Planes, boats and automobile, it’s Tassie road trip time.

[bPeteb]

we can't get enough of the bumblebees

the vege garden


eggplants in the infamous greenhouse (if you've watched any of his show's, Matthew had quite some trouble with the greenhouse)


some future pastrami


the goats were hiding!

back in for more food. We changed seats so that BigAl could see the kitchen



I continued with the rose but BigAl moved on to the pinot

farmer's salad with open flowers


beef fat potatoes, roasted turnips and carrots, roasted shredded fat pig with tomatillo


apple and blackberry crumble

 

[bPeteb]

petit four. Coffee or tea was available but it required a $5 donation to something. I should have read the little sign more closely


I then bought another rose and BigAl a gin to finish off the meal

BigAl said to me Matthew has just walked into the kitchen. I kept saying take a photo, take a photo but he wouldn't do it. He said he doesn't look like he wants his photo taken. I said he was a journo and he's a media personality. Having his picture taken is part of his job. He wouldn't budge.

The wind had been howling all day and half way through dessert, with Matthew still milling about in the kitchen the power went off. The silence was weird as there were fans going beside the tables and the kitchen was in full cleaning mode.

Sadie and Matthew stood out front to explain the outage - Matthew said that local power lines had been taken down by the wind and were expected to be back up by 5pm - and then thanked us for coming to lunch. And I got my photo.


Matthew usually does the end talking (if he's there) but he is recovering from back surgery (operated on down his throat!) and it was the first time he was able to speak since the op. Sadie did a really wonderful acknowledgement of country and explained how they were trying to look after their farm as it would have once been managed by the original occupants. It was a truly magical end to a truly magical day. Apart from seeing penguins in Antarctica for the first time, this was my best travel experience.

We also bought some gin


At close to four we sadly climbed aboard Son of Zeus and drove across to Cygnet and the Cygnet Caravan Park Cygnet Caravan Park

This was definitely no BIG4! Lovely location down off the road with a whole lot of really old caravans, some permanently occupied. The caretaker directed us to our site, said to get settled, then bring over our payment for the night, $30 for a powered site, cash only




we walked down into town to see what was open and I'd go with just about nothing. There was the IGA, a cafe called Red Velvet Lounge and the two pubs.

The power came on just as we walked into the Commercial Hotel. Had a cider and then decided we'd walk back to the Cygnet Hotel that was directly across the road from the caravan park.


I'm not sure we really needed dinner but at the same time all we had in the camper was cheese, crackers and some chips. We ventured into the operating theatre lit dining room and ordered flathead and chips. It was really nice fish, and the staff were lovely, Best of all, free soft serve!!

the mash needed a bit more butter, and milk, and seasoning

but the soft serve just couldn't be improved

known and unknown wine also quite reasonably priced

 

[RooFlyer]

Well, after all that, even just reading and looking has stuffed my diet!!

 

[bPeteb]

To our penultimate day and the drive and ferry ride to Adventure Bay on Bruny Island

Bruny could also have done with some more planning.

Super surprised to arrive at Kettering and get onto the ferry without having to wait for the next. Just two small cars were allowed on after us.





It's always going to be a bit of a wagon train coming off a ferry with one road in but we weren't at that head of that train. Some people just shouldn't have a driver's licence. Barely doing 70 and wandering all over the road just does my head. Luckily they pulled in to Bruny Cheese and away we went.

First stop, as it would be for most first time visitors was the Truganini memorial and The Neck lookout The Neck - Must See Attractions & Things To Do 274 punishing steps in a gale but a terrific view




we then headed for the lighthouse. Yeh we know the rental agreement said not driving on gravel roads and we aren't usually those people who ignore the rules but if you stick to tarmac on Bruny the options are limited. We gave up after about 8km and turned around.

We stopped at Lunawanna Store and each had a very delicious vegetarian pie but it was a strange affected operation that despite the line 'he' was responsible for making coffee and serving people and 'she' was out the back in the kitchen. Nice pies and coffee but maybe they need to reconsider their service model if it's busy so that he concentrate on making coffee.


we then did the Alonnah Sheepwash track from Alonnah up to the historic landing site

kite surfers at Alonnah and the small protected 'harbour'

 

[bPeteb]

Much more typical Tassie weather.The Lyell Highway closed at Derwent Bridge by snow.The Advocate will let you access 5 free articles so here is their link.

