Launceston


On Sunday the 25th March we left Gunn’s Plains (my favourite place in Tazzie) and went to Old Mac’s Farm in Launceston. We had spent one night there weeks earlier enroute to Swansea. I had met the owner, Ian, who is a real good bloke when we were touring WA in 2015. The cost is $10 per night with access to toilets and $2 to fill your water tank. Pretty good for 4km from a major city.

The plan was to use that as our base to do day trips from there to take in the Tamar Valley and more. We had chosen not to go up the pass from Pyengana so we had missed out on the trip through Derby and Scottsdale. The weather was bad when we were at Chudleigh so we missed out on doing the Great Lakes drive. So using Launceston as a base was pretty ideal to cover all that area. It meant we would be at Old Macs for eight nights which was great as it cut out a lot of hitching and unhitching which we had been doing for a while.

So Monday morning, after going to the Launceston Information Centre we went to Cataract Gorge. Did the chair lift with a buy one ticket get one free voucher from our Hobart friends.












After a coffee we walked to the bridges.




Then walked to the main café and had a nice lunch. Linda had seen a write up of the cafés food in a book at Lake Pedder, Strathgordon so having lunch there had been a goal of hers.


Headed in to town to the City Park and checked out the monkees there. They were a lot of fun with their antics, chasing each other around.










We bumped into a fellow whilst we were watching the monkees who we had been sitting close to at the café at Cataract Gorge. We had chatted to him and his wife and two friends earlier as we had been walking around so this was actually the third time we had bumped into one another.  Linda got some tips from him about her camera. His friend noticed that he had a lot of blood on his trouser leg. Apparently a leach had its fill on his leg. At the café a big leach, as full as a goog was under my feet and my boot had touched it and a heap of blood was on the floor. So we worked out it must have come from him. So all was revealed. Would you believe we bumped into them a fourth time two days later as we were looking around Evandale.

I will report on the various day trips separately except for those that are in Launceston itself. So we now skip to Saturday the 31st March. That evening we went to the City Park in Launceston where a concert was being held by the churches of the city for Easter. Our friend, Maria from Hobart and her son Josh came up to join us for a couple of days. They met us in the park and we watched the musos but the main one we were there to see was Curt Anderson who is from Nashville and he has a song in the top five on the Christian charts in Australia, 'Keep Me Falling'. It is such a great song.

Curt was standing by himself watching the bands. I was a bit surprised there was no one keeping him company so we went over and said g’day, such groupies eh! He is a good guy and we had a good chat and then he had to go up and play. I will be putting a video of him on facebook. He is a great singer and performer. This photo is not so good but I don’t have a better one.

The next day we met Maria and Josh back at Cataract Gorge. Josh and I did a big circuit down to Duck Reach where there is the old hydro electric power station and then back via the bush track to the gorge.









We hung out for the day with our friends and went to watch a movie called, ‘The Blockers’. Pretty shabby, don’t bother. We then went to the Lagana Church for the pm Easter Sunday service. We chose that one because Curt Anderson was their guest worship leader for the weekend. Groupies eh, what did I tell you. Chris Foley, pastor of Maryborough Grace Community Church was speaking. Chris was a former politician and his story was amazing. Following that we said goodbye to our friends for the final time as we only had two weeks left on our trip and would not be seeing them again before sailing.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Road From Bruny Island, Derwent Bridge, Lake St Clair & Surrounds

Image
Linda and I left Bruny Island on the 10am ferry to Kettering on Monday the 12 th Feb. It was an easy run through Hobart, not like going through Sydney. Filled up with gas at BCF, Moona. Only $25 for the 9 kilo bottle which you would expect in a major city. We paid $39 on Bruny Island. When we ran out of gas on one bottle I found the second one was empty. I don’t know whether the second bottle of gas was empty because of the failed gas lead that became evident or because I neglected to refill the tank after our last trip. We motored on nicely and although I needed diesel there were no convenient fuel stations on my side of the road. I had looked ahead and saw there was a United at Hamilton. What I did not realise was that Hamilton was such a tiny town and I did not leave enough margin for error if this little town servo was out of diesel. Thankfully it had fuel. It was only a 24 hour machine though, no operator, so if the internet was down you could not get fuel. Fortunately the...
Read more

Freycinet National Park, Wineglass Bay & Surrounds

Image
Thursday the 22 nd February, after a good look around Swansea we left but did not have to go far. Firstly we pulled into the Pondering Frog which is well known for their ice cream. It is at the intersection of the highway and the road to the Freycinet area, north of Swansea. We had lunch there. Unfortunately we did not enjoy their seafood chowder. After lunch we headed toward Freycinet and pulled into the Swanwick Golf Course where they have camping for fully self contained vehicles for $10 a night. They do have a toilet available 24 hours at the club house and there are two toilets in the park which is also walking distance. It was such a beautiful warm day that after getting set up we drove to the nearby beach and had a swim. A bit cold but the water was so clear. On Friday we took a drive to Coles Bay which is just before the National Park. Unfortunately the weather was still a bit overcast and rainy. By Saturday mornin...
Read more

Penguin, Ulverstone and Burnie

Image
The process of getting off the Spirit of Tasmania was also very smooth. Once on the road we headed for Penguin which is about 20 minutes from Devonport. The reason for going there was because there are three free camps there right on the beach. I also knew that the next couple of days would be warm weather so the aim was to enjoy some beach weather while we can, knowing that Tazzie is likely to be pretty cool to cold most of our trip. There were a heap of vans and motorhomes at each of the free camps as it was the Australia Day long weekend and still school holidays. There were a lot of Tazzie locals there, some from only 8 km up the road at Burnie. By the next morning more than half of the campers left. We had found a good spot anyway and when the sun came out it was awesome. But whilst the weather in the morning was still very cloudy we took a drive to Ulverstone. There was a farmer’s market that morning and we needed some vegies as we could not bring...
Read more