Day 44: Snug to Teds Beach

It was a misting, cold day. The landscape was almost
eerie and it certainly felt remote.

This day we aimed for another "end of road" adventure, the second in the week. We slightly misjudged things, though, as it was a public holiday (ANZAC Day), a rare one where grocery stores shut for the morning out of respect to those who have served to protect our nation. We've been mostly buying food as we go, the occasionally bigger shop, but often just a few things as we need them. This day we were driving into territory that didn't have shops, and almost got there before midday. Thankfully we were able to snag some meet and bread rolls at one of the last shops on the road, but they weren't cheap! It has continued to be interesting to find the remote areas of this little state, and realise that actually there's quite a lot of them, and small rural towns. There's very little "city" here at all.

Teds Beach

This road took us into the middle of the large area in central Tasmania that is designated national park. We stopped for the night close to the shores of Lake Pedder, a lake greatly increased in size in the 70s due to the Serpentine Dam. This is a free free camp. We had access to toilets only.

Lake Pedder

It was a fairly small campsite and was almost full with seven units staying overnight. Amusingly six of the seven had Queensland number plates! It was cold and people stayed inside, so we only met one of them, though saw another come back on his mountain bike, only to pull out his kayak and spend some time on the lake. It was cold and wet, I guess he wasn't feeling it so much because he was so active.

It was a slightly eerie landscape, not helped by misting rain. The area looked barren and desolate. This is the one place that we've camped where there was absolutely no internet coverage. Not even one bar "I'm trying and might give you occasional access". Our phones said "SOS only". No problem! We had plenty of other things to occupy our time, but on these very cold nights—the van has no heating—I've often been heading for the warmth of bed soon after 8.30 (and then read for an hour or more). It was under 10C when we got up and got going the next morning.

Ted's Beach is named after a Project Manager of the Gordan River Power Development (1969 till 1975) who fell in love with the area and wanted to encourage people to come and enjoy swimming, fishing, and boating. The beach is artificial in the only sense that they cleared the vegetation away and the water (when it rose after the dam became operational) created the beach from the rocky shore.