Lots of driving today to get from Hobart to Devonport, where I’ll spend the next four nights while officiating at the triathlon. But as with Monday’s adventure, while I plugged in my final destination, any of those cool brown signs that show tourist information may have had me veering off course. In fact, I spent so much time taking off in the other direction that I swear Siri had an attitude with me by the end of the day, sternly telling me to do u-turns and come back to the planned route. She would have been exhausted re-routing for all my meandering.
Saw many of the old heritage towns today as I started on the heritage trail, of particular interest was Steppe’s sculptures and Steppe’s homestead but one of my stops, Liffey Falls, took me onto another trail, and up over the mountains where I found myself in alpine country (1300m +) in the midst of a storm. So pair rain with mist and low cloud that only allowed about 50m of vision ahead, on winding mountain roads, and by the time I pulled up at the falls, my brain was happy for the rest.
Unfortunately the storm was still raging overhead when I arrived. Having spent a lot of time reading about tragedies in national parks of late (there are literally volumes and volumes of books available happy to tell you about lightning strikes, bear attacks etc), I opted not to walk the 45 minute return trail, and will try to get back there next week on the way back to Launceston. A few hikers were venturing out, but I just wasn’t willing to take the risk. If you want a good national park lightning story, look up the one on Half Dome in Yosemite that claimed 2 or 3 lives - that will be enough to tell you why I wasn’t risking it!
Made my way into Devonport, did a bit of shopping for the next couple of days camping and then onto Mersey Bluff Caravan Park to set up camp. It has been raining here all day, and the caretaker thanked me for bringing the rain from Queensland, as they haven’t had rain since before Christmas, which is evident from the crackly brown grass everywhere.
Camp setup and I made my way through town to tick off a few of the sites on my to-do list, including the Spirit of the Sea statue (Neptune or Poseidon, you choose), the Lillico Penguin Conservation area (too early in the afternoon for them so just had a look around and read about them), and then at a bit of a loss I decided to go to the Tasmanian Arboretum - billed as a museum of trees.
My grandmother on my dad’s side, was a natural gardener. She had the greenest of thumbs and could grown anything. She transformed the gardens of her retirement home into a veritable nursery of camellias (her favourite flower) and driving by, to this day, 26 years after her passing, you can still finds remnants of her gardening prowess around Maleny. My sister definitely got the greenest thumb from Nan, and I got a love of green things, but sadly I can even kill cacti. My home is where green things come to die! But I love a Botanical Garden, and now I can say I loved the Arboretum.
Acres and acres of trees, planted in continental groups, so you can explore the junipers of North America, the Australian Wollemi Pines, the Japanese camellias - all surrounded by foliage from the native area.
But best of all, and I know I said yesterday was the best day ever, there is a large lake in the centre of the property surrounded by all kinds of water plants, and teeming with platypus. One of the advertisements for the arboretum claimed you can see platypus at any hour of the day. Now if you’ve ever tried to spot them in the wild, you know that it’s pretty much dawn and dusk hours, and they can be very clever at hiding. Well in this lake, there were three of them just playing around, diving under and resurfacing, flicking their little paws in the air like they were waving and living their best platypus lives. I spent over an hour just sitting and watching them - got a few pics, some video, but difficult to get a good pic as it was 4 in the afternoon (the sun won’t go down for another 4 hours here) and overcast, so a lot of shadow on the water.
How do you top that for an afternoon? Couldn’t think of anything else, so by 7pm I’m back at camp tucking into dinner. One of my staples that I like to try in new towns is always a combination chow mein (crunchy noodles) from a local restaurant. Tonight’s choice from the Sky King restaurant was delicious - the perfect balance of protein and vegetables, complete with scallops, calamari, fish, prawns, chicken, beef and pork. And the crunchy noodles were perfectly salted to enjoy in the chow mein and as a snack after.
I’m about to settle into my little tent for the night. I have about 6 padmelons grazing on the grass around my camp - they are quite unphased by me being here and one of them was close enough that if I wanted to reach out and pat it, I could have. There’s a lot of scat around the campsite, of many shapes and sizes, so will be interesting to hear the wildlife once it gets a bit darker and quieter here.
Tomorrow I’m meeting up with one of my Tri buddies, and she is going to take me exploring. The word distillery may have been part of the adventure, so I am really looking forward to something that I usually wouldn’t do on my own - yay for travel buddies! See you tomorrow peeps.
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