Day 52: Ferry to Geelong to Melbourne

We arrived in Geelong on the ferry before sunrise. Based on our experience a month earlier, we immediately drove up to the car park between the botanical gardens and the foreshore, where we could park for free for as long as we wished. We ate our second breakfast there (we had muesli bars before leaving our cabin at 6.30 am) and enjoyed savouring the sunrise over the ocean.

We had two goals for this day: go to the National Wool Museum in Geelong and drive to a caravan park in north Melbourne. It took us much of the day to get this done! 

Foreshore of Geelong. We walked
along this former pier.

The Wool Museum didn't open until 10, which is a long time to wait when you've been up since 5.45! We wandered through the botanical gardens and then along the foreshore, out on a jetty and finally arrived outside the museum at 9.45 where we ate some morning tea.

Scarlet-star, of the bromeliad family.
Native to north and south America

The museum was worth visiting. We learnt about the history of the area as well as more about the wool industry. Australia was a wealthy nation from pretty early on in its history, mostly due to wool, an industry that remained a major part of our economy for almost 200 years. Sheep arrived with the first fleet, but less than 10 years after the first white settlers landed on the continent sheep were imported with the goal of developing a wool industry. I had no idea that Australia had once had natural grasslands. I'd always assumed that trees covered the land until they were cut down by immigrants. In any case, the museum told us that the native grasslands were largely destroyed by sheep and there is little left now.

The main reason wool was a great industry for this new nation was because it didn't degrade with time—it took months to get produce to the "motherland". Of course they had to develop sheep that would cope with Australian conditions and succeeded in that endeavour very well.

Geelong is where my mother was born (her family moved to Queensland before she was school aged). Apparently for many years the city was known as the wool centre of the world. It was a fascinating couple of hours we spent in the museum. The blue-stone building itself is historical. It was built in 1872 as a wool store.

On the top floor we happened upon the Wildlife Photographer of the Year photo exhibition on loan from the Natural History Museum London. It was astounding. I had to stop reading after a while (all the photos had good stories with them) as I was running out of energy prior to lunch.

We walked back to the motorhome, ate lunch, and headed to Melbourne, stopping along the way for some groceries.

Greenhouse at Geelong botanical gardens

A False African Violet. Native to
Tanzania

The biggest stress of the day came late. We were booked to do a tour of the MCG (Melbourne Cricket Ground, an internationally famous stadium) the next day, but had to figure out how to get there and it wasn't easy. Public transport is hard for visitors, I wonder why cities don't work harder to make it more accessible. After visiting several Australian cities this year, my favourite is Sydney, where you are allowed to use your credit card as a "transit card" and don't have to pay extra for a card you're only going to use for a short time. The complexities didn't just include where we could get on and off, we had to figure out where we could by a local transit card on a Saturday morning and on our way to the train stations and buses replacing trains on the weekend.

We were thankful for another place to lay our heads (though it was the most expensive place that we slept in the motorhome in our whole journey). I was a little bit discombobulated by the loud local radio playing in the ammenities block, though. We'd definitely landed in AFL (Aussie Rules football) territory. The radio broadcast that night from a live game at the MCG was just a taste of what was to come the next day.

You find weird plants in botanical gardens. This
one is an Arizona cypress?

Museum

This internal blue-stone wall in
the museum has been restored.

An exhibit of various sheep breeds. These were real
sheep with names that had been expertly taxodermied.

Reflecting on our month in Tasmania

This was our Tasmanian journey. We would have
liked to make it to more of the west and north-east
coast, but there were almost no sealed roads in
the areas on those coasts you see we didn't go. We
also would have preferred not to have to drive
on the same roads, but it was impossible to avoid, 
particularly in the middle (we drove the road from
Queenstown to Derwent Bridge twice) and in the
south-east (we drove through Hobart a few too 
many times).

Our long road trip was not yet over, but I'm pausing a moment to write about our month in Tasmania.

