NSW – Tasmania trip 2021: 4 – 6 March

Thursday 4 March
An extremely windy day again!!! But we didn’t mind, as we had planned on ‘doing’ a few wineries in the Tamar Valley. Arno was treating Jen (he was the driver) as it was my birthday. Tasmania has some truly wonderful Pinot Noirs (like New Zealand) and sparkling wines, such as the famous Jansz, both Jen’s favourites. We found out that Jansz was actually Abel Tasman’s middle name (short for Janszoon) – who would have guessed… not me!
Anyway, let’s tell the story in sequence. We started at Delamere, who are renowned for their sparkling whites & rosés, so they created 4 tastings: 2 sparkling, and 2 Pinot Noirs. All great! The stemless champagne flutes which Jen had been eyeing for a few years were another bonus, so bought a few (for home as they won’t survive a week in the caravan)…

Then on to Jansz with a tasting of 6 different sparkles… WOW!

For lunch, we ended up at the Lost Farm, which had already been recommended by Andrew, and subsequently by a few locals. And what a perfect setting. It was still blowing a gale… However, perched on top of a hill, the restaurant has enormous windows with views over their (click on the link for) golf course (I think the most exclusive in Tasmania) and Bass Strait – magnificent in the sun!
Arno didn’t bring his camera today so here’s a pretty lousy picture of us against the light, but still gives an idea of the location…

Grandkids sent oma virtual birthday love and kisses from (sleepy) Bangkok and the (wide awake) Netherlands…

Friday 5 March
A cracker of a day!  And we didn’t want to take any chances with the clear blue sky and beautiful temperature, so we first headed north to the top of the head to visit the Low Head lighthouse – quite a unique one as it was also a pilot station and it was equipped with a foghorn; its history (and technical detail) is worth reading on Wikipedia, or click here and here.  The original lighthouse was first lit in 1833 – and underwent various additions as new inventions came along.  It was rebuilt to its current version in 1888.

Due to the dangerous entry into the Tamar River (one of them being a big reef named Hebe Reef after one of the first ships wrecked) it also had a foghorn.  This foghorn has a great history!  After its decommission (it was obsolete in 1973) it was resurrected only 20 years ago– ie rebuilt using the original manuals found back in England somewhere!  Some of this is detailed on plaques/signs which we took pictures of, and are below (sorry about quality, these are Jen’s).

The foghorn these days still sounds once a week. You can listen to it by clicking on this link.

On we went to cross the Tamar River over the Batman Bridge to explore the west side of the Tamar River.

We stopped at Beaconsfield, one of the most famous goldmines in Australia, mostly due to its unfortunate accident in 2006, a collapse….and with the amazing rescue of 2 miners who surfaced 2 weeks later. We remember being glued to the news of their fate every day…

The town and mine history is very interesting and here is a link to read more about it.

We learned about how the ore is mined, then lifted (by incredible machinery) and via a conveyor moved onto trucks which transport it to crushers some 3km away.

Below some pictures of the information.

We enjoyed lunch and a nice craft beer at the ‘Gold Brewery’ next door and headed up towards Beauty Point.

Hoping to see the platypus area and seahorse aquarium we found out that they only have tours, and 3 pm is the last one (we got there at 3.10pm). Well, we were okay with that and drove on to the top of the west side. We hiked out to the West Head Lookout, a spectacular view of the entire west coast (Jen thought she could even see Stanley’s Nut at the very end!) especially given the clear weather we had.

After that, we stopped so Jen could take a picture of the Low Head Lighthouse that we had visited a few hours earlier from the west side of the water…. It’s a little far, especially a picture taken with the phone, but still – love seeing this…. 😉

We loved this day – just one of those days where everything goes your way…!

Saturday 6 March
This weekend has a public holiday Monday in Tasmania. So, as we discovered, many campgrounds were fully booked, or if they were free camps, would be full (first come first serve basis)… We managed to book our last 3 nights here in Tassie (ie Sunday, Monday and Tuesday), but didn’t have Saturday night sorted yet. We would just see how it panned out.

We set off to get closer to our next point of interest, and so ended up at the most adorable totally packed little caravan park which had happened to have a cancellation and could fit us in… power/water and all! Surrounded by mountains, we set off after dropping the van to Liffey Falls, certainly one of the more famous Tasmanian waterfalls. They are split, and we stopped at the various points. A lovely 45-minute hike, and the weather was good for the steep hike back up (even sweating a bit!) The water was cold though…

Saturday 6 March
And so we set off for our next destination for the next two nights – closer to Cradle Mountain, where we wanted to end our Tasmanian trip. The weather forecast is good for the next few days, so we are hopeful that we can get to see the famous Cradle Mountain and Dove Lake in the sunshine, do a nice hike, and take some nice pictures (last time in 2012 Arno was in a boot and we could only do a little bit of the hike (here’s one of those pictures)…

We took the long slow route and stopped for coffee at the town of Deloraine which had a lot of cute street art (a few pictures below) and did a side stop at Alum Cliffs 45-minute walking track, with a most gorgeous lookout. Again perfect weather for a walk. Not too hot, not too cloudy and no wind.

We continued on, and after about 5 minutes our wonderful (caravan) tyre pressure alarm system paid off big time on its tiny investment…. beep beep beep.. beep beep beep. We were fortunate to be on a nice quiet country road with lots of space to pull over immediately. Arno jumped out in time to witness the left tyre deflating. We have a tiny jack, but who is in a hurry right? So Arno changed the tyre, and the local farmer came to inquire if we needed help (as did other fellow campers passing by), but it was all under control….. What we hadn’t counted on though was that on inspection of the busted tyre, we noticed that the entire inner rim of the rubber had worn down to the canvas, which had eventually split. Arno checked to see if it had rubbed against something, but no. Then, upon further inspection, discovered that the other tyre showed the same symptoms! So the inside of both tyres is wearing much much faster than the outer. An issue to be diagnosed at some stage.

Meanwhile, we continued on and arrived soon after at our booked caravan park… A small, comfortable, independent one (like the previous) surrounded once more by nice high mountain peaks where we did a load of laundry, enjoyed a few beers, had the owner tell us lots of gossip as well as confirmed that Sheffield (15 mins on the way to Devonport where we move to on Tuesday) has a good tyre & mechanical service and should be open again that day (tomorrow being a holiday).

This works out well, as we plan on going to Cradle Mountain tomorrow!

This post’s route: