Tasmania here we are
We find ourselves now at Swimcart Beach, which is a (free) camping area north of Binalong Bay on Tasmania’s East Coast. It is very wet and windy and we’re a bit trapped in the tent – which of course lends itself to catching up on schooling and diary writing, but is not much good for beach activities.
After arriving in Tassie we slowed down and spent four nights in Devonport – the slowing down was much appreciated by everyone. It was cool in Devonport, but sunny and pleasant and the clear skies were a good change from the mostly wet weather we had between Brisbane and Melbourne.
We did a few looking about things, such as watching the penguins climb the beach (it was pretty hard to get a view and after a lot of waiting it was mostly over pretty quickly), and we went for a drive to the west to see what we could see. We saw a couple of markets, at one of which we bought a cabbage which is still feeding us 10 days later. We did some touristy stuff such as walking to the lighthouse at Table Cape, and we visited a distillery and share a whisky flight (the whisky was great but way out of the price range for the unemployed…).
After four nights we departed Mersey Bluff at Devonport and headed for East Head Tourist Park at Low Head, north of Georgetown. We spent a week there and it was cold – really cold when you’re living in a tent. Two mornings we awoke to frost, and I was surprised it was that warm.
Fortunately, we have a 12V electric blanket, and there was enough sunshine to power it through the night. The kids in their sleeping bags were not so fortunate and Heidi ended up as the chicken in the turducken sleeping bag arrangement (Heidi inside a sleeping bag inside another sleeping bag).
It is much less cold on the east coast, but is wet and miserable, and I would prefer the cold sunshine.
While at Low Head we visited Beaconsfield and looked through the museum which is something the kids really enjoyed. We also went down to Launceston for a look for one day and visited the lighthouse on the Sunday for the weekly fog-horn-blowing. This ain’t no church-picnic-foghorn-blowing Flanders! It is seriously loud and impressive when they fire it up.
The Tamar River has a pretty rich history and there is plenty of historical value to explore and look at – none of which I will bore you with here.
After a week we were ready to move on and headed east to see if the Tassie school holidays make getting into the free camping difficult. The answer to that question seems to be, “No.”. The first place we looked at ended up being where we pitched our tent, but we had our choice of any of the beaches north of St Helens.
On the way to the East Coast we passed through a number of towns which we had been to before – Sarah and I celebrated our tenth anniversary with a long weekend in Launceston, and we clearly did a lot more driving around than I remember.
We arrived in good time and set up camp before getting down to have a look and a long walk down the beach-front sand dune camp sites, which seem to be in hot demand. They don’t really appeal to us, and the onshore wind that we’ve had for the last 24 hours would make it very miserable down there.
Yesterday we went into St Helens for some (expensive) supplies and water, and manage to stop off on the way back to camp for some $12/doz live oysters. They were phenomenal and were followed quite a long time later by the camp-oven roasted chicken, which was delayed a bit due to the green nature of the wood we had.
Today is an inside day, but hopefully it will be warmer and less windy and rainy tomorrow and we’ll get into some outdoor activities.
