Saturday, December 28, 2013

Northern Tasmania :: Day 2

We slept in a little this morning, until about 8am.  Then showered and went down to the hotel restaurant for breakfast.


After that, we checked-out and loaded our cases into the car.  Then we went for a little walk through the streets of Launceston, passing some lovely old houses on the way ...


We cut through the Central Park, which was really beautiful ...


















Then, on the other side of the park, we visited the National Automobile Museum.  It had lots of lovely old cars and motorbikes ...




























After enjoying looking at all the old vehicles, we sauntered back to the hotel and came unexpectedly upon a lovely Farmers' Market, right in the middle of Launceston.  It was just perfect, as I always enjoy a look through these when I can and we had already decided that we needed to pick up some items for a picnic lunch.


We bought fresh croissants, two types of cheese, salmon paste, chutney, quince paste and a bag of pears.  We also stopped to taste some wine, but didn't buy any.


Then it was time to get back to the car and drive to Cataract Gorge, which is a beautiful spot not five minutes' drive from the centre of Launceston.  We took the chairlift across the river to a picnic spot on the other side.





We chose a nice bench and opened up our picnic.  It wasn't long before we were joined by a beautiful peacock, who apparently thought we had brought the food for him.


After we gave him a bit of our food, he thanked us with a beautiful display of his tail.


Some wallabies also hopped past, but were too shy to come up to us.


After lunch, we walked back across the causeway to our car and began our drive to our next town, via Devonport and Burnie.  We stopped for afternoon tea in Wynyard, which has a really lovely lighthouse at a place called Table Cape.


The signboards told the story of the lighthouse and the community that had lived around it, including the story of the first lighthouse keeper's infant son, who died just a few days after the commissioning of the lighthouse and is buried nearby.

We passed many poppy fields on the way.  It appears that this is a very lucrative crop for the farmers. The poppies are used to manufacture pharmaceutical grade opiate-based medicines like morphine and codeine by big companies like GlaxoSmithKline.  Tasmania produces over 50% of the world's raw poppy product for this purpose.


There was also a really good lookout there, from which on a clear day one can see a great deal of Tasmania's north west coast, from Table Cape east to Low Head at the mouth of the Tamar River.


Then it was time to move on again, towards our final destination for the day - the seaside fishing village of Stanley, out on a narrow peninsula, off the northern coast.


We had booked to stay at an absolutely gorgeous little cottage which had been built in 1840 and beautifully decorated by its current owners ...






The place was called Touchwood Cottage and was owned by two lovely people called Cathy and Trevor, who had left some freshly-baked raspberry and buttermilk muffins for us to enjoy upon our arrival.






After we had settled-in, we went for a walk around the village and did a bit of shopping at the supermarket.  Then we headed down to the local pub for dinner and to spend some time chatting with the locals, who were all incredibly friendly and welcoming.

At about 9 o'clock, we walked a couple of blocks back to our cottage and sat in the gorgeous little living room with a cuppa, to watch a bit of TV before finally relaxing in the big soft brass bed.



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Friday, December 27, 2013

Nothern Tasmania :: Day 1

We are off on a driving holiday around northern Tasmania today for a week.  We arrived at the airport at 4pm, checked in and boarded our flight to Launceston at 5 o'clock.


An hour later and we were picking up our hire car in Launceston ...


... and driving to our hotel.  The view of the hills surrounding Launceston was quite nice from our hotel room window.


Once we had settled in, we took a walk around the small town to get our bearings and see what was going on.  We ended up at a small bar called Alchemy, where we had a couple of drinks and a small snack for tea.


We stayed on at Alchemy to listen to some live music and ended up meeting with another couple who were on holiday in Tasmania from Brisbane.


We strolled back the couple of blocks to the hotel at about 10:30 and relaxed into our room.