Day 81

Oatlands is a heritage town with the most heritage buildings in one town in Tasmania. We originally stopped right next to Lake Dulverton which was lovely...

 

 ...until it became a cesspool of dog poo by caravan dog owners that let their dogs wander around unmonitored. We moved up to the park next to the Callington Mill and then had a wonderful stay.

 

 

 

We wanted to be there until the Friday night when they had their Christmas Parade and we are glad we did. As we walked to the main street we saw kids gathering carrying plastic bags - we thought this strange. Our questions were soon answered...LOLLIES!! The parade went down the street throwing lollies out! Tonnes of them! The boys had a great time collecting them and wishing everyone a happy Christmas, and we may have collected some too.

They started with the traditional bagpipes.

 

 

One of Santa's little helpers.

The costumes were brilliant and so many themes.

 

 

 

 

 

A few were reminiscent of pagan ideals, a great job but I think the brighter colours were more festive.

 

 

The devil was the last to go through, I guess he got behind thee.

 

So with bulging pockets and active sugar highs we went back to the camp site. The parade ended at the park where we were camped up, with a free BBQ for everyone. We didn't want to impose so we decided to go back to the van to cook up some chicken legs for our dinner. As the last of the people left, Andrew went over to say g’day to the organisers and help clean up...he soon headed back with a bread bag full of cooked sausages! The people of Oatlands were very homely, approachable and giving people - the heart of the town.

One of our day trips was to Ross and we had a lovely day, visiting a bridge built by convicts, and the church!

I certainly took a lot more photos, but these are a good example of the area. We also visited the Ross Female Factory to show the kids where women were incarcerated and what their quarters were like. Only one building is left, but there was a replica of the whole area that fascinated the kids.

Some ghostly faces looked out of the female factory front door as we took photos.

Day 86

Anyway, we sadly left Oatlands on Saturday to travel an outstanding distance of 30kms to get to Kempton where we can utilise free power and water.

We have been to Hobart a couple of times now, the last time being yesterday when we went to get groceries and 8 hours later came back to the van. After the groceries we drove to Mt Wellington which was a little hair raising, but worth the drive as the views were fantastic. HOWEVER...it was freezing. I would say 1 – 3 degrees maximum and the wind chill factor was very high. We climbed to the highest section and had to hold on for dear life.

View towards the south half way up.

The road can get precarious as some smaller rocks have fallen

The top is windy and pretty barren of life, except for the stupid humans wandering around telling each other how uncomfortable it is.

 

A view over Hobart

 

A view up the Derwent river which cuts Hobart in half.

The communication tower. Apparently the electrical signal is so strong that you can have trouble unlocking and starting your car!

Who are these people who keep hogging the shot?

The picnic spots on the way. A nice stop for lunch but the weather changes every 5 minutes - it was sunny, then it rained, then it got warm, then windy, rained again....

After Mt Wellington we drove down to Port Huon to check out some camp spots and we are, needless to say, quite looking forward to getting down that way.

The next day was another big drive up to The Great Lakes (high altitude lakes).

We found this sculpture on the way up

 

The photos we took of the area were all so large, the only one that fit on the blog was this one.

We have decided to stay on another day here in Kempton to get the washing up to date and also to vacuum the van and the car. We are only supposed to be at this site for 48 hours, but it seems to be the case over here that you can stay longer as long as you are not a bother.

By the way, when I did a spell check on this blog and one of the words it didn't recognise was 'blog'...irony.

Day 65

It was exciting catching the Spirit of Tasmania, even though I nearly lost my shoe over the edge before we pulled out! There were some rules with food however, we could take no fruit, veg, eggs or honey. Too easy, we used our food in spaghetti bog for a couple days (we also used a lot of four bean mixes in these), a few curries and when we went on the boat there were only eggs left so we had curried egg sandwiches. See, easy.

It was only when we got there did we realise we were in a room with no windows and roughly the dimensions of a large esky - all night, just the four of us and the results of thousands of beans and eggs . Lets just say we felt sorry for ourselves and even more sorry for anyone using that room after us...um sorry about that.

Anyway, an early wake up call by the staff of the boat at 5:50am (that's in the fours QLD time!) and we had 30mins to be at the car.

The boat from port

We're on and firing

Melbourne...

And again...

 

And again...

 

Happy to be going after "patiently" waiting

 

Bye bye Melbourne

 

Us somewhere, oh yes, still Melbourne.

 

We just got to the car in time!!

 

Tasmania - after the fog lifted.

