Tasmania Part 1

September 22-25, 2012 – Tasmania Part I

Saturday morning we left the Grampian Region and headed towards Melbourne. Our destination was the port in South Melbourne where we would catch the ferry to take us to Tasmania.  Another driving day through pasturelands, sheep, cows and big gum trees. The weather got warmer and sunnier as we got closer to Melbourne. We arrived early afternoon and had an hour or so to kill, so we found a parking place for the Apollo and parked ourselves in the sun on the patio of a friendly pub and joined many others taking in the wonderful weather with a cold one.  The Spirit of Tasmania Ship was docked just across from our afternoon’s perch, so we made our way to the terminal and boarded with many other cars, utility vehicles, trucks, travel trailers and small motor homes; the choreography that the ferry had was amazing to watch, getting all of the vehicles inspected, parked and secured for the voyage efficiently. We were on ship by 6:00pm, found our recliners (a bit larger than airplane seats, but the same concept J) and made our way down to the lounge area to see the lights of Melbourne as we sailed south to Tasmania. We had a very nice dinner on board and were able to catch a few winks in our lounge chairs during 11hour crossing.

Sunday morning we docked in Devonport, Tasmania about 5:00am. We were a bit concerned about finding the MoHo amongst all of the vehicles in the garages, but Mike navigated us right to her.  A bit sleep deprived, but anxious to get on the road we headed east. Our first stop of the day was in Burnie, an interesting town, once big in paper production. We spend about an hour at an exhibit center that had booths of different crafts’ persons from doll makers, milliners, and hand made paper crafters, wood workers and many more. Our route along the northern coast took us along the Bass Straight through the colorful and intriguing towns of Wynyard and Stanley. On the itinerary was to visit the historic light house in Wynyard and see the tulip fields in bloom, lighthouse was there but we were too early to see the tulips; there were many beautiful blooming rhododendrons, camellias, and other colorful plantings We visited our first national park, “Rocky Cape”, enjoying lunch at a beautiful coastal sight.  Our next stop was a quick visit to the historical sight of Highfield, the 1^st residence of the English land developers – the Van Diemans’ Company. It represented a very sad story of how the foreigners took advantage of their wealth and strength to harm many of the local Aboriginal Tribes as well as the prisoners from their own country that were treated harshly as slaves. Our campground for the night was a small little RV park, but it was right on the coast, such a beautiful location.

Monday morning saw us heading south to visit Cradle Mountain National Park, a World Heritage Site, the route was many miles, very curvy and we had lots of rain and snow.  Mike, the consummate chauffer, just kept going with the flow. When we arrived at the park there was a shuttle van that took us to the top, we got out and walked up the path for a quick view of clouds where the mountain was supposed to be, and grabbed the next shuttle down to get out of the snow and wind. BRRRRRRR!!!  Bought a postcard at the gift shop to give us an idea of what the mountain does look like. Heading down the mountain we did enjoy the temperate rainforest growth along the roadside (fern trees, gum trees, pine trees, and grasses of many descriptions), through the wipers swiping the windshield most of the trip.

Tuesday morning we are singing the “Rain, Rain Go Away” song. Knew that Tasi might be cool and damp, but weren’t quite prepared for COLD and WET. Oh well, nothing can keep this duo down, another day of places to go and things to see. We went through Queenstown a copper mining town, then we stopped at the Franklin – Gordon Wild Rivers National Park where we took a nice walk down a well maintained path to the Franklin River, a wild and scenic water way.  We continued out pace south through the pleasant towns of Tarraleah, New Norfolk, and on into Hobart.  We decided we needed a bit of break from the “Camper” so we got a nice hotel about 3 blocks from the wharf. Tomorrow we set out to see the beautiful town of Hobart.