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Published: April 25th 2007
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Mike at Suicide Rock
It's called suicide rock as it's not a good idea to jump into the lake there as it's full of rocks. In the background is Cradle Mountain. It looks like a baby in a cradle if you look closely... and with a bit of imagination. As a bit of a change from what we'd planned, we decided to visit Tasmania as when we leave Oz we will have visited every State and Territory. We managed to book cheap flights from Melbourne with the budget airline- Virgin Blue.
We flew into Launceston in the North. Even though we were both tired from the early morning flight we decided we would walk to Cataract Gorge which is 10 minutes outside the city. The weather cleared up after a wet start so we had a lovely walk to the lake. The scenery was stunning. We took a chair lift across the lake (apparently the worlds longest chair lift) and walked up to some view points. We took the Zig Zag track back to the city. It was mean to be the hard route back but we both found it quite easy- must be all the the walking and mountains we have climbed.
Everyone in the hostel was very friendly and we ended up playing with Charles, a 3 month old miniature chihuahua.
The next day we took a day trip to Cradle Mountain, stopping at Sheffield on the way. (many towns have English place names)
Mike and Charles
No it's not a rat. It's a dog honestly! Luckily the clouds cleared and we could see the top of Cradle Mountain from Dove Lake. We did a couple of short walks. On the way back we stopped for some cheese tasting- we had lots of samples to try, all very nice especially the chilli cheese.
On Friday it took 2.5 hours to get to Hobart via bus. In Hobart we had a quick walk around Salamanca Place and Battery Point before finding the supermarket to stock up on food for the next 4 nights.
On Saturday we have a quick look around the weekly Salamanca market before joining the bus tour to Port Arthur. When Australia was first being colonised, many convicts were sent over from England. If the convicts committed crimes in Australia, they would probably be sent to Port Arthur
We stopped at Richmond to have a look at some of the old buildings and visited the old jail. Once at Port Arthur we had time to wander around the buildings and museum before going on the ghost tour. Debbie had to carry the front lantern, so she had to go in to each building first to check there were no ghosts and
Deb at Cataract Gorge
This is actually only 10 minutes from Launceston city centre. light up the way for everyone else in the group. It also meant she had to be last out the building. Half way through the ghost tour it started raining so we were just glad to get inside the buildings. We didn't see any ghosts!
Sunday was a lazy day in the hostel as we were tired from the previous trips. We tired to do some planning for the east coast. We found the other travellers at the hostel friendly, each evening everyone sat in the lounge chatting.
On Monday we took a trip to Freycinet National Park on the East Coast. It was lot of traveling to get to Wine Glass Bay. We walked up to a view point to look down on Wine Glass Bay. Luckily we left the rain behind in Hobart, but it was still cloudy. We both decided to walk down to the beach, we only had a few minutes there before we had to walk back up lots of steps through the national park back to the minibus. At the car park there was a wild wallaby, which we got very close to and got some good photos.
On the way
Debbie in Richmond
The oldest bridge in Australia + Debbie back to Hobart we stopped at Kate's berry farm at Swansea to sample the fruit jam and had some really nice ice cream. We also sampled a little bit of Strawberry Riesling, which is like a dessert wine.
Tasmania is completely different to the parts of Oz we have already visited. The scenery reminds us of New Zealand and the weather is more like at home. It was cooler about 15 degrees and had some rain most days.
We are now back in Melbourne. Last night we got upgraded to a hotel room as the hostel we had booked to stay in double booked. We decided to eat out and found a really good place- The Golden Tower Restaurant- it does very good burgers, I had a King Kong Tower (see photo) whilst Debbie had a Texan burger. It was very cheap and just as good, probably even better than the burgers at Hard Rock Cafe. Our last day in Melbourne and we've finally got to looking in the galleries in the library. We've even seen Ned Kelly's armour. So we're now catching up with the blogs. Apologies for all the reading.
Anyway its off to Canberra
Mike at Dog Line
The dog line used to go across Eaglehawk neck (a very narrow stretch of land) to stop convicts escaping. THey were told the waters were shark infested so didn't try to go through there. tomorrow and the start of using our greyhound passes.
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Chris
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Devil Wallaby
You may not have seen a Tasmanian Devil on your visit but the Devil Wallaby in the photograph with the red scary eyes frightened me! Are you now qualified as an official ghost hunter Deb? - a new career awaits(you were fed up with fly investations!!) Look forward to reading about your Canberra trip. Chris x