David and Enid's Travels

View of the Grampians towards Lake Bellfield

Yesterday, March 2, we got our oil changed in Ballarat.  It certainly costs a lot more to change oil in a vehicle here than in Canada, probably three or four times as much.  This motorhome does take a lot of oil (almost 10 litres) and has two filters, but I don’t think it would cost anywhere close to what it cost us here to change it in Canada.  Anyway, that will be the last oil change we need.

We drove to Halls Gap, which is  a tourist town on the edge of Grampian National Park.  The Grampians are a set of mountains, roughly 500 metres high, not very high of course, but they are quite rugged and pretty. 

It wasn’t very warm today (just under 20 C) and this morning it was drizzling a bit when we left for a hike.  We stopped at the visitor centre and the receptionist showed us the weather forecast for today which was sunny with a 5% chance of rain.  I said “I think there’s a 100% chance of rain as it’s raining right now.”  That struck her as quite funny and she laughed.

We hiked to the top of Boronia Peak. There were a lot of kangaroos, wallabies and emus near the visitor centre.  They were quite tame.  The walking trail was easy at the start, but got more and more rugged and stony as we got higher.  The last one hundred meters or so were just a rough scramble up through a rocky ledge.  I went to the top, but Enid did not.  On the way down after lunch I tripped and fell over some rocks and skinned both my knees and my left wrist.

There was a major flood and storm through here in mid-January (when we were trying to avoid all the rain and so headed to South Australia).  It did a tremendous amount of damage to the park, and destroyed many of the roads with landslides and washouts.  Most of the park is closed, and so there are very few hikes that are open.  That is unfortunate as The Grampians are renowned for their nice walks.

When we got back from today’s hike I shot some video of Kookaburras.  There are quite a number of them here in this camp site, and they are quite tame.  This morning one was sitting on the electrical outlet box beside our motorhome pulling at the electrical cord with its bill.  Someone had left clothes on the line overnight, and about half of the clothes were on the ground.  I suspect it was the Kookaburras that did that.   I still haven’t managed to capture a quality sound recording of them laughing though.

Devonport Harbour

We left Devonport yesterday, February 28, on the ferry to Melbourne.  The trip across the Bass Strait was very calm, much more so than when we went in to Tasmania.  We were the very last large vehicle off the ferry, however it was a relatively fast trip onto the freeway to get out of Melbourne.  Unfortunately we had planned our drive wrong, so went the wrong direction when we reached the M8 motorway (we turned off towards Ballarat, and should not have) so drove about 10 to 15 km farther than we needed to.

We were surprised to find the couple that had loaned us clothespins when we were doing our laundry in the Devonport caravan park were parked right next to us in the caravan park in Melbourne.  We had a visit with them and their friends (who are just one more site over), and then they took a look inside our motorhome.  The other couple suggested a caravan park in Sydney for when we return there, so we booked it this morning for our last week in Australia.

I got my hair cut this morning by walking into the hair dressers shop right at opening.  It cost only $12.  The hairdresser, a Vietnamese woman, asked me how long I wanted my hair cut, but I didn’t really catch what she said with her mixture of accents, until she said “Medium?”  That I understood, so said “Yes, medium.”  It’s a good thing I didn’t say short!  Her idea of medium and mine are somewhat different.  I will definitely have to wear my hat so I don’t get sunburned!

We drove on to Ballarat, ate lunch just outside of the city, then registered at the Big 4 caravan park.  There are many school children staying here.  They are on some type of three day excursion.  At least not everyone in the caravan park will be retired people tonight!

Enid at penguin statue, Penguin, Tasmania

We did get to see the little penguins last night.  We drove to Burnie to the viewing platform just a bit after eight pm.  The penguins showed up just as it got dark.  We saw about four of them.  They are pretty small, maybe 20 cm tall, and it was pretty dark, so I couldn’t get any video of them.  We left just about nine pm, as it started to sprinkle rain.

Today we stopped in the pretty little town of Penguin.  It was a beautiful day, clear, sunny and a very nice temperature in the mid twenties.  We went to the market, but really there wasn’t anything there to buy, as it is mostly a flea market with lots of junk, but nothing very interesting.  There was only one stall with any fruits or vegetables, and not much of a selection of those.

We are now in Devonport ready to go on the ferry to Melbourne tomorrow morning.  We will be ready for boarding about 7 am, and should dock about 6 pm tomorrow night.

View of Stanley from the Nut

First this morning we drove in on the Bluff Point road.  We came to a spot where the road forked, to the left to a lighthouse, and to the right a road that was marked on my GPS maps as going to the ocean.  We went right, and did come to the ocean, actually to a bay where there were several cabins, and a number of people were launching boats.  There were some small docks in the very calm bay.  We didn’t stay, instead turned back and went to the lighthouse.  The ocean was quite calm this morning, and although there looks to be a rocky reef that extends quite a way into the ocean, there was a large trawler style fishing boat which was coming in quite close to the shore.

