6th October 10

Once again we uprooted the annexe and packed up to head south to the small but beautiful town of Ross, which is known for its convict built bridge, like Campbell Town, but in this case the convict crew contained two stone masons who have given the bridge a very ornate appearance.  The two stonemason convicts were given their freedom in return for their efforts. It has curved steps down to the riverbank on both sides and both ends of the bridge, and has a row of stone bollards on each side of the approach road linked with chain as guides to avoid dropping of the raised road After crossing the bridge, the road enters a large crossroad with the war memorial in the centre. When you stand in the road and look along three of the four roads they are all tree lined and currently adorned in pale green petals, and we are imformed that the leaves come later..

7th October 20

Ross, which is the central town of the midlands, is waiting to hear whether it has won the Australia tidy town competition, and if left to us would definitely get it, meanwhile we are waiting for it to warm up again as it snowed on the highlands east of here, and the strong wind is blowing straight through us.

The street curbing is sandstone like the bridge and looks really good, but you wouldn’t want to hit it with your wheels as it is quite high and square topped. The town has many sandstone houses with neat gardens which are all in blossom, as are the trees that line both the approach to town and the main streets of the town.

There isn’t a genuine grocery type store of significance so real shopping has to be done in Campbell Town, but it has a cute post office, a great hotel and two bakeries, but several of the remaining shops (art, crafts and antiques) haven’t been open during the week, so maybe that will happen on the weekend. We have given the bridge a second look in daylight plus some night time photography around the town of all the lit up areas as it really is special and supports a beautiful little township.

10th October 10

A community garage sale happened today so we drove around the town visiting houses that displayed balloons on their front fence to see what was on over. Mainly clothes and old junk such as VHS video recorders, however, I wanted to find a small flat file and a small round file rather than buying them from a hardware store. No-one had them on display, and only one had any tools at all, but one guy rummaged in his shed and found one of each and gave them to me. The shops and market have come life for the day. We then drove out to the original graveyard as it on the tourist list and then drove 41km out to Tombs Lake which provided the town with water until last year’s draught that allowed blue/green algae into the low level system. It is now a playground for fishermen. The water is now piped from Campbell Town which is fed from Lake Leake.

On our return to Ross we continued on to Campbell Town, which is the northern town of the midlands, to check out any highlights that exist in that town other than the bridge, which provided some interesting buildings and statues. The bridge is quite amazing, although only brick and not ornate, as it was built in the days of horse and cart transport (mid 1830s) but now supports 18 tonne trucks without any alteration. We treated ourselves to a Banjo’s pie which we consider to be the best pies we have experienced since discovering them in Strahan.

11th October 10

The strong winds have returned making it cold and unpleasant again but dropped in the late afternoon allowing a quiet night’s sleep.

12th October 10

We had to go to the post office so used that as an excuse to also pick up some wood fire baked bread rolls and pies from the bakery. The rolls at lunch time were really nice and the pies for dinner proved to surpass the Banjo pies

13th October 10

We moved on to Richmond which is not far from Hobart to check out the town more thoroughly than the drive through that we had some weeks ago. On the way out we stopped to buy some more pies from the bakery. After setting up the camp in a park that doesn’t live up to the photograph in the caravan park book, we took Foxy into town for a walk and a little shopping. It is a very pleasant township but doesn’t match the high standard of Ross, but we haven’t seen it all yet, but like Ross it has plenty of holiday accommodation, antique and craft shops. We haven’t worked out where all these antiques come from, or who buys them, as we have never seen anyone enter or leave an antique shop. However, it is possible that they all come from Ross as the Market that only opens on the weekend had a sign offering ”Antiques made to order” which may also account for them being in such good condition.

14th October 10

We drove into town and parked in the winery car park for convenience to check the price and dog access to the model village, and didn’t like both answers, so walked on through the town to the 1839 convict built bridge and back down the other side of the road. We then drove homeward but stopped off at two wooden mazes associated with a cafe and spent quite a while in both mazes and never made it to the centre of either.

18th October 10

We drove up to the small township of Oatlands, which is the southern town of the midlands, for their festival and to meet up with Stu and Be once more. It was very overcast day but only produced one light shower whilst we were in Oatlands butthe wind due to the high alyitude was very cold.

Oatlands claim to fame is the currently renovated and now operative flour mill which will be officially opened in November but was open for tours during the festival, so we enjoyed a tour of the various levels, highlighting the intricacies of the wooden gears and braking systems. The rest of the festival was more like a market along the main road that had been closed off to traffic. It had a few bands, a fun fair for the kids and a parade during the lunch period, ut was still a glorified market, but for Oatlands it was a big event. The town itself has a number of old sandstone houses that add to its interest.