It was a fun destination. Tasmania is one of those places on a wishlist of most Australians (and many have been there). Though most people don't spend a month there driving around in their own vehicle, we encountered plenty who were there for a while in their caravans or motorhomes (it's expensive to get there, the ferry is the only way if you're driving your own vehicle). We were there long enough to see some of the lesser-known places, and that was fun. Like most road trips, though, there was always more we could have seen!

Tasmania is fun because there's so much to see in so little space. We met friends in Hobart who originally come from Queensland, but are confirmed Taswegians now (at least in their minds). They said, it's not that there is not lots of great things to see in the rest of Australia, but they are so far apart. I agree. You can drive a long way (like many, many hours, or even days) to see just one thing in other parts of Australia, whereas you can drive just an hour in Tassie and see many things. I think we kinda got used to it, but early on it felt like around every bend there was something new and amazing you could see.

Tasmania lived up to its reputation of being cold. And considering how far south it is, that isn't surprising—it's at a similar latitude to Hokkaido, which gets many metres of snow each winter. It's also a similar latitude to Boston and the southern tip of South America. It's significantly colder than Queensland, but not as cold as Hokkaido, the northern island of Japan. In fact, looking at the weather graph, temperatures doesn't fluctuate anything like Tokyo or Canberra do. Tokyo gets much, much hotter and a bit colder than Hobart. Hobart is just generally cool most of the year. We were there in the April, the so-called second month of Autumn, but we were already often wearing more layers than we do in winter in Ipswich during the day (nights were similar to winter in Ipswich). Though it's worth noting that the van had no heating in the "house" part.

Roads are generally narrow and windy with very suspect edges. Most open road speed signs were more of a suggestion that we laughed at than anything we could realistically do in the motorhome (maybe it would have been possible on a motorbike?). 

Parts of the island look very foreign, especially the more remote ones, but other areas looked very Australian. I've added some photos from various parts of the state at the bottom of this post to compare.

We were surprised at how remote some areas were, despite it being a small island.  There are many places it's impossible to get to on a sealed road. Several of our campsite required us to drive on a dirt road. And, as I mentioned early on in my journey, there are places where it's hard to find medical care. But we were surprised that many small towns had decent grocery stores (many of them are regional centres). 

In writing this I had fun looking at size comparisons. Tasmania is smaller than Hokkaido, around the same size as Sri Lanka, twice as big as Taiwan, half the size of England, and slightly smaller than Scotland. It's about the same size as the US state of West Virginia. 

There is much to see for lovers of history, science (ecology, biology, botany, geology), adventure, and active holidays—mountain biking and hiking (remote and much more tame). There is less for those looking for shopping or high density areas. There are plenty of vineyards and open cellar doors. We saw lots of beaches, but not many were surfing beaches. And certainly, if you're a lover of hot weather, you probably would find this island a challenge, except in the middle of summer.

It's noteworthy that almost a quarter of the state is World Heritage listed, you can see it's the darker part of this map. Much of this area you can't drive into.

Our time in Tasmania was also driven by budget considerations. We carefully selected what we paid to do (river cruise, a handful of museums, etc.) and spent most of our time doing free things like walking. We used a combination of free, low-cost campsites and caravan parks to keep our costs low, the combination of these was driven by a limited amount of water we could carry onboard and the shower in the motorhome, which isn't great. We also ate the vast majority of our meals in the motorhome. Usually our morning routine included me making a coffee-to-go to save on the cost of buying one in the afternoon. Probably our biggest expense was getting there and the petrol to get around. (Borrowing a motorhome rent-free was a huge saving, and one for which we are very grateful to my parents for.)

Below is a selection of about 20 photos (the slide show you may or may not want to see). They are mostly showcasing the Tasmanian countryside that we saw.

An unusually straight road! I was often
driving the really curly ones, so didn't
get many photos of them.

The dilemma that was evident time and time
again as we read the history of this state.

Did not expect to see sand dunes!

Something we saw many times was clear
water like this.

A dairy farm. There's plenty of agriculture in Tasmania.
Dairy, vineyards, sheep, and beef were the chief ones we saw.
So many sheep!

