the Rangers’ Station, but they closed (4pm) just as we rolled up. So we headed out along a boardwalk to see if we could catch a glimpse of Cradle Mountain (highly unlikely as the cloud was rolling lower by this stage!). We walked a bit of a way along the path when it began to blow and spit rain, so I bailed! Lex wanted to go on, so I headed back to the car and got there just as the rain began to pour down again. I sheltered quite happily there until he finally turned up just before 5; cold, damp but happy because he’d finally seen a wombat!

 I saw this lovely mother and baby

Lex striding off to adventure

It's a wombat!

We were really glad to get back to our little chalet, put the heater on, and contemplate tea. There’s a lovely little inn at the bottom of our hill, so we got changed and headed down the hill while it was still mostly light. We had a lovely meal there of a pumpkin and fetta pizza and salad, and are now back in the warmth of our cabin, watching the news and finishing off our bottle of ‘Iron Bay’ Pinot Grigio (won’t fit in the ports to go home!)

We are nearly out of holidays – today is our second last full day in Tassie. Sad! We are off to Stanley tomorrow, so hoping and praying for some nice fine weather.