We reached Stanley about 11 am.  Along the way we passed a number of farms, with some very large herds of dairy cattle.  I didn’t see anything much in the way of milking barns, though I suppose the weather is mild enough that they don’t need them. 

We climbed up “Circular Head”, also known as
“The Nut” after we’d made our lunch.  It is a very steep climb of about 100 metres elevation.  The trail was paved all the way, and they could make it switchback less steeply.   However they also have a chairlift here, and it is incentive to the unfit not to take the steep route to the top.  We ate our lunch about half way around on a lookout that faced the south.

After we descended we drove about three kilometres farther north to a restored historical site, “Highfield”.  It is the site of the original Van Diemen’s Land Company in 1826.  After an interesting hour there we travelled on to Burnie where we have stopped for tonight, and hope to see some fairy penguins this evening.

Azure Kingfisher

It started raining sometime about eleven pm last night, and continued for much of the night, just a light drizzling rain that had mostly stopped by the time we ate breakfast.  With the clouds breaking we decided that we would go on the cruise of the Arthur River, so drove across the one lane bridge to the store where we registered.

Since that was just before nine, and the cruise didn’t leave until 10:15 we continued on the road for about another kilometre to “the edge of the world” viewpoint.  It was still somewhat misty over the ocean but we walked along the ocean and took some photographs and video.  There was an old wombat there when we returned from our walk.  Enid tried to walk in front of it to drive it towards my video camera, but it just totally ignored her and walked on by toward the edge of the parking lot.

The tour was a very pleasant way to spend the day.  It was a beautiful temperature, mostly sunny, and not much wind.  The area along the river is temperate rainforest.  The trees range from very talk eucalyptus (blackwood) to tiny shrubs, and two different kinds of tree ferns.  We saw a number of different kinds of birds, including white bellied sea eagles, cormorants, a few ducks, and a very pretty azure kingfisher.  This is a very rare bird in Tasmania (according to my bird book). 

The sea eagles had a young fledgling with them.  It didn’t fly too much.  The boat captain threw fish into the water, but on the way upriver the eagles ignored it.  He obviously has them trained to respond for he would blow two short blasts on the boat horn, but the birds didn’t move.  He suggested that they are trying to train the young one to catch its own food.  However, on the return trip he did the same thing, and this time an adult eagle came down, took the fish out of the water, and then flew back up into the tree with the juvenile bird.  The captain repeated the process with more fish, and the eagles did it again so we got to see them take a fish from the surface of the water.

Lunch was served on shore.  There are several tame pademelons there that hopped around as we ate.  Then we were given books with numbered photos of the kinds of plants, and we walked about 500 metres or so along a trail into the bush.  There were at least five different kinds of ferns along the trail.  One of the more interesting things for me were the burrows (really small mud piles) of a kind of crayfish.  The youngest couple on the cruise (the rest of us were all old retired fogies, or nearly so) were walking just ahead of us and he suddenly yelled out an expletive.  He had nearly stepped on a black tiger snake.  It swam away very quickly across the tiny little stream with its head out of the water.

We ate so much for lunch today, and so late, that we didn’t feel like making much for supper.  Instead we just had a salad, a hot cross bun, and some cheese.

Ocean surf at Arthur River

It was for the most part another dull and cloudy day as we drove across the north west part of Tasmania to the very small resort town of Arthur River.  Much of the road today was better than anything else we have driven on, though it got much poorer after we turned south west at Smithton and headed to the coast.

We had a brief stop to get groceries, fuel and eat lunch in Burnie.  It was very hard to find parking to buy groceries.  We first pulled in to a Woolworths, but there was no space in their lot so we continued on.  The Coles is downtown, so although they had a car park, we are much too tall to access it.  We drove to the visitor centre and they confirmed these were the two main stores, so we drove back to the central business district and parked on an out of the way street.

We stayed at the Mantuka campground in the Arthur-Pieman reserve.  We can hear the ocean surf quite loudly here, but when we tried to walk to the ocean could not get through.  However we did see an echidna, the first one we have been able to photograph in the wild.  We wound around on some trails until we got out to the bridge over the river where one of the two cruise boats here was docking.  One woman enthused about the trip so we may take it tomorrow if the weather is good enough.

We kept on walking down to the ocean.  There is a rocky point and heavy surf here.  If you look very hard you might be able to see Argentina about 10000 kilometers away!  The wide open coast is subject to the winds of the roaring fourties, and the ocean is very rough along this coast.

