North East Coast Tasmania - 1st – 6th March 2009
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| From NE Coast Tasmania |
After a great night’s sleep as predicted, we decided to hang around another day to get some washing done and plan our trip around Tassie. This was a thoroughly lazy day and there is nothing to report!!
The next day we headed off to Launceston (which to Carl will always be a place in Cornwall – we have noticed many places here are named the same as Cornish/Devon towns. Tamar, Falmouth, Exeter, Launceston, Swanpool)
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| From NE Coast Tasmania |
We headed in the direction of Launceston over Batman Bridge. Launceston is a really nice big town everything there for us to stock up – Coles, Servo and Dan’s!! (Gary)
Here we did some shopping, bought fuel and then headed off to the famous gorge.
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| From NE Coast Tasmania |
As we arrived at the gorge we could see a chair lift crossing a valley to the other side over a pool and a lake. Turns out the chair lift has the longest single unsupported span in the world!! Yes I know you are all excited! But in my excitement I lost the facts and figures, it was over 300m though (I think? – I checked our pics and found it was 308m). The view was pretty good from the gorge and we climbed up to a lookout on the other side, it was steep and pretty hard going. At least it only lasted for 10 mins!!
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| From NE Coast Tasmania |
After our visit to ‘Launie’ we headed off towards the North East Coast. On our way we stopped off at a picnic area to make a budget lunch (sandwiches). Whilst we were making them we were surrounded by a local chicken population! This was great, we both think chickens are cool and we gave them our crumbs. There were baby chicks and all, just running around by the road and in the rest area! It made for an interesting lunch.
The drive over to the coast went over a mountain which was shrouded in low cloud. It was very calm and eerie. As the day wore on we decided to look for somewhere to stop and hopefully for free. We have a book and they recommended a spot in Scottsdale, turns out this place is clearly famous as it was covered in motor homes. We struggled our way over to a clear spot near the back and looked for a flat spot to set up. We parked up in the drizzle and left the car as it was and cooked up some bargain rissoles we bought earlier. We got talking to a nice guy there who had done a lot of travelling and he gave us lots of advice and handy tips. A few beers later – 11pm! – we set about putting the rooftop up in the drizzly dark.
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| From NE Coast Tasmania |
We slept ok to start with – think that may have been the drinks! But then it became apparent that the road we have camped next to is a main route for logging trucks! It felt like they were in our tent with us! It was so loud I could have shouted and Heidi would not have heard me! Anyway we got up and it was still drizzling and any of you that camp will know that a ‘wet pack up’ is not a barrel of laughs!! Still we did as required and put our wet tent away between showers, still wet, and then proceeded to worry that all the stuff we store up would get wet.
After drying out we headed off to Mt William NP and their white beaches and clear water. The sun was out and we strolled off to the beach with the camera to take some pics. We could see this black cloud coming our way and dashed on to the beach to take some pics thinking we had loads of time. As we got about 250 meters away from the car and decided we better head back, the heavens opened and we got drenched, it didn’t help that the wind was blowing a gale and the rain was coming down sideways at us as we tried to run back to the car and as we did the rain stopped, typically! After drying out again we headed off down the coast through the NP towards St Helens taking in Anson’s Bay. We found a place to stay the night at St Helens which also had a car wash, a blessing for OJ as she was filthy! The nights are cold and windy in Tas so we spent it in the camp kitchen drinking more wine and chatting to some fellow travellers from England and Germany.
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| From NE Coast Tasmania |
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| From NE Coast Tasmania |
The next morning we headed back up the coast a bit to Binalong Bay and the Bay of Fires which are just gorgeous. White sand and crystal clear water. Binalong Bay was voted the 2nd best beach in the world and we can see why. I never knew Tasmania had such beautiful beaches! This was like something you would expect to see in the north of Australia. We were a little gutted when we arrived as the cloud started to gather, the wind started up and the turquoise water started to disappear, so we decided to walk to the other end of the beach which had big boulders covered in orange lichen spread along the edge of the bay. Luckily for us the sun came out and the colours returned, out came the camera and we snapped away, it would have been difficult to get a bad picture, with red rocks, white sand, blue skies and turquoise shading to blue waters - Such a beautiful place!
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| From NE Coast Tasmania |
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| From NE Coast Tasmania |
We had decided to spend the night at a free camping area just north of Binalong bay called ‘The Gardens’ so called for all the wild flowers that bloom there in summer, we were a little late and no flowers for us to see but the coastal scenery was just amazing. We had lunch up there over looking the sea and then headed to our campsite. We managed to get a great spot overlooking our very own little bay. As we set up for the night we just both looked out over our view and thought it was the perfect end to a wonderful day.
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| From NE Coast Tasmania |
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All North Coast Tas Pics
