Mar 13, 2013 - Days 51-54 UPDATE NOTES, Stanley to Mainland

Hi All, Our last 3 days after Devonport were at a quaint town on the north coast called Stanley. A feature of Stanley is the large rock immediately above the town to the east called The Nut. Unfortunately we could not get to the top of it as it was too windy for us to ride up in the chairlift and the walk was huge and steep. Photos will suffice. From Stanley we went to a village called Arthurs River which is about as remote and desolate as you can get here in Tassie. It is said that once there you are on the Edge of the World. In fact if...

Mar 8, 2013 - Days 42-50 UPDATE NOTES-Scottsdale, Launceston & Devonport

Hi All, We left St Helens on the east coast then stayed at a free camp (not a caravan park) for one night and ran into a couple who we had previously run into before 4 times in various places here. Getting to the north coast from the east coast was a lot of fun. Typical for Tasmania the roads were narrow, winding and going up and down hill like the proverbial. The trip took 4 “passes”, steep and even more narrow than the average road here. One thing we have worked out, if you can tow a large caravan in Tasmania you can tow it anywhere in...

Feb 28, 2013 - Days 32-41 UPDATE NOTES - Pt Arthur, Coles Bay, Bicheno, St Helens

Hi All, After leaving Hobart we headed for Port Arthur, famous in Australia for the convict penal settlement there from 1823 to about 1870. At its peak it held a population of 1200 convicts and was a fully functioning township. All that’s left now are ruins and some houses for the senior officers but all being restored or at least kept. It’s a very interesting place to visit and very photogenic so you can imagine the number of photos we took. We also spent some time exploring all of the peninsula upon which Port Arthur is located. After...

Feb 19, 2013 - Days 27-31 UPDATE NOTES - Hobart

Hi All, Well, we thought we would slow down but our 6 days in Hobart was not to be. We were as usual busy all the time including a couple of mornings spent getting servicing and wheel aligning done to the car. Hobart is the country’s 2nd oldest city and one of its smallest today and to its advantage it is still full of older houses and buildings both in the city and in the country, beautiful old ones both big and small dating from 1823. We travelled a bit around the country areas to Ross, Richmond and Oatlands which have beautiful...

Feb 13, 2013 - Days 20-26-UPDATE NOTES -St Clair, Russell Falls, Bruny Island.

Hi All, Back on the road again after 4 nights at Strahan and we aimed for the Lake St Clair part of the Cradle Mountain Lake St Clair National Park and it was there that things started to unravel. Whist being a National Park it was being run by contractors who were obviously starting to cut corners. It was just not nice being there and although we were booked for 2 nights there was no way were we staying there a second night. Being a long weekend we could not move forward to our next destination as they had stuffed up our booking so we just...

Feb 6, 2013 - Days 14-19 UPDATE NOTES..........Burnie-Cradle Mountain-Strahan

Hi All, This section is long due to the amount of places we have been to. Sorry but it will be the longest we do. Now on the famous West Coast of Tasmania, not that we see much of the sea but the area has some beautiful, wild, virgin forests world heritage protected but what you could do with this rough country is a loss to us. There are a couple of mining towns with small populations mining copper, silver, lead and zinc plus tourism and that’s it. We stopped for 3 nights in one of Tasmania’s most famous National Parks Cradle Mountain Lake...

Feb 1, 2013 - Tassi und Melbourne die 2te

15.01 Flug um 06.00 Uhr von Adelaide mit Stopover in Melborne nach Hobart/Tasmanien. Ankunft 10.00 Uhr. Richard holt mich am Flughafen ab. Er zeigt mir Australiens älteste Brücke von 1825 in Richmond und wir haben Kaffee in einem süßen Café. Danach bringt er mich zu meinem Hostel in Hobart. Er geht arbeiten. Abends verabreden wir uns zum Dinner in einem Restaurant mit Kollegen von ihm. Es ist ca 12.00 uhr und in meinem Hostel kann ich ich ab 14.00 uhr einquecken. Ich laufe zum Hafen vor und schaue mir die Stadt an. Hobert ist süß und sehr...

Jan 31, 2013 - Day 13 UPDATE NOTES

Hi All, Not even a week since the last entry but we have done heaps and a lot more to go. We toured around Albury on the NSW and Victorian borders where we have not toured before and found it interesting. A short run through a couple of villages led us to Beechworth a very interesting old township where we found a cafe called of all things Beechworth Bakery, it was that busy we could not get in. Lots of tourist type shops but a cute place. Moving on, we went to Bendigo as we did not want to go all the way to Melbourne on a 4 lane highway....

Jan 25, 2013 - Burnie to LaTrobe

Today Steph did the washing and we decided to leave the van in the park and go for a bit of a drive around the area. We did a bit of a loop and found some nice waterfalls and we also drove through the Gunns Plains area which is a valley of farms and when you drive into it the views are very pretty. Even though again we have the rain following us everywhere.

Jan 24, 2013 - Burnie

Today we have had a short day on the road traveling from Wynyard to Burnie. Once we booked in to a caravan park we went for a drive to the tourist center to see what was available to do. As there was a paper making tour about to start we went on that, this was very interesting and lasted about 30 minutes. We made our own sheet of of paper with a little print on it. We then had a look around the center at all the display's of the people of Burnie, glass blowing, paper statues, wood works and burnt paper prints etc, all good to see. This took...

Jan 24, 2013 - Wynyard

I totaly forgot when I did the entry yesterday about us going to the Tourist Information Centre at Wynyard which also included a display of very rare vehicles that have been restored over many years by a local man. I will put up some photos. One of the vehicles is the 31st Ford ever built, this vehicle was driven around Australia in 2003 by the restorer and his wife. Most of the vehicles are Fords but the are Cadillac s and also a number of other very rare vehicles. There is also a display of Penny Farthing push bikes and 1 Indian motor...

Jan 23, 2013 - Wynyard

Today we are heading up towards the top of Tassie hopefully around Wynyard. We took of pretty early (for us)and I decided to go via Queenstown, now for anyone who has been to Tassie would know that the road into Queenstown is interesting, especially with a van in tow down the 5km VERY steep drop into the town. Steph was ecstatic that I decided to go this way NOTTTTT She was saying that she can handle the drop off if there are trees to stop you, but this road has no tree's or anything if we did happen to drop over the side, AND IT IS A LONG...