Down Under Down Under
⬅ previous ⬆intro next ➡Day 10 ~ 31 Dec - Hobart to Cradle Mountain
We walk the corridor at Somerset on the Pier for the last time. It's been a fine stay and we would happily recommend it to anyone. That said, it's shortly to undergo major refurbishment (in progress at the time of writing), so you may not be able to make use of our recommendation for a while yet.
I need to do a three-point-turn on the narrow pier road. Fortunately the railway tracks have not been in use for some time.
Our journey today is around 300km, which wouldn't be much on a motorway, but Tasmania is a bit short of those. Google offers us a couple of options, and seems to vary between which it thinks is better pretty much at random. However, right now, it's suggesting the route that we think looks more interesting, if a bit less straightforward, so we're good with that. Jo and Meta reckon they're going to take the more obvious route, at least partly because they don't trust digital floozies as much as I do.
It's true that digital floozies can sometimes need to be shown who's boss, but I can handle that.
So off we go. Initially it's just urban and suburban roads, but it's not too long before we reach, not exactly wilderness, but certainly much more rural territory. At around 55km we leave the 'Midland Highway' - which really not all that high - at the town of Melton Mowbray(!) and then we're on proper country roads.
It's very pretty, but we have no reason to stop, so no pictures. After a couple of hours, though, we could do with a stretch of the legs and what do we see but a sign for the "Steppes Sculptures". Let's pull in and take a look...
There's a plaque explaining it. An Australian sculptor called Stephen Walker lived in Tasmania for much of his life and became a great lover of this area. He designed and made a set of sculptures referencing the local landscape and its history and gave them as a gift to the community
.
They form a little stone circle.
The first shows thylacines, the now extinct marsupial 'tiger', which could still be found in the forests when the first tourists started to visit in the 19th century.
Number ten features wedge-tailed eagles which can be seen today.
The signs also say there's an old homestead here which can be visited, but we pass. We've still got a way to go, so it's back on the road.
Wombat crossing!
He or she just casually saunters along without a care in the world, and certainly without a care for traffic. We don't quite need an emergency stop, but certainly have to brake like we mean it.
Another stop at a view point looking out over a large lake, imaginatively named the "Great Lake" (officially, "yingina / Great Lake"). It's semi-artificial, an original natural lake being greatly enlarged by the building of a hydroelectric dam in 1922.
The road is beautiful and almost completely devoid of traffic. If you look carefully here, you can just make out another car behind ours, but they don't stop long at all and we mostly have the place to ourselves.
A bit less than an hour now should get us to the town of Deloraine, where we will meet J&M for lunch.
This, then, is Deloraine, the biggest town we will pass through after leaving Hobart.
We've heard from the others that their route has been a much more stressful drive and they're a bit behind schedule and not sure whether they'll meet us here or not now. We'll have a look around town and stop for a while anyway.
A quick check of Google Maps shows us where the tourist information centre is, so that's where we head.
On the way, we find they've made the place into a bit of a sculpture park
Little pillars support a variety of creations, some straightforward like this, some more whimsical.
Hmm... This technically isn't a sculpture, it's a war memorial.
One of the more whimsical ones.
And behold, the story of its creation is art too!
Ye Olde British Hotel is surprisingly famous online, but Tripadvisor reviews seem quite polarised. Most people rate it as either 'excellent' or 'terrible', the top and bottom ratings respectively. We only admire it from afar, so have no comment of our own to make.
But on the side, just barely visible in this picture...
There are no specific Tripadvisor reviews for the brewery, but "Little Green Men Brewing" gets 4.7 out of 5 stars on Google.
Again, having not tried the beer, I have no comment other than to say that like most boys of my age, I had armies of those little green men myself back in the day, to go with my Airfix model tanks of course. Do we infer from this that the brewers are gentlemen of a certain age?
But gosh! https://plasticsoldierreview.com/ is a thing! Specifcally, these Airfix models are what I'm thinking of. It's not clear whether the site is run by a bunch of old codgers or whether it's a new enthusiasm of Millennials, but it can't be Gen Z because the copyright notices say "2002, 2009".
The company website gives no clue about its history or its people other than "Serving since 1859 ~ Brewing since 2020".
(I've definitely spent more time researching and typing this up than it took us to walk past the place an take a few pictures.)
Ingleson Lodge B&B looks rather cute. It gets a solid 5.0 rating on Tripadvisor, but that's based on just one single review, so take it with the proverbial pinch. In fairness, online opinion elsewhere seems generally favourable too.
Now just beyond this is the tourist information centre, of which I have no pictures. It is, I must sadly inform you, not a particularly photogenic place. You can see it from Google Street View if you really want.