We camped on this very bleak beach on a misty, cold day. It was 
probably the eeriest place we visited.

Day 51: Greens Beach to Devonport to the ferry

More beautiful Tasmanian water: Bass Straight

On our last day in Tasmania we drove east as far as we could at Greens Beach (not far), parked, and walked on the Beach. Then we drove to the end of the road in the nearby Narawntapu National Park, out to the west of where we’d slept. From there we walked a short way out to a lookout on the coast, overlooking Badger Beach. Another gorgeous beach, but we didn’t feel the need to walk on it too!

Badger Beach

We then took off for our final destination in Tasmania, the place it had all begun: Devonport. We had a lunch date there with a mutual friend from our uni days, someone we hadn’t seen since the mid 90s. She was on her lunch break, so it was a fast and furious, yet good catch up.

Final beach walk in Tassie: Greens Beach

Then we still had hours to kill because the ferry was scheduled to depart around sunset. We filled up with petrol, encountering the only petrol station on our entire journey with a roof too low for our 3.25 m high home-on-wheels. We were problem solving this very thing when one of the staff (or owner?) ran out and told us about the roof (several vehicles had run into it in recent times).

Then we headed to a familiar-type destination: a seaside park with free parking. We were not the only ones doing this: several other motorhomes came and went during our hours there. We went for a short walk out onto a jetty, admiring a final seaside view, before we headed to the ferry.

Looking across the mouth of the Tamar River to
Low Point where we stayed earlier in our journey.

While we waited in a car park-shaped line to board the ferry we watched the sun go down and listened to the audio book we had only a few “pages” left to finish. It was a nice ending to our time in Tassie.

Our final Tasmanian sunset: over Devonport

Driving onto ferries is interesting in a tall vehicle. We, along with others our height, squeezed between the lower deck, the side of the ship, and a movable deck on our right. It was tight. The vehicle ahead of us nearly stripped the top right side of his van by veering too far away from the side of the ship and into the deck that was lower than the top of his vehicle (and ours). When you’re used to driving a car you don’t easily think about where the top of your vehicle is located in space.

Mersey River, Devonport

Then we packed our bags quickly in the dim lighting of the bowels of the ferry and headed upstairs to our cabin for the night. We enjoyed a similar meal to the one on the way over: a pie and salad followed by ice cream, all bought from a little shop that reminded us of Japanese convenience stores.

If you enlarge you can see our motorhome and
in the distance is the ferry we would later board.

We hadn’t had a quiet day for over 10 days by this point, so were very tired. In the latter part of our journey it was common for us to go to bed around 8.30, lights out by around 9.30. Part of that was fatigue, but also cold in our unheated van. We sat out in the quiet reading room for a while until the ferry felt cool. I wonder if someone turned the air con down to encourage people to retreat to their cabins for the overnight journey? We slept well, if a bit short, due to being awoken early for disembarking the next morning.

Reading room on ferry

Day 50: Oatlands to Greens Beach

We continued our journey north this day, heading all the way to the north coast (Tasmania is so small, especially when you drive the straight, fast road up the middle).

We got to Launceston by mid morning. This is the second largest city of the state, with a population of about 91,000 (Or is it 71,000? I found two different figures!). Another of the "one of the oldest cities in Australia", it was settled in 1806 and was second in Australia to be declared a city after Hobart in 1889. (Correction: this is not true. Maybe second in Tasmania, but not Australia.)

We headed for the famous Cataract Gorge and spent an hour or so exploring. I'd been there as a kid and thought it was much further from town than it was, but it's practically inner city!

One of the first things that struck me was, in the middle of the gorge, the blue rectangular swimming pool surrounded by a bright green, mowed lawn. That seemed quite odd after the national parks we've been to where the priority was on preserving the natural state of things as well as possible, this looked very unnatural. Hence I don't have a photo of it!