Montezuma Falls

Though it wasn’t raining this morning, it wasn’t really bright and sunny either as we left Strahan.  After doing some business in town (getting fuel, refilling the LPG cylinder that was empty, and posting a letter to Enid’s mother) we drove to Macquarie Head, which is where the river empties into the ocean.  Hell’s gates, the narrow mouth to the harbour, is quite shallow.  Past the end of the breakwater we could see surf, but along the beach where we walked there were hardly any waves.  The beach goes on for miles, but we only walked about 2.5 km return.

When we went to leave I nearly got stuck.  I didn’t realize that the sand was so soft where I’d pulled in, and when I backed up almost got myself bogged.  I did get out ok, but not before one of the other campers there came over, and I’m sure he was about  to give me advice.  However getting out of soft sand isn’t much different than getting out of snow, so I was OK.

The road in to the point is a gravel road, and it starts out deceptively smooth.  The first few kilometres were the best gravel road we’ve been on, but when it turned off to a farmer’s yard, the road changed and became very rough.  It continued that way for most of the way, except for a short stretch where they were grading, watering and packing the road.  Along the way there were many clear cut areas in the trees, some of which have been re-seeded.  In several spots there were some very large trees and spots have been cleared under them where people have camped.  However it also looked very wet under them and would be easy to get stuck.

By noon it had cleared over the mountains and we ate lunch at the town of Zeehan, then drove on to see Montezuma Falls.  There is a turnoff just before Rosebery that goes about six kilometres in to where the walk starts.  The first five were paved, but then the pavement ended just after crossing a new bridge, and the road became very rough very quickly.  We drove another 500 metres or so and as the road was too narrow to turn around we’d have had to back up, but there was a spot where another camper van was parked in a pullout, and we turned around there.  We drove back to the top of the hill and parked.  A four wheel drive came by and I flagged it down and asked the occupants if it was the road to the falls.  “It is,” they replied.  “And it’s about another six or seven hundred metres to the parking area, but I wouldn’t take that down,” the driver said, motioning towards our motorhome.

So we walked in to the falls, which are reported to be the highest in Tasmania at 104 metres.  It took us a bit over three hours to walk in and out, including a stop at the falls to photograph them, and eat some gorp.  There were a number of interesting things we stopped to take pictures of on the way in, including a black tiger snake (supposedly one of the world’s most venomous snakes), some interesting fungi, a number of small streams, and the temperate rain forest with large myrtle trees, eucalyptus, and tree ferns.  The entire trail is fairly flat as it is the bed of the old railway in to the mining area.  Some of the old trestle bridge remains are still there, and some of the ties have been used in the construction of new walking bridges.  The last kilometre or so the ties are still present along with the rail spikes. 

There used to be a trestle spanning the stream at the bottom of the falls, but now there is a suspension bridge.  I started to walk out on it, but it is very narrow, about a 10 cm wide track, and I lost my nerve and turned back.  In any case we got just as good or better pictures of the falls from the wooden observation platform at the base.  The stream isn’t very big, but it is a long drop over the cliff in about three main cascades of water.

We debated staying in the upper parking area.  We were concerned about how solid the ground was, as it’s been so wet, and therefore decided to drive into Rosebery.  We’re here tonight in their free parking area which has two rather contradictory signs.  One says “No Camping” and the other says “Parking area for self contained recreation vehicles – maximum 72 hour stay.”  So, here we’re staying.

Australian tropical plants in snow

Yesterday, February 21, wasn’t much of a day to do anything.  It was very cold the night before, and when we went over to the visitor information centre (just for something to occupy our time)  they had recorded the temperature overnight of 0.8 ºC.  For the rest of the day we didn’t do much more than read in our motorhome as it was raining almost continuously.  By evening we could see snow on the tops of the mountains across the lake.

It was much better today, and although it wasn’t really warm, at least it was no longer raining.  We got an early start to our hike, setting off on the loop circuit to Shadow Lake at just about 9 am.  The trail is best if you go the way we did, clockwise, since it is rougher going up that way but easier to come down.  The trail is fairly rough with a lot of rocks and roots.  Water was running over the track in many places from all of the rain.  Near the top of the track we started to see some snow.  It wasn’t a lot, but it looked strange to see the green tropical plants standing in snow.

We finished the hike, about 13.5 km round trip by just after 2 pm, and drove to Strahan.  The road is another narrow twisting mountain road, so travel wasn’t too fast.  All along the way we saw many beehives set up in small turnouts from the highway.  Many of them were more than six feet high and there were many bees flying around the hives.  At one of them there was a chain across the road and a “Bees” danger sign.  The highway is especially narrow and steep around the mining town of Queenstown.  Here the road twists and turns around the exposed cliffs where the rocks are many shades of reds and yellows.  It is quite pretty.