 

 

Day 66

Once we got through quarantine, we pulled up on the water’s edge to have breakfast in our van and then headed off to find a spot to stay, which turned out being at Penguin.

 

The view here was incredible with deep blue skies, stunning crystal seas and beautiful green grass that reached right down to the water. Just like any government, some idiot decided that between these two stunning features they would stick a railway, but even this did not deter our enthusiasm for the beauty of the area. However our enthusiasm was strained a little when another idiot parked his van between us and the view. We told ourselves that the place was pretty full and he didn't have many options so we perked up our enthusiasm and had some nibblies. It was then that Mr. Inconsiderate decided to hang out his wet, grotty 'Y' fronts between us and our view. So we packed up our enthusiasm and sat inside the van taking silly photos of each other.

 

The next day, after undies man had left, God himself smiled down on the town of Penguin. Beautiful is an insufficient description. We wandered to the markets, lingered around the foreshore, just so relaxing we almost broke out into spontaneous whistling - we didn't take any photos, sorry, too relaxed.

Undies man returned that evening, but we were so happy we could only manage to give him some disapproving looks.

Day 68

We could only stay here 2 nights and today we have moved to Burnie...not so nice. Its a very industrial town where the industry seems to be slowly closing down.

 

 

Sign the big paper roll at the very impressive Burnie information centre.

There were also a number of livestock transport trucks right next to the camping spot which emanated a lovely manure stench - but the moon came out later to try and make up for things.

Day 69

We thought we would head straight over to Myrtle Park (30km east of Launceston), with the intention of going on to the east coast at the Bay of Fires for Christmas. Myrtle Park was nice enough, it was only $6 a night with toilets and showers, there was a lovely creek flowing around its boundary that the kids swam in (mad children), there was lots of green grass and many varieties of trees.

On one of the days we thought we’d head over to Scottsdale and through to St Helens without the van, because we had heard that the road was ‘tricky’. Tricky was an understatement, the range was very narrow, very bendy and very steep...glad we didn’t take the van. After seeing the Bay of Fires and how busy it was, we decided not to do that for Christmas, so we continued our journey to St Marys, Fingal, Conara Junction, up to Evandale and back to Myrtle Creek. This took us all day and we were all very tired on arrival back at the van.

 We also had a look at Launceston to do Christmas shopping. Charging for parking in this town was astounding. Even the free botanic gardens that have loads of walking tracks and hours of relaxed entertainment, charged like a wounded bull for parking. I guess 'free' is open to interpretation.

"You hold off the parking meter readers, I'll get us out of 'ere."

We also went to the Evandale markets where a pig was on site security for a local pub.

Day 75

Our next stop for accommodation was Evandale (you aren't allowed to stop here during market day as the market site is also the campsite). Evandale is a heritage town as evident in the buildings.

 

 

 

 

 

We visited the Tasmanian Sauce Company on one of our outings while staying in Evandale and purchased Pepperberry Wholegrain Mustard and a bottle of Cumberland Sauce, which has an undertone of citrus. For this purchase we received a free bottle of Horseradish Mustard that we haven’t opened yet as it will be very hot. Our next stop on this day was to the Tasmanian Honey Company where we bought a bottle of Ginger Honey and a bottle of Orange Honey, so far Andrew is the only one eating the ginger honey!

On our last day at Evandale, we took the kids to a place called Tasmazia in the Promised Land at the base of Mount Roland - and it was awesome. It has eight mazes, cubby house town, correctional centre with all the tools used to punish in the ‘good old bad days’ and also a miniature town to walk around. We were there all day and at the end of it our feet were aching.

 

This was just the gutter at the front!

On the right you can see they were building another township.

"You can't see me! You can't see me!"

The village of Lower Crackpot over the hedge

Mount Rowland, no not Cradle Mountain

 

 

These jokes were all over the place - you didn't feel so bad about coming to a dead end when you get a little giggle.

About time! Just where they belong - behind bars!

The dentists...

 

...complete with dentists chair and missing tooth!

 

Day 79

After Evandale we went on to Conara Junction as they had a great playground for the kids. We didn’t mind our stay at Conara, but the free camp in Campbell Town would have been prettier. I guess we have to weigh up our options, Campbell Town was prettier, but no playground, water or toilets and these things are useful. The day we left Conara, we thought that we might spend a night at Campbell Town, but decided instead to go through to Oatlands, a decision we didn’t regret.

The view at Conara

The view at Campbell Town 

 

 

 

They had clay tiles throughout the main street with the details of convicts.