Hobart to Dover
We moved again on Friday, departing Hobart after a minor crisis the previous night where I had manage to smash the rear glass window of the canopy on the ute tub. This creates a few issues for us, with packing becoming more difficult (can’t just close the door and keep everything in) as well as security, dust and weather issues.
We made a few calls on Friday to see if it could be replaced, repaired or something, but nothing could be done in a reasonable time frame, so we patched a tarp over the gap and set off for Dover.
I Hobart we had been very well catered for at Casa Teale, where Junior, Vanessa, Holly and the two dogs Olive and Badger fitted us in to their very busy lives.
Olive is about the same age as Jett, so they immediately began a two week Dog Fest, which involved non-stop wrestling and crazy running around Junior’s five acre yard.
We were camped in the yard, but Vanessa and Junior had very kindly built a shed ahead of our arrival and kitted it out with TV, couches and tables to make us very comfortable.
As an added bonus we had some excellent weather in our first week, and this mae a real change from the wild and freezing weather we had experienced while on Bruny Island (and also the previous weeks).
On our last night in Hobart, Sarah and I went off to the Crowded House concert, which was excellent, but in retrospect was probably where I picked up covid.
We got up the next morning, packed the car and set off for Dover. We left Jett behind in Hobart to continue the Dog Fest for five extra days, since we were pretty keen to hit the national park walks down south, and it is a bit simpler without the dog to look after.
We arrived at our new digs in Dover where we didn’t have to set up camp – we are staying in a house, but it currently has no furniture and so we are sort of camping inside. We’ve been pretty thankful to be inside over the last few days which have been pretty windy and very cold. Before the weather turned, however, we got in a couple of days of looking around.
On Saturday we went south to Recherche Bay, which has long been on our list of places to see. We continued further south and had lunch at a camp ground at Cockle Creek.
While lunching we convince the kids to go for a walk down to South East Bay. We spent th afternoon doing that walk, and you can get the gist of it from the kids who have written about it on their own posts.
From my point of view it was a most enjoyable walk – firstly through a rocky hilly area of native bush, then we descended ont a marshy area which had board walks all the way across to a more sandy bush area at the other end. We eventually emerged onto a barren shaley cliff above the beach to our north and looking out to South Point, which is the most southerly point of Australia. We had afternoon tea there and then headed back, with Heidi setting a pretty cracking pace up front. The kids are definitely getting fitter and smashe out the 7.5km return journey in faster time than the outward leg.
Sunday found us heading off to the caves at Hastings where Sarah had booked us into a tour at 11am. The caves are dolomite rather than limestone, and this makes for some differences with other caves in which I’ve been previously. There are a lot of cave photos below, and they are probably worth more than my words.
After the cave tour we donned our togs for the first time this spring, and took to the thermal spring pools. The water was warm, but for me (and Sarah) it was not as warm as we would have liked. The weather had once again started to turn cold and wet, but they did have really hot showers there and we were able to make ourselves comfortable before heading back to our digs.
On Monday I hit the phones for a while trying to figure out something with the back glass of the ute, but it seems like we will be living with that at least until we get back to the big island.
In the meantime, I started to feel a bit crook on Monday afternoon, and then took a test to rule out covid, and ruled it in instead. Then we figured out how to isolate in the house, an also shuffled some of our plans around to allow for me doing nothing for a few days.
I am very glad that we are not camping at the moment, since isolating would be impossible, and the outside world is really turning on the cold, windy and wet weather – all the best conditions for camping.
Next stop is the west coast of Tassie, with a quick stop in Hobart to break up the Dog Fest. I’m not sure how Jett will feel about that, but hopefully he’ll be happy to see us.
