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.