Covering Tassie

January 14, 2002- A Wander
(photos:Hanlon House,
Penguin crossing,
The Nut,
Strahan Harbor)

We started the day by “having a wander” through Woolmers, the first home that Thomas Archer built in 1819. It’s adjacent to Brickendon & part of the Archer Trust. It contains every item the Archers owned over the years. They were pack rats. They seemed to have every lawn mower ever used on the grounds. The house had been enlarged over the years & is a combination of a wooden farmhouse with an Italianate front. Typical of the times they held convict servants. The Archer family hailed from Hertfordshire, England. They started out with an 800-acre land grant in Van Diemons Land (now Tasmania)& built it to 35,000 acres. Now only the 200 acres remain in the trust.

We made the short drive into Launceston for lunch. My manicurist had friends who ran Kondetori Manfred, a café, in town. We stopped in to send regards to Claire & Manfred, ordered takeaway sandwiches, & went on to Cataract Gorge. The gorge is almost in town & has been turned into a delightful park. There’s the natural formation of the gorge as well as a deep basin lake. The parkland around the lake includes a public swimming pool, restaurant, snack bar, & changing facilities. We ate our lunch overlooking it all. David mustered all his courage & we took the chair lift to the top of the gorge. He was happy to learn that at 1000 ft. it is the longest single chair lift span in the world.

We drove up through the Tamar Valley along the Tamar River just to drive over Batman Bridge. Batman was a prominent settler family whose name appears on streets in Melbourne as well. It was worth the ride for the luscious cherries we bought from a farm stand at the end of the bridge.

Nuts

I’m now looking out over the Bass Strait that runs between Tasmania & the mainland. We’re staying at a B & B called Hanlon House in Stanley. It was built in 1904 as the parsonage to the tiny Catholic Church that still stands next door. It sits on a stunning original bluestone foundation & has 4-5 guest rooms. It’s at the foot of The Nut, a huge volcanic formation jutting into the sea. The Nut is smaller than but reminiscent of Ulhuru.

We were directed here indirectly. People in the congregation back on the Gold Coast, asked us to say hello to their friends at Orchill Lodge. We tried to phone them from the road, but were in a “no service” area for our mobile. We sailed past a sign for their inn & decided to stop by. We delivered the greetings & got their recommendation for a place in Stanley.

We’d gotten to Stanley at 6 PM & had plenty of time to explore the cemetery that dates from 1828 & is across the street from Hanlon House. One of the guests was also there & found several of her ancestors. Stanley has the distinction of having won the Australian National Tidy Town award. It’s based on tidiness as well as environmental responsibility. As the guests assembled back at the B & B, our hosts, Maxine & Graham, offered to either book us into local restaurants or to prepare dinner here. We all opted to eat here. There’s a family with three teen-aged girls & an 80-year-old grandma, another couple, & two women staying here. As we looked out of the dining room windows past the sea, they pointed out an old house sitting on a nearby promontory. As it turns out, they do evening ghost tours at that house. We all decided to go tonight. The tour starts at 9:30 PM. That leaves time for Graham to walk us down to the shore to visit with the fairy penguins. Their chicks have gotten their mature coats & are about ready to head for sea.
You will be happy to know that as we traveled the 4-lane super highways of Tasmania we still had to navigate roundabouts. I think they were set up to remind us we were in a foreign land. Also strange to us was the fact that service stations here are full service. It was a welcome surprise as the insect population was out in full force & someone else cleaned the windscreen.

January 15, 2002-Boo

The people at the B & B were so gracious. It was a delight to spend time with them & with the other guests. Dinner was delicious. We had spicy Thai chicken soup, David had lamb again, & I had fish…again. Breakfast included a cold buffet &/or a cooked meal made to order.

The tour of Highfield House, the haunted farm, had an extra bonus. Our guide, Lisa, had grown up across the street & had played on the property as a child. She & her family knew all the ghost stories & gossip surrounding its occupants. We were in a group of fourteen with two guides. The tour was done by lantern light. Since convict labor was used at the site from the time it was built in 1832, three of the guests were asked to wear convict shirts, carry the lanterns, & pretend to be convicts. I got to be Charlie, age 22. As we walked around to the different buildings, the convict stories unfolded. Charlie was quite a rascal. He was a shepherd who tried to make off with an aborigine woman. Several white settlers were killed or injured in the skirmish. The aborigines retaliated by running the sheep off a cliff. The whites ended the feud by herding the aborigines over the same cliff.

Lisa cautioned us to drive carefully as we left. The entire area was a penguin-nesting habitat. We played dodge-the-penguins as we passed a penguin crossing sign. Yes, we got a photo of it the next day. When we got to the B & B, there were penguins in the driveway. Maxine offered to take us all on a private walk through the rookery. She explained that Graham had spent years hauling boulders to the beach in order to entice more penguins to nest. He built 90 burrows. It worked. They were flourishing. This was a different experience than Philip Island. In Philip Island we saw the adults coming in from the sea & had to scurry around to find the chicks. Here, we saw mainly chicks who’d lost most of their fluff & who were decked out in their new sleek feathers. They were impatiently waiting outside their burrows squawking, & pacing. Maxine said they kept an eye on the chicks & if some seemed to be starving she & Graham fed them. They eat ½ kilo (a little more than 1 lb) of fish a day. That’s why the adults are so stuffed when they arrive on shore. That’s also why the gulls hang around & try to frighten the adults into regurgitating the baby’s food on the beach. We were so emotionally charged we didn’t think we’d sleep. We were wrong.

We set out this morning to crack The Nut & succeeded. David was thrilled to ride the chair lift to the top since the walking path was straight up. It turned out that Lisas day job was running the chair lift. It was nice to see a familiar face. We hiked the perimeter & were rewarded with breathtaking views of Bass Strait, Highfield Hill, the town, & our B & B. The binoculars made it even more spectacular. We could even see the family of six leave the B & B in their van & pull into the car park at The Nut. We did walk down & greeted them at the bottom as if they were old friends.

Mountains vs Sea

Our goal today was to see Cradle Mt. & Dove Lake in the Western center of the state. It was an arduous ride through mind numbing switchback roads shared with those ominous logging trucks. David was very grateful he had so much experience driving on the left. He wouldn’t want to have to learn under those conditions. For those of you who have traveled with me, you know about my larder. I tend to want to know that I won’t go hungry, so I scavenge food to carry in the car. This time I had grapes & old bread & jam. At 2 PM, when we were still wending our way past deforested hillsides & reforested groves of dwarf trees, it tasted good. As we neared the lake mountain, wildflowers appeared on roadside. That perked us up until we realized we had to traverse a 7.5 km (4.5 mile) gravel, one lane, winding, two-way road to get there. When we arrived, David was trashed from the tension of the drive. We looked at the site, got back into the car, & decided the mountain was more dramatic when seen from the distance & that the picture on the post card was prettier.

I think we prefer the sea. Tonight we’re staying in Strahan (pronounced Strawn). We got one of the two last rooms in town. It’s spa room overlooking the harbor. No, it was no bargain, but we did get a AAA discount of 10%.

We’re now on the West coast of Tasmania on the Southern Ocean. I guess they didn’t want to think up a new name. Here the shoreline has sand dunes as opposed to the rocky crags of the north. We stashed our bags in the room, got our tickets for the cruise on the Gordon River tomorrow, & sent you all email. On our way to the restaurant, a car passed & honked the horn. It was the two women from the B & B. Small island.

As I am writing this, David keeps calling me to look at the sunset. It keeps changing & I keep going back & forth. It’s worth it.

Toby