Heading (farther) South

Getting ready to call it another early night.

This morning I woke up and packed before loading the car and driving down to Cataract Gorge , a gorge formed by the South Esk River as it flows into Launceston. From the carpark on the south side of the River, I headed up the zig-zag path, scaling a huge cliff. The track was pretty muddy and steep, but when I made it to a clearing in the trees I found a spectacular view of the gorge and a series of waterfalls. I hadn’t known what to expect, and I was happily impressed.

 

While there was more track to go, I wanted to get over to the museum around its opening time at 10:00, so I clambered back down, took a few pictures from the King Bridge before getting in the car, heading across the north end of town, and across the North Esk to the Inveresk Campus which contains the Queen Victoria Museum (the history museum for the city) and the Arts and Architecture faculties for the University of Tasmania (the rest of the programs are in Hobart).

The Museum had an interesting assortment – from dinosaurs to trams, bicycles and an exhibit about the ship HMS Sydney Cove; it was nice to browse through. The museum, and actually the entire complex including the schools, is built in and around the old train workshops for Tasmania.  The buildings, some of which are preserved in the state they were left the day they closed in the 1970s. I enjoyed that the most.

 

Just after noon I met up with Stuart who had been working at the school all morning and we headed off to south east to Freycinet (Fray-suh-nay). The drive out the motorway took us south toward the airport.  Once we passed that roundabout, the motorway became a small road with one land in each direction.

The drive to Campbell Town (population 772 – the largest ‘town’ in the area) along the A1 was very nice. We passed through the quaint little town with quite a few beautiful old churches before turning off the A1, which continued due south to Hobart, to get on the B34, a secondary road.  The road got even smaller, with no striping in some places. We stretches with winding hills and 15% grade which made me glad I had an SUV. We finally arrived in Coles Bay (population 150), marking our entry onto the peninsula with Freycinet National Park.

Once we had purchased our park pass at the visitor centre, we drove into the park, covering about 10 kilometres on a road which was barely more than a single lane wide, filled with twists and turns.  The landscape was beautiful, reminding me of the Pacific Northwest, with mountains(the Hazards) and water ( Oyster Bay, the Tasman Sea, and the Pacific Ocean) visible around each turn and break in the trees.

We arrived at the car park for the Wine Glass Bay track to discover it overrun with wallabies. After snapping a few photos (and watching some tourists try to coax wallabies out of the front of their car so they could pull out of a parking space), we began the 45 minute climb to the Wine Glass Bay Overlook.  The path was pretty nice, having recently been redone, and the climb up to the Coles Bay Overlook was pretty quick.  The views were spectacular.  We then continued the climb and cross over to the other side of the peninsula to see Wine Glass Bay. Absolutely stunning.

After we had our fill of the view, we made the trek back down the mountain and drove a back toward the park entry, turning off the main road onto a very twisty and hilly drive. On one particularly steep hill, the SUV wouldn’t get above 20kph, no matter how hard I depressed the accelerator. Once we had made it the 7km off the main road through the park, we were awarded with the best views of the day.

A lighthouse, perched on cliffs overlooking the entry to Wineglass Bay, provided the perfect backdrop for a ten minute trek along the cliffs.  I think I keep saying things like “beautiful” and “phenomenal” and “gorgeous” and “stunning”, and this was no exception.

As the sun began to sink at 4:30, we hurried back to the car and down the road a bit to the carpark for Sleepy Beach. We made it in time for sunset across the mountains, turning the pink rocks beautiful hues not unlike Uluru. The beach itself was fantastic, comprised of pink pebbles. With dusk coming on, we got back in the car, headed out of the park, and out to Swansea, about an hour drive back to the mainland, across from the peninsula.

We made it to our accommodation in Swansea, the beach chalets, and checked in just before six.  We settled in and relaxed for a few minutes before heading into ‘town’. With a population of around 500 (and that is probably during the summer, when people are actually there for the beach), there wasn’t much on, but we found a nice fish restaurant for the evening - and seemingly, as one of the only open places, so too did the rest of the hungry people of Swansea.

We decided to try some of the local oysters – very different from both the ones I am used to in the gulf coast and the ones I tried in NZ – which were pretty good. We both decided on fish and chips for dinner (being by the ocean and whatnot) and weren’t disappointed.

Our hunger satiated and our thirst slaked, we headed back to the chalet (actually quite nice modern prefab units with kitchens and bedrooms and whatnot, extending back from the cliff overlooking the water) to turn in for the night.