Snow covers and closes roads in regional areas

Snow above 700m.

www.theadvocate.com.au

Wow! What a difference seven days makes

 

[bPeteb]

from the Alonnah walk


these people must really have liked Pizza Hut to base their house design on it...

the historic landing site is somewhere there

love a bottle brush/banksia, or two


then we thought we'd try north but were thwarted again by yet more dirt roads. We did get down to the original ferry landing site but for some reason failed to take a snap and read about the history of the Bruny ferries

 

[bPeteb]

Two things that struck us on our trip - very few Aboriginal place names and a lack of the ability to recycle outside of recycling bins in large towns. On the first I realise some places have first people's place names but they are few and far between. The second is just unforgivable. By the time we got to Bruny we had an entire cupboard filled with plastic, glass, aluminium and cardboard to be recycled.

When we were at Cygnet the couple camped beside us got talking about their travels and started talking about Bruny. They had also noted the lack of public available recycling, especially at camp grounds. They had stayed on Bruny with friends who'd told them their only option was the council refuse station. We'd seen it when we first arrived and decided it would be easier to access coming in the direction from the ferry so that's what we did on the way back towards Adventure Bay.

Our must do on Bruny was Bruny Cheese. We'd sampled their cheeses and beers at the Good Food and Wine Show a few years back. The campers at Cygnet said we had to have the ham and cheese toastie. The carpark was packed so we didn't bother looking and parked out by the road.

Super lucky to snag a table as a group stood to leave. I managed to get the last toastie and the baked O.D.O.


they were delicious.


no more toasties, many disappointed punters


I bought four beers and a Tassie ginger beer and BigAl two cheeses and with Bruny Cheese ticked off we headed for Discovery Bay.



For anyone who's been to Discovery Bay I won't be telling you anything you don't know. It's glorious. Home - Captain Cook Holiday Park was/is a cracker of a location with flat wide sites right across the road from the beach

The view from our site


and they have rabbits, on chocolate egg/rabbit/bilby Sunday

 

[RooFlyer]

Wow! What a difference seven days makes

You only need one, in Tasmania

 

[bPeteb]

The beautiful Adventure Bay. Interesting updated plaque attached to the original clearly updating the concept of 'discovered'. And not recently I must add.








The Bruny Cheese cheese was stored in the fridge for carriage home. We finished off the remainder of our supplies with the beers. Our neighbours in the very permanent looking caravan teased us for hours with the small of roast pork in the Weber.

Of the permanent thing - their are heaps of vans at the park that have been converted into kinda tiny homes. You sure couldn't tow any of them. Does anyone know the story of these 'vans'?

 

[kookaburra75]

I have just realised I have been remiss in not thanking @kookaburra75 and MrsK for their very kind offer of help as we went into isolation. This is an amazing community of great people and BigAl and I would like to thank you and Marianne so much for your contact and offer of getting anything that we needed if isolation had continued. Thank you so much

That's ok - I'm glad we were in a position to help out if necessary. As fellow travellers, we need to look out for each other.

I'm not sure if @kookaburra75 chose upper deck on their Gordon River cruise but @RooFlyer is mid-report and is about to show how the upstairs people live. I'll give you the downstairs perspective, albeit window seats, not centre

Yes, we were up on the top deck of the World Heritage Cruises 'Red Boat', which was very comfortable. Your cruise was booked out for that day, so we went with the other - and weren't disappointed. That was the same cruise @RooFlyer went on a day or so after us.

it was then back through Hell's Gate and then south east across Macquarie Harbour to the Gordon River. I missed these, our route, and some local information
we met the big red boat on its way out to Hell's Gate. Did we snap you @kookaburra75?

No - we were inside the boat at that time, but we did wave back

 

[RooFlyer]

very few Aboriginal place names

Good point. Many places do have officially gazetted dual names (including 'Hobart'), but they are a bit slow to put the Aboriginal peoples' names on signs. As it happens, dual names were gazetted for another 15 or so locations last week.

Unfortunately one issue that keeps coming up is that there are several groups representing Aboriginal people in Tasmania and they have different (to varying degrees) names for places (and differing opinions on many things!), so getting agreement is a bit fraught.

Not excusing it, but recycling is a net cost for the Councils, and in fact many of the west coast etc councils have no way to pass-on anything recycled, except to drive it to Hobart or to the north. We still have many, small councils in Tasmania, which is a big issue, for a long time, but the folks like their little shires, in spite of the inefficiencies. Forced amalgamations would be political suicide for any State government.