But as we walked around and read the signs we realised that this area was an example of what people (largely from the UK) thought was beautiful in the latter part of the1800s and how they did recreation—that involved tea parties on the lawn, band rotundas, walkways, shelters, and lookouts. Still, it was a beautiful, peaceful place to wander around, though we hadn't allowed time to do the longer walks.

After lunch we drove north up the western side of the Tamar River (earlier in the month we'd driven across Batman Bridge about halfway up the river and stayed over on the east side of the river, near the mouth at Low Head). The Tamar is a very wide, shallow river for most of its journey, so there are almost no bridges over it! We drove almost to the "end of the road" for our last night on the island, at a caravan park across the road from Bass Straight.

But on our way there we stopped at Beauty Point to see Platypus House. Ironically I don't have any photos of the five platypuses there, just the echidnas that they also house! It's a rescue facility, and they haven't had any success with breeding platypuses, though the echidnas have produced a baby in the last year. We had a 45 minute personal tour (no one else showed up for the last tour of the day), so got to ask lots of questions. In the echidna room we got to get up close and personal with them (they could touch us, but we were asked not to touch them). The baby kept investigating our shoes! 

Echidnas and platypuses are the only monotremes in the world: that is, mammals who lay eggs. There is not much else they have in common, but it was cool to see them so close. Platypuses are very difficult to spot in the wild, though David thinks he might have seen one playing in a stream earlier in the month.

Yes, it was our last night on the island and wasn't a particularly remarkable evening. We still had more to do the next day, but the time is nearly here for me to reflect on the Tasmanian leg of our two month journey (along with a map we compiled of the journey)!

Day 49: Hobart to Oatlands

This is the day that we really turned our sights north. With only three nights left before our boat ride back to the mainland we headed north out of Hobart. Our first stop was at another famous historical site, one that I saw back in the '80s. 

Richmond gaol

Richmond was a early settlement in Tasmania and has many sandstone buildings, including a famous bridge and gaol. The gaol was built over a period of 1825 to 1840. It's quite small compared to sites like Port Arthur and Cascades, it seems to be more of a place that prisoners stayed on their journeys between places. But also a base for convict work gangs building public buildings and infrastructure. They claim it's Australia's oldest intact gaol but I've seen different wording on that (careless writing, possibly)

After the gaol we did a little bit more souvenir shopping (I found a pair of Tasmanian earrings and bought them from the artist, she even made a change on them at my request before I bought them). We ate lunch in a free carpark and headed north again.

Our destination for the night was a free free camp in Oatlands, beside a lake. This historical town has more than 150 sandstone buildings, including a fully restored flour mill built in 1837. It is now the only operating mill of its kind in the southern hemisphere. It is the third oldest windmill in the continent which makes it one of Tasmania's major tourist attractions. We didn't book a tour, but instead walked around Oatlands looking at the various buildings (many of which had informative signs out front of them). We also stopped at an old building that now houses a coffee shop.

Keep scrolling for more photos and information about Oatlands.

This is one example of the buildings in Oatlands.
The sign says: 'Elm Cottage'. Built c. 1837 by
Joseph McEwan, then publican of Invary Castle 
(Kentish Hotel), probably for his impending retirement.
In the1840s 'The Elm' was rented to john Ryan who provided
lodging for Kevin Izod O'Doherty, one of the five Irish 
political prisoners sent to Van Diemens Land in 1848.
Devout Catholics, the Ryans often hosted Mass
in this cottage prior to the building of St Paul's church.
In 1850, Father Keohan stayed with the Ryans whilst awaiting the
completion of the Presbytery. Later in the 19th Century, it was
called 'Prospect Cottage' when Mrs McRa and her sister Harriet Jones
ran a girl's school from these premises, offering private lessons
in music, French, and drawing. It also served briefly as a branch
of the Union Bank. For most of the 20th century, it was the family home
of Eva Burrill. The cottage takes its name from two English elms
once planted in the front yard.

This was the lake we spent the night next to. It isn't
very picturesque, but is apparently a valuable conservation area.
Also the location where they mined a lot of the sandstone for the
town's many buildings.

Parked by the lake.