The caravan park we are in tonight, Strahan Holiday Park, is really full (as is the Big 4 across the road).  Both have no vacancy signs out.  This one is rather short of toilet facilities.  We can find only about four toilets and showers, and there are close to 100 campsites here.

Rain on Lake St. Clair

It is very cold and wet today.  We arrived here at Lake St. Clair, at 200 m the deepest lake in Australia, just shortly after noon.  It was raining heavily all the way here on the drive from New Norfolk.  We stopped at a campsite by Brady’s Lake, but it was bare with no shelter (we’re not sure why it was checkmarked as a good spot in our campsite guide) so didn’t stay there.  Instead we drove in to Lake St. Clair national park, where we were able to get a powered site.

Thank goodness for the electricity, as it is running the heater in our motorhome.  Right now it is about 3 ºC, raining (there was sleet this afternoon) and generally not very nice.  We’re staying here for two days, as we hope it will clear up tomorrow or the day after so that we can do some hiking.  Today we stayed indoors, read, and played Scrabble (David beat Enid, but only by 5 points).

When we booked in at the visitor centre there were a number of backpackers there.  This area is the start of a number of longer hikes through the Tasmanian “wilderness”.  I do not envy them their night if they are out today, as the weather is truly miserable.

Old gravestones, St. David's Cemetary, Hobart

It began to rain just as we started packing up this morning, and it continued for most of the day.  At times it was a heavy downpour, at other times just a very light sprinkle.  We did limit our activities today somewhat because of the rain, but we did get to see some of central Hobart.

We drove over the very high cross channel bridge, the Tasman bridge, which (as we found out later today) was struck by a ship in 1975, knocking out a span of the bridge and collapsing a 127 metre long section of bridge.  The concrete bridge landing on the ship caused it to sink, and five motorists were killed when their vehicles fell through the gap.  We were able to park downtown in a pay parking lot, and spent a couple of hours walking around the Salamanca market.  This is a fairly large outdoor market, and many of the shopkeepers were attempting to keep their wares dry by lifting up the roofs on their tent shelters with sticks to keep the rain running off.  Enid and I wore our raincoats and also used the umbrella but we still got a bit wet.

We found a very interesting wall covered with old headstones from the period of about 1800 to 1850.  This is in a park, St. David’s Park, which is where the original cemetary of Hobart was located.  Over time the cemetary became neglected and overgrown, so badly that apparently thieves used the collapsed graves as hiding spots.  In the 1920’s the city made the entire burial area into a park, removed the headstones and placed them on walls around the park.

After the market we walked back, still in the rain, and had a seafood lunch at a restaurant.  We had several different kinds of fish, prawns, scallops, and squid, and some other kinds of seafood we didn’t really recognize, all on a plate of chips.  There was a nice view out over the Hobart harbour from the restaurant.

As it was still raining when we finished lunch we bought two more hours parking, and went into the Tasmanian maritime museum.  It had several displays of the history of sea travel and exploration around Tasmania.  It was there that we found out about the bridge disaster.  There are many intricate models of old sailing ships as well as museum artifacts.   Upstairs they had a display of photographs taken by Alan Villiers in the late 1930’s of sailing boats in the Arabian gulf.

Upon leaving the museum we walked through a bit of central Hobart.  We found a mobile phone store, but the clerk said he would need our phone to recharge it.  He also said we could get it recharged at the Telstra store, and told us where it was.  Since we didn’t have the phone with us, I walked back to our motorhome, and Enid looked in some of the stores downtown.  It was heavily pouring rain now.  I got the phone and found Enid and we walked to the Telstra store.  They closed at 2:30 and it was now 2:31, so although you could see customers in the store, they wouldn’t open the doors!  Another customer, who was also locked out, had just been in the store and wanted to do something else was furious, as he said he’d only been in the store about two minutes earlier.  I ranted to him about my experience trying to recharge the phone.  Enid and I decided to walk back to the original store with the phone, and the clerk there recharged it.  He also didn’t need the phone at all to do this, so we have no idea why the original clerk said we’d need it.  Perhaps he didn’t know.

We drove out of Hobart about 30 km to the caravan park at the town of New Norfolk.  It rained almost all the way there, but stopped just as we got here.  Supper tonight was a very light meal of a salad, hot cross bun and cheese since we’d eaten so much for lunch.  We started to walk down by the river, but didn’t take our umbrella, so of course it started to rain again.  While it wasn’t heavy, just a light mist, we decided not to get wet and came back to our motorhome.  We have enough wet socks to dry out after today already!