23rd April to 2nd May 2010

Friday 23rd April 10

This was just a lazy day with only grocery shopping to do prior to a possible move to Arthur River subject to weather conditions.

Saturday 24th April 10

We had a thunder storm last night with plenty of rain which is still producing heavy showers this morning. There is no point in moving today as we would be heading into worse weather if we go to Arthur River. So when we do move it will probably be eastward rather than further west.

Sunday 25th April 10

We had an easy morning and after lunch dismantled the annex and packed the tables and chairs away under the van ready to be loaded into the van in the morning.

We had to go into town for last minute shopping so whilst we were there we continued out to the lighthouse on Table Cape which we couldn’t see on our previous trip due to the low cloud.

From there we drove round to the lookout, and then on to Fossil Bluff which means driving though the expensive real estate area with both ocean and river views.

We elected to torture our legs and lungs and walked to the top of the bluff despite the cold wind and took in the views out to sea and also across the golf course and river to the town.

After dinner we took down the awning as strong winds where predicted for this area. As it turned out, the winds didn’t happen but we gained extra time in the morning with less to pack away.

Monday 26th April 10

We moved out of Wynyard, and as previously mentioned headed away from the west and wandered south easterly to Deloraine. We came through here 10 years ago in the spring but didn’t stop other than to look at some of the annual fair venues and didn’t really notice the town. We set up the camp on the bank of the river with a ten minute walk into town.

It is a beautiful town, especially now with the deciduous trees turning to their autumn colours prior to dropping their leaves.

We called into the visitor centre which has a recently installed statue of Malua, a Tasmanian race horse of note that was bred and trained in Deloraine, for some local literature and discovered that the town has numerous small sculptures throughout the main street mounted on posts that look like redundant oxygen/acetylene bottles, plus large sculptures along the river bank and surrounding area. We have already seen a few of the later and wondered what they were as our minds don’t work like so-called artists’ minds.

Tuesday 27th April 10

We walked along the river, passing some of the abstract objects, to the nearest end of town and proceeded up one side of the main street to check out the sculptures, which took us to the visitors centre again, and then crossed the road to work our way down the other side for the other sculptures.

There are actually a lot more than the literature indicates as many have been added.

We returned to the caravan by walking slightly out of the bottom end of town to the swing bridge across the river that highlights the town weir, and as luck would have it we got to watch a train cross the river whilst filming the weir.

The trains cross the river and immediately turn left at the bottom of the town, unfortunately passing immediately behind the caravan park and run at night. We continued through the park and more objects on the other side of the river to a footbridge that brought us back into the caravan park.

Wednesday 28th April 10

This was a wet day so the morning only consisted of a trip to the doctors for a prescription. In the afternoon we drove to Launceston to a Harvey Norman store to have our fan heater replaced, as it was not working too well. We added some money to the original value and went for a bigger and better one, especially as it is going to get a lot of use from here on. On the way back to Deloraine we saw several of the competitors from the Targa Tasmania 2010 rally, presumably moving to Launceston for the next stage. They would have had a wet morning, and according to the news some spills, but the afternoon weather has cleared.

Thursday 29th April 10

Today is dry again but with a cold wind that refuses to go round you. However, as we have discovered that mornings are best for photographs, especially waterfalls, we drove out to Liffey Falls. We visited these falls in 2000 and enjoyed them, but they had a lot more water present than in the photo used in the tourist literature, so hoped to see them in this pretty fashion. This was not to be, as there had obviously been sufficient rain to overcome that possibility.

The tourist picture is also taken from the right hand side of the river to provide a head on view of the stepped rocks to present the fairy tale effect, which you can only get to when there is little water. The tourist picture only shows the top fall out of four significant falls plus several cascades which make up the overall experience. Our memory of these falls from the previous visit where more clouded than we expected, and included bits of other falls visited on that Tassie trip.

There were a lot of differences, such as the road to the car park, and the path down to the falls that had several lookouts over the individual falls, which we didn’t remember.

We could only remember one fall not several, but maybe only the one was accessible in 2000. We think this was a different car park as there is an upper and a lower car park, and we think we may have used the lower one last time as we were able to leave without having to return up the same road that we came in on. This time we had to turn round and go out the way we came in which involved passing two oncoming vehicles on the way down and one on the way back up. To do this means coaxing your vehicle to suck its stomach in as the road is barely wide enough to pass a shadow. We wouldn’t have got past another Nissan Patrol or Toyota Landcruiser. Going back up is not too bad as you are on the inside of the track but on the way down you are on the outside and left with an ugly mess to deal with if you get it wrong. It helps if both vehicles are the same colour so the rubbed areas don’t show so much. We were lucky that two of the other cars were Toyota Getz size but the other was a larger Ford Falcon that was a real squeeze, with us on the ugly side. When we returned to Deloraine we had a late lunch in one of the cafes in town but were not impressed. We promised ourselves that we would look up the old photos from our Tassie trip in 2000 to do a comparison against the new photos.

We also don't remember the sculpture near thestart of the path, so going back a second time was well worth it despite worrying us about the reliability of our individual memories.

Friday 30th April 10

We fired up the old photos of the Liffey Falls and apart from obvious differences such as the camera resolution (8 kilobytes as against 10 megabytes and was the top of the range video camera at the time, that also took still photos and cost $3500. It now sits unused under the bed), we only had photos of two falls, not four, which must have been dictated by the accessibility at the time.

Saturday 1 May 10

Household chores and good books kept us at home.

Sunday 2nd May 10

We phoned Garon and Sue without success to wish Garon a happy birthday, in the belief that this was the first of May. We got that wrong, although it was suggested yesterday but deemed to be the wrong day without actually checking. It is still very doubtful that contact would have been made. When did they do away with 31st April?
There was a cold wind but it was dry so we headed out to have a look at Devil’s Gullet which meant covering a lot of territory that we explored from Latrobe.

We had to drive through Mole Creek and past King Solomon’s cave and then turn off onto a dirt road for 14km, which should then leave us with a 15 minute walk each way to the lookout with a sheer drop of 300 metres. It had started to rain and then when we got to the beginning of the dirt road it rained harder put things in doubt, and we also came across a sign warning us of logging truck in the area. Later at about seven kilometres along the dirt road we came across the ‘Road Closed’ sign at the beginning of the logging area. Disappointed, we headed back down the dirt road and had a speeding police car pass in the opposite direction. We assumed this was either for on accident, or protesters.

Part of the reason for going to Devil’s Gullet was to find and photograph one of the sculptures that are spread out around Deloraine, however, we had to call in to both Solomon’s cave and Marakoopa cave to photograph the sculptures that are near each of them, which we missed or ignored on our previous visit. At the Marakoopa cave, the ranger informed us that the locals had been disappointed with the sculpture, which looked like a stone tyre, and had thrown it over the edge at Devil’s Gullet, so we wouldn’t have found it anyway.

We drove back towards Deloraine and spotted a sing to Lobster Falls, so we parked at the road side and started walking about ten minutes ten realised that we had not brought water with us so gave it away and drove to about 8km from Deloraine and cut through to the Bass highway and out to the cheese factory at Elizabeth Town which is home for another sculpture, and sampled and bought some cheese. On our return to Deloraine we drove out in another direction to find yet another sculpture without success, so returned to the visitors centre for some help and now have better direction for next time. We also found out that the walk to Lobster Falls is about an hour each way.