Aahhh... perfect Tassie day, sunny with a cold wind. Just the way I like it. Sorry about the stressed last post. The guy in the internet cafe knew how to download things, but not how to burn disks, and I hate PCs. I eventually just took my camera into the New Norfolk pharmacy and make a bloody disk on the spot. Today I bought a new chip for my camera, 1GB of room, that'll get me home hopefully.
Today I am sitting in the State Library of Tasmania, and I have ten minutes left. So this'll be a quickie. Maybe just a list. Let's see how we go.
Day 1: arr. Devonport. Stayed in a pub straight across the river where we could see the boat come and go. Went up the coast that evening and watched fairy penguin chicks being cute. Annoying tourist encounter 1.
Day 2: La Trobe, Tazmazia (look it up!) and Cradle Mountain. Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Freezing. Putting up the tent in gale force winds and rain was a test of our marriage. We got through it. Bumblebee's new blow-up mattress went down overnight.
Day 3: Walk around Dove Lake and along the board walk. Did the first 100 metres of the Overland Track, Best Beloved vowing to take Bumblebee on it when he's 15. Better weather. Patted the bum of a Tasmanian Tiger. Annoying tourist encounter 2.
Day 4: Through Zeehan (Jam shop!) to Strahan, where we stayed in a place I dubbed 'Wallpaper City', with at least four different 'period-style' patterns from every angle. Met a nice female couple over breakfast whom we've run into since at nearly every leg of the journey.
Day 5: Boat cruise around Macquarie Harbour and up the Gordon River. Fantastic views. We'd spent the last two days listening to an (extremely, disappointingly abridged) audiobook of His Natural Life so Bumblebee was primed for Hell's Gates. Afterwards we found an amazing place called 'Tut's Whittled Wonders' which you may have seen on The Collectors.
Day 6: Trhough Queenstown to Derwent Bridge. Walk around bits of Lake St Clair. Walked the last 100 metres of the Overland Track. Played with river stones in a nice bit of river.
Day 7: Slow drive to Hobart. Staying with a family friend of BB's. Imagine Miss Bates (? I think) from Emma, the one that talks constantly about kindnesses. I have resisted playing Emma, for the consequences would be similar.
Day 8: Salamanca Market, TMAG, Cat & Fiddle Arcade (is that all? asked B) and the Botanical Gardens.
Day 9: Hastings Caves and the Airwalk. Annoying tourist encounter 3. Lots of driving through nice landscape.
Day 10: Port Arthur. Exhausted.
Day 11: Today. Cadbury's chocolate factory. I feel ill. Plus the Mercury Paper's printing museum, across the road from TMAG. A TREASURE. Go and see if you like letterpress.
Must go. Run out of time. Might not get another chance to write until Melbourne.
Toodle-pip!
10 comments:
Zeehan - jam shop??? You haven't been harvesting the local mushrooms for brekkie fry-up have you?
& HEY - we got taken on a school excursion to watch that bloody clock, so be nice. Tasmanians have very very long memories.
Ah, New Norfolk! I hope you've been gorging on raspberries for me. Best raspberries in the country in Tas.
Hang on, you can't just write annoying tourist encounter and leave it at that - details please!
Don't forget the wine! I hope you're drinking lots of the local stuff.
Enjoy the warm(ish) weather!
Must tag this - want to visit that Mercury Press myself if I get down there.
Nice roundup, Duck. I may not see you in Melbourne, it will depend on how I pull up after daughter's 21st. So have a lovely holiday, anyhow.
what Mindy said!
I hope you're saving annoying tourist encounters for your next post, otherwise, we will be exceedingly discommoded!!
Wow, we just did day trips from Hobart and that was quite tiring enough thanks - no wonder you're exhausted!
I too want more info about the annoying tourist encounters.
ok - fudge shop replaces the cadbury factory (plus it's next to the women's gaol and near the cascade brewery, which is worth going to - it looks like the picture on the bottle, and the gardens are a nice place to sit or explore).
If you're at the Bot Gs again (and everyone in Hobart goes there more than once. A lot), look out for the 'leathery grass'. It's near the Gardening Australia veggies.
Make sure you make it to the shore opposite Hobart, at night if you can, but daytime is fine. Check out the amazing VIEW.
Hope you're enjoying the trip.
when I was in late primary (so we're talking the late 70's) a relative of mine bought me the most awesomely fascinatingly bizarrely horrible tan plastic wallet with a recognisable but still garishly terrible picture of the Cat & Fiddle Arcade on it.
I used it until the press stud started ripping away from the vinyl (which, surprise, didn't take long) and then put it away as the very precious strange thing I realised it to be.
I have it still, somewhere in the archives I call "the double garage." it fascinates me still, it was so nasty. and yet fascinating.
btw dogpossum hurrah! for the word gaol. doesn't get used enough anymore huh? infinitely preferable to jail... which annoys me so.
Are you the Spokesduck for an asteroid?
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