Down Under Down Under
⬅ previous ⬆intro next ➡Day 8 ~ 29 Dec - Hobart
Amanda's morning run takes her up to the bridge. I'm still asleep at this time, of course.
We're going for a walk or two in the Mount Wellington park, but first we'll pick up some non-perishable stuff for Cradle Mountain that we can then leave in the car. We go to a big Woolworths, which is kind of weird for us Brits. It's Australia's largest supermarket chain and completely unrelated to the former UK high street icon, except that the founders stole the name! Wikipedia links to a Wayback Machine copy of an article that's no longer on their website for some reason, which tells us that in September 1924,
The original prospectus showed the proposed company as ‘Wallworths Bazaar Ltd’ an obvious play on the famous F. W. Woolworths, name. However when it was discovered that F.W. Woolworths hadn't registered the name in Australia and had no plans to open in Australia, the name was changed to Woolworths.How very confusing.
Anyway, onwards!
This is the "Lost World Trail". Seems easy enough to start with, but it's officially described as "Grade: 4 (bushwalking experience recommended for steep sections and bouldering)"
Getting a bit rougher...
Definitely quite rough now. Without the markers it would be hard to see the trail. We're getting close to the top.
Coming down on the other side, and we're starting to look for a place to stop for lunch.
This is our lunchtime view.
It's warm in the sun. I'm just in a t-shirt and Amanda's taken her coat off!
Right, this is probably the end of the line for us. It's heading steeply down and it's not a circular route so we'll head back now and check out one of the other less strenuous tracks.
This is what we're not climbing down into.
And as we return to the start, even Amanda's now down to her t-shirt!
The nearby Big Bend trail is much easier, just a casual amble really.
No mountainy bits to climb either.
There are a lot of little ponds beside the trail. This one looks natural enough, but some are very clearly artificial, with pond liner visible.
The water is a bit murky, but we can clearly see tadpoles.
Eucalyptus Coccifera, the Tasmanian Snow Gum. It's endemic to Tasmania, but is the dominant species in many areas such as this. We think it's very pretty. Read all about it in Wikipedia.
The path carries on but it's time for us to turn round. We now realise that we have descended quite a lot more than we'd realised, and the return seems to be up a hill that wasn't there before.
We drive back via Liquorland to pick up wine for Cradle Mountain.
A bit of dinner prep back at the apartment, then back for a harbour walk via a very important location...
The other evening, we passed an ice cream shop with a huge queue outside. "Is this really a queue for ice cream?" I asked a woman. "Best in Tassie!" she cried. We can't leave this assertion untested, now can we?!
As you can see, it's a buzz of activity inside.
While standing in the queue, I get chatting to this cute couple who've just come over from Melbourne by boat, though just a passenger ferry, not a racing yacht. They too have heard the tales of ice cream wonder. Oh, no, I'm not suggesting they've come from Melbourne just for the ice cream, but like us, they can hardly pass it by.
And the ice cream itself? Well, we haven't tried every ice cream in Tassie, so we are not in a position to judge, but it is very fine ice cream indeed. We have no complaints on that score.
And the band play on. And still we walk on by.
The apartment entrance is on the other side of the pier where the Melbourne and Hobart arrivals are moored up. Jo and Meta look out this way.
Time for bed; tomorrow it's our trip to Maria Island.
⬅ previous ⬆intro next ➡