However, inside I get chatting to one of the staff (while Amanda runs away, of course) and she gives us lots of useful information about what we should do next. Specifically, she recommends one of the two alternative routes from here as maybe fractionally slower but much more scenic. As it happens, that's the route that floozy had suggested for us anyway, but it's good to have local confirmation.
And as we leave the building, who do we see but Jo and Meta! They've recovered from their ordeal and made it here not that long after us. I think Jo finds driving a bit more stressful generally than me, and had chosen the main highway over the more rural roads believing it would be easier. In the event, we've had a fine time on clear roads in beautiful surroundings and made better time too!
So now to find a lunch spot. Down by the river sounds good, and it's back the way we came, quite near where we parked.
What can I say? You just have to love a grumpy dragon.
Josephine studies her map. We like maps, but for getting from A to B, I'm afraid that we have come to accept that it's easier to let our floozy do the navigation. Josephine may be described in many ways, but even I would never go so far as to call her a floozy.
After lunch, we part ways again, next to meet up at the lodge where we're staying. They are planning to go straight there while we are continuing in our fairly leisurely fashion.
As we drive through the small town of Mole Creek, we pass a war memorial. Wait a mo! Screech to a halt! (Ok, not quite), what is this?
Yes, we really did see that.
Now if you search for "Mole Creek War Memorial" online, you will find many pictures of the obelisk, but will you find this scene? If you can, your Google-fu is stonger than mine!
You can't read the notice at this scale, but it says "This tree carving honours those who served in the Vietnam War in particular the 9 young men from the Mole Creek area", followed by their names. There's no date, but Vietnam isn't exactly a recent conflict, so I don't know why this piece has no apparent online presence.
Onwards.
So the next place my lady at the Deloraine tourist office had recommended is Sheffield, which is a slight detour on the road we've chosen although we'd have gone through it naturally on the other route. It's not a big diversion.
Sheffield's USP is its murals, which adorn almost any large flat space.
I'll be honest. I know the thylacine is extinct so nobody today has ever seen one for real, but this just doesn't look natural to me; I fear the artist had more enthusiasm than skill.
Artistic architecture if not fine art.
I think this is self-explanatory.
What, you don't?
It's a coffee shop of course, how could you not know that? Again, there's a surprising amount online if you look.
A skate park with no skaters.
Never mind, we'll have an ice cream
Can't fault the portion sizes! These are the regular cones.
Very nice too.
The old bakery is now a holiday apartment, but its past lives on in paint.
10/6d? That means 1970-ish or before, but that ad style looks a lot older. That was probably a fair amount of money at the time. But gosh, the National Library of Australia has a website with digitised copies of old newspapers, partially turned into searchable text. Look what we find here: The Age (Melbourne), 13 July 1907
Wonderful stuff, I think you must agree.
Ok, translate it directly into modern money and 52½p doesn't sound like much, but there's been a LOT of inflation since then. That's the equivalent of more than £80 today! But what price can you put on vitality?
There are lots more murals and other interesting things in this place, but we must move on. We're close to our destination now, and there's nothing else of any great interest on the way.
Ta-da!
We have booked two self-catering cottages here for a week.
At Reception, we learn that Jo and Meta have already arrived and got settled in to doing their laundry!
Here is our cottage. It's surrounded by trees and looks out into the forest, so it's very quiet and secluded.
We quickly put perishables into the fridge (and some fizz into the freezer because we will need it soon), then hop across the road to the visitor centre to buy our bus passes.
The way the system works here is that you can't normally drive yourself inside the national park, and if you don't want to walk there is a regular shuttle bus service. Tickets are valid for 72 hours, so we'll need to buy two sets for our week, but they aren't terribly expensive.
So, a little spin around the cottage. The interior continues the rustic style, but it's well done and very comfortable.
One luxury is the spa bath, though.
We are warned it can get quite cold here, but we have a wood burner and plenty of logs.
A small verandah outside the living area.
J&M will shortly come over for drinks and nibbles and we should be able to enjoy a little evening sun here.
From the balcony we can just see Cradle Mountain in the distance behind the trees.
And a rather easier to see bird.
As the evening starts to cool, we light the wood burner and come inside for dinner..
After dinner we all take a little post-prandial perambulation. We walk the main road towards the park entrance and there's almost no traffic at all. We have our first real sight of the mountain from a point where road rises a little.
Another wombat snuffling in the grass beside the road.
Wallabies too.
And if you're particularly fortunate, you might even spot a tourist or three!
At this point, we've walked almost to the main park entrance, so that's probably enough for the evening. We'll head back for bed.
The wallabies are having a boxing match now.
And the sun sets. It's about 10:30pm on New Year's Eve and the likelihood of any of us being awake for the stroke of midnight and ringing in 2025 is zero!
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