On Sunday 15th January it was time to leave our comfortable little cabin in St Helens – it had been one of our most relaxing stays on any Big 4 park we have visited anywhere in Australia. In order to travel along a different route, we took a chance and headed for Launceston via Scottsdale. It wasn’t the most obvious route (the main road was quite direct) but we weren’t in any hurry and we didn’t want to backtrack at all. The Scottsdale route, although much longer and hillier, offered some tourist attractions including The St Columba Falls and The Holy Cow Café and Cheese Factory. It proved to be an excellent choice as the scenery was fantastic, the falls were very “full” and we enjoyed the walk through the rain forest. The main lookout had ... read more

The day of our Bruny Island trip, Thursday 12th, disappointingly started very cloudy and rain was in the air. We had to be at the departure point by 7:45am so we were up early and away from the motel in good time. Graham has got to know his way around Hobart pretty well and we were soon at the car-park to take advantage of an “Early Birds” special offer which allowed all-day parking for $10. It meant we had to drive to the top floor of ten to park but we had plenty of time. We checked in for our All Day trip and were surprised to see so many people already there – we thought we’d be the first! Eventually, two small 20 seater coaches left for the ferry terminal at Kettering but not before ... read more

As Monday 9th January dawned the rain cleared and we were treated to a lovely rainbow over the village. We rather reluctantly left the delights of Tarraleah and headed in the general direction of Hobart. We didn’t anticipate reaching there today as there were a few places en route that caught our attention although we still had to arrange overnight accommodation. We reached the small village of Westerway which gave direct access to the Mount Field National Park – an area we wanted to explore. We spotted a sign for accommodation which suggested there was a vacancy so we drove about a kilometre along a gravel track which led to a house and two chalets. We had rung ahead but only got an answer phone message. We followed the signs which invited us to enter the ... read more

On Thursday morning, 5th January, Steph and Gerry went through their regular early morning swimming routine which we could have joined, but we had a leisurely breakfast whilst admiring the views. We popped out to have a look around the town and were slightly disappointed to find that parking meters were everywhere so we drove back to the area where we saw the penguins and parked outside ‘The Makers’ Centre where there was free parking. It seemed an interesting place so I had a quick look in and discovered that conducted tours went round about every half an hour - we decided that we might go in later. I had offered to make a fruit salad for that night’s dinner so we walked into the centre of town, had a cup of coffee and then got ... read more

January 1st 2012 - New Year’s Day began slowly but became very, very hot well before10:00am. Originally we had planned an early start with a drive to the beach in Mornington but we were a bit sluggish first thing after the events of the night before. Our sluggishness eventually got the better of us and we abandoned our original plan to go to Mornington as time was going on and Mornington would almost certainly be busy. Instead, I prepared a picnic and we headed for Mentone – a beachside suburb not too far away from Wantirna. It took us about 30 minutes to find our way to the beach at Mentone as Graham had it in his mind that we needed to go to Mordialluc first. Anyway, we soon found a delightful spot where it was ... read more