Day 40: Coles Bay to Sorell

Swansea Anglican Church, est. 1871

We did finally get to a church on our journey. This morning we drove about 45 min off the Freycinet Peninsula to Swansea and worshipped at Swansea Anglican today, there were less than 10 people in the building. David's sharp eyes saw a plaque on the wall commemorating Rev. Joseph Mayson, whose name also graces a local mountain on the peninsula.

Then, morning tea happened and numbers at least doubled, which we did not expect. There are interesting dynamics in Christian circles in this town. The Anglicans meet weekly and the Uniting Church meets fortnightly and some go to the Anglican Church on the Sundays the Uniting Church doesn't meet. But it seems they usually share morning tea each week.

View down the road from the church
across Great Oyster Bay to Freycinet Peninsula

We kept driving south after our substantial morning tea. We had lunch at Triabunna, yet another small town. Tasmania abounds with towns between 500 and 1,000 people!

Dead Island at Triabunna. There are some graves
there, but the origin of the name is unclear.

We weren't sure exactly where we were stopping that night, but ended up at a free camp in the town of Sorell, only 30 minutes from the centre of Hobart. It was very suburban after all the places we’d been recently (about 2,500 people). This town is one of Australia’s oldest towns, first established in 1808. We didn’t do any tourism here, though, as we had arranged to see some friends the next morning in eastern Hobart.