 

[bPeteb]

Day 11. This is a holiday neither of us is yet ready to end

BigAl was dead keen on us getting away as early as we could. There was a worry about being stuck waiting for a ferry as we'd been told about people waiting for two hours the day before. Our early departure from Adventure Bay would explain the complete lack of traffic we encountered on the road driving to the ferry and no waiting again. Al's watch still being on DST could also explain his rush...


this time we literally drove straight on


When we'd caught the ferry over we'd thought it was expensive, thinking it was $130 return. Silly us. The $65 we'd paid was for the return trip.





It wasn't until we drove off the ferry that BigAl asked what time it was. I said 8.45 and he was "are you sure?" Yep. We had time to burn. Once we'd visited the dump station at Kingston we started looking for things to do. Mona - nope, no time slots available. So we drove.


out to South Arm and Opossum Bay. I want to live at Opossum Bay and commute by boat!



we chose the carpark here to pack that was easier than BigAl thought it would be (not unusual)

 

[bPeteb]

Next we walked down to the beach from Goat Bluff lookout where we could look across to Betsey Island





stopped at the bakery at Lauderdale where I finally had a scallop pie. It was curried and it seemed to have a few scallops and it was, ok.


On that school trip back in 1980 we stayed at a camp of some kind at Seven Mile Beach, maybe a church owned camp? I couldn't see it anywhere but we did wander down onto yet another beautiful beach...


Apollo called while we were sat there and asked what time we'd be returning the van. Soonish I said. I know how coughty the Qantas Club is so wanted to get to the airport as late as possible. We stayed sat on the beach.

RooFlyer had said to install the FuelCheck Tas app and we used this to check for the final time where the cheapest fuel was. It gave us a Caltex right around the corner from Apollo that was way cheaper than anywhere, by a long way. It was an odd card only place. We needed some instruction from a local using it and filled up. $1.15.9/litre compared to the next cheapest we saw at $1.39.9


handed the van back and walked on the correct path back to the airport. 10 minutes max.

The lounge was as coughty as I remembered, and weirdly even more crowded than it had been the last time we were there, especially considering the Qantas fly well 'programme'.

Our Qantaslink 717 left on time. Three 717s, a QF 738, a JQ A320 and a Bain 738 there or departed while we were at the airport.


It was a very light load considering how full the JQ flight was coming down. 26 in Y and two in J. View over Hobart as we headed north

 

[bPeteb]

Was surprised that there were no drinks served in Y, just coffee/tea and soft drinks. We were served drinks on our flight from TSV in Jan, also Qantaslink.


we flew directly over Canberra and a great view down. And now to the most amazing sunset either of us have ever seen. It was like the sky was on fire. Pictures do less justice to this than the blood moon at Hall Point









then down into the grey and murk of a very wet Brisbane

 

[bPeteb]

One of the best holidays we've ever had, without question. Loved the camper experience. Loved everywhere we visited. With what we missed we could have easily spent another five days but now we'll just head back to Tassie for another seven or so.

Amazing scenery, great boat trips, lots of wildlife (a scary amount of it dead on the side of the road). We saw wallabies too many to count, small roos maybe, one wombat, one Tassie devil, one echidna and about a gazillion possums.

Excellent food, excellent wine, excellent gin


Our wine from The Farm Shed arrived on Tuesday morning.


The Bruny Cheese cheese is going to be tested this arvo.

Thanks you again to @RooFlyer and @kookaburra75

Next stop Magnetic Island in a week and a bit. Thanks for coming along on our trip.

 

[JohnM]

Great TR!

 

[RooFlyer]

Great TR, and great to meet you. Pleased you have stocked up on the East Coast plonk. Pronounce Gala the proper, local (Scottish) way 'Gal-a' not Gar-la and you'll get double points!

 

[drron]

Loved the TR just as much as I love Tasmania.

 

[VPS]

Excellent TR as always - many thanks. I do love Tassie and will be in Hobart for a few days at the end of this month but it will be just around Hobart eating and drinking

 

[bPeteb]

Great TR, and great to meet you. Pleased you have stocked up on the East Coast plonk. Pronounce Gala the proper, local (Scottish) way 'Gal-a' not Gar-la and you'll get double points!

Gal-a, as in '"she was a lovely gal"? Got it. Now that we're talking pronunciation someone said to us Strathgordon is pronounced Strarth-gordon. Surely they were taking the proverbial?