Sideling Viewpoint
We are camped tonight almost on the beach. The ocean is about 30 metres away, and we are looking out over it towards the north east. We are almost on the point of land and looking out into the large expanse of Ringarooma Bay. The ocean is fairly calm, but there are a few waves as the wind is from the east. If the sun comes out tomorrow, for today has been cloudy and occasionally has spit rain, it looks like a nice beach to swim and possibly snorkel. This is one of the nicer campsites we’ve had, and it’s totally free, though quite isolated as we had to drive about 12 km of rough dirt road to get here.
This morning we stopped at a caravan dealers hoping to get the part we need to fix our waste water disposal, but he didn’t have one. However we did fill up our tanks with water from his faucet, and he talked to us for quite a while. Water’s not so scarce in Tasmania as it has been other places. Considering that some of the caravan parks we’ve paid to stay at won’t even let you fill up your storage tanks with water, it’s in such short supply, it was very nice of him. We went into the city of Launceston, the second largest city in Tasmania with a population of just over 100 thousand, to see the Launceston gorge which is raved over in the tourist information books. Unfortunately, while it’s nice, it’s not really worth raving over. It’s a very tiny trickle of water through a very deep canyon. Since the river is dammed for hydroelectricity there are probably times when the water is high enough to make the rapids big. This wasn’t one of those times. They have a long chairlift over the gorge, advertised as the longest span chairlift in the world. At $15 per person Enid and I passed on the trip (can you imagine getting Enid on a chairlift in any case!) and simply walked across the suspension bridge which took us all of 15 minutes. We then hiked up to a high point above the gorge, and continued on down along the river to where we ate our lunch.
This afternoon we drove across the Tasman Higway (A3) to Scottsdale. It is a narrow twisting road. The country reminds us very much of Tasmania, with small fields and farms, and lots of steep hills. There was a great quantity of road kill, wallabies and the occasional wombat, on the road. I’m sure it averaged one animal every kilometre. The road climbs up over the 600 metre high Sideling Range, then drops again. Just as it starts to drop there is a viewpoint that looks out over the valley below. We continued on north off the main highway to the small town of Bridport, then a further 35 km or so reaching the road to the town of Tomahawk, where we realized we had gone too far. We had to drive back 11 km to where the small dirt road leads into the Waterhouse conservation area. We know why we missed the road – there was no sign on the road in the direction we were travelling, and nothing to indicate that this was anymore than a road into a farmer’s yard. There was a sign on the way back, but of course we never saw that!
In any case it was well worth the drive in as the site though small is very nice. Several more motorhomes have entered since we arrived, but they would not find many places to stay, as we took the next to last site here.