Sunday 24th March - Cole’s Bay
We woke up to rain and the forecast wasn’t good.
We set off for Coles Bay with a few stops. First stop was Richmond to look at a bridge which is the oldest span bridge in Australia. The foundation stone was laid in December 1823 and using convict labour the bridge was finished in 1825. It is 135 feet in length.
Next it was Spiky Bridge, a dry stone walled bridge with the top stones pointing upwards to make it look like spikes. It was built in 1843 using the dry stone walling method. But why the spikes? One reason was that it was done that way to stop cows falling off the bridge and the other is that the convicts wanted to exact some form of revenge of their supervisor and stuck the stones the wrong way round!
Our last stop was Cole’s Bay itself, a pretty place with views of pink mountains opposite - the sun came out just in time to make one of them really pink. A shore based whaling station was established in 1824 but was abandoned in the 1850s.
We hardly had any rain to speak of but it was grey and quite warm.
We saw so many dead wallabies along the road today - it was really sad.
Monday 25th March - George Town
Today was a long day but worth it as the scenery was ever changing. Forest, woodland, yellow plains and farmlands. It must have been an area for Aberdeen Angus cattle as there were fields of them. We went through so many places with British names, you can’t forget that the British settled here first!
I did some of the driving, I let Richard do the bends through the mountains and then I took over and drove on never ending straight roads mostly without any white lines. I saw a lorry coming towards us at one stage and pulled over as I had no idea how much road he was going to take up!
Our site was at a place called Low Head which is just north of George Town on the north coast. It was quite windy and we were very close to the beach but there was a nice bank of trees between us. We had a quick stroll to the beach which was lovely with lots of white sand and there was a lighthouse!
The area around George Town has been inhabited by the Aboriginal Tasmanians since, at least, 7000BP and possibly as long ago was 43000 BP. (BP is Before Present years and is a time scale used mainly in archaeology and geology.)
Tuesday 26th March - Wayatinah
I have come to the conclusion that Tasmania has giant sheep! Some of them are huge!
We went over the Batman Bridge, which was opened in 1968, very innovative for its time. It is 1,417 feet long and was the first cable-stayed bridge in Australia and among the first such bridges in the world.
We drove to Deloraine a nice little town to get some shopping from Woolworths! Then up and up the windy road to the Great Lake. It wasn’t as I had imagined it, in my mind I had seen it as trees coming down to the water’s edge, but it wasn’t. All along the side of the lake there were shacks, some of them very well looked after but some you wonder how they are still standing. The lake is both natural and a reservoir which came about when the Amiens Dam was built in 1967. It also has the reputation of being one of the coldest places in mild Tasmania.
We turned off and drove 32 km on the B11 which is an unmade road. We stopped for lunch then continued on. I had a can of Coke in the cup holder and the bumps completely flattened all the bubbles!
We drove to Lake St Clair but it started to pour down and as we couldn’t even see the lake we turned round. We stopped for a cup of tea at the Hungry Wombat cafe then I saw a dead wombat by the roadside (we were still seeing lots of dead wallabies).
On our drive to our campsite there were lots of lakes so Richard took a turning to one. As we were driving a huge wallaby crossed in front of us. He must have been at least 4ft 6ins! It was quite surreal really. The lady at the site said he would have been a big male Bennett’s Wallaby.
There are a lot of hydro power stations and lots of huge pipes making a bit of an eyesore of themselves, which is a shame.
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