The Tamar Valley

Sitting down to relax after a busy day in the city.

We left the house in the morning on foot to head down the hill into the city, visiting a few churches and the old synagogue along the way. We passed along the high street (Brisbane) through the heart of town, past the two tallest buildings, the Myer department store and telephone exchange building, both six storeys. It is a quaint, pretty town, with a lot of two and three storey historic buildings.

Stuart was heading into his office at the Uni to get some work done. He pointed out the Telstra store (for my phone), the James Boag brewery (my intended destination), and across the river to where the architecture school is, where I would meet him later in the day.

We parted ways at the Esk River and I headed back to James Boag to find out the tour schedule.  I got a ticket for the 11:00 tour, and with 25 minutes to spare, ran over to the Telstra store on Brisbane Street Mall to set up my phone.  I made it back just in time for the tour.

There were only nine of us for the tour, a much smaller group than usual, and we struck out to start the hour-long excursion.  The guide was witty and knowledgeable. While I have been to a few craft breweries, and visited the Guinness Store house in Dublin, this was the first time I had been to an actively bottling brewery of a large size.  It was really cool to see the process in action, from the delivery of raw materials to bottling and palletizing.  The building housing the fermentation process was completed in 2009, a pretty nice, contemporary space.  Because we were a small group we got to see both bottling lines before heading back across the street for the tasting component of the tour.

We tasted three of their brews, paired with Tasmanian cheeses.  It was a gastronomic delight. The James Boag Premium was smooth and refreshing and paired with a light brie which was equally light and delicious.  The next heaviest beer was the XXX (a carryover from the days when the Australian government graded beers on a scale from 1-3 Xs. The beer, the oldest surviving of the beers brewed by Boag, is often known as Red Ale (though it is not an ale at all) and was paired with a salted cheddar. I liked the beer quite a bit, but didn’t love the cheese. The final, heaviest beer was Wizard Smith’s Ale, paired with a smoked cheddar with undertones of bacon. Both the beer and the cheese were really delicious.

At 12:30 I headed back to Telstra to set up my data before crossing over the Esk to the Uni campus (only the architecture and art schools of University of Tasmania are located in Launceston – the rest of the school is in Hobart)

The architecture school, located next to the major art museum of Launceston, is housed in an old tram workshop. The soaring ceilings (five or six stories up) make for a great, light-filled studio space.  Stuart gave me a quick tour of the building before we struck out back to downtown to grab lunch at a café.

By 2:00 we were done and walked back up (and I do mean UP) to the house to grab the car and continue the afternoon in the Tamar Valley.  The trip took about an hour on some very small roads, striped for two directions but really only wide enough for one car at the posted speeds.  It was very fun to drive, spending a lot of time in the centre of the road, moving over as you saw another car approaching; it would have been VERY fun in a sports car.

Our first stop was Notley Fern Gorge, a very small (10 hectare) state preserve. A 40 minute walking circuit took us down deep into a gulley, surrounded by seemingly prehistoric man ferns.  It was very beautiful.

From there, we returned to the main road and headed toward the Tamar River, stopping at Brady Lookout for some spectacular views off the cliff down to the wide, winding river.

As the sun began to sank we drove north and turned down a road that would take us back to Launceston along the River. Along the way we stopped at a jetty with unbelievable views.  The river is very wide and smooth as glass; the dusk sky reflected, seemingly going on infinitely.  A small 19^th Century church across the bank added to the scene.

On the way back into town I stopped to fill up with petrol. I was worried that in under 400km we had gone through a large tank of gas, but it is seemingly not as big of a tank as I would have expected; it only cost $50 to fill up, which considering gas is close to $6.40 per gallon, that means it only took about 8 gallons. Through about 6 conversions (and I didn’t manage to fill the tank all the way – it didn’t have auto-cutoff) I got somewhere between 25 and 28 mpg, which for an SUV I wasn’t too upset about.

Once back in downtown we stopped at Coles to get some groceries for dinner.

Stuart whipped up a simple pasta with broccoli, onions, lemon and some fresh parmesan, which was very good. We’ve sorted out plans for tomorrow and are now relaxing a bit.

I will try to go through some pictures tonight and post them on facebook – I will send out a link if I do that.