Tassie in a troopy

Yeah sorry, another car picture. I pulled into a caravan park which seemed very full and I was about to turn around and leave till I saw another troopy parked by the water so figured I’d stay for a night. They had bought there’s many years ago as an x-camper and changed almost nothing on the vehicle, it was the old straight 6 with no turbo, only 2 years older than mine. I’d arrived back in Tassie at about 5 in the morning, it was dark and foggy and I’d had very little sleep laying down on a couch in the ferry.

I drove east to Weymouth, a public fossicking area on the north east coast. I wasn’t too sure what I was doing, I didn’t really have a plan of any sort. I knew that I wanted to make it to this fossicking area at some stage so why not now.

I like this sort of fossicking, simple wandering along a lovely section of shoreline looking for pretty rocks and there are lots of them, all different colours and patterns.

After a few hours I needed to have a walk and get settled so I headed to Narawntapu national park, this was the same national park I’d spent my first night when I arrived last time in Tassie, and I ended up in the exact same camp site.

There’s a nice walk to do here though annoyingly I dropped my phone while walking it. The trail was a soft peaty path yet it must have landed just right and I’ve now got cracks all through the screen, first time ever I’ve managed to crack a phone screen. Still the view from the top of the walk back over the national park was nice.

When I got back to the car it had gained a friend, this vehicle was very basic, I was amazed at how the dash board was basically non existent, there were wires hanging out, it was really a bit of a mess inside, but you could never tell from outside the vehicle and hey, simple is good. It’s been many places by the look of it, I think it’s Denmark plates? As in the country.

A hit a padimelon (small wallaby) on the way out of the park, only about 100m from the rangers hut. The stupid thing just ran from the side, straight under my back wheel.  The ranger told me they are really quite dumb and they do it quite often and she gave me a rubber glove so that I could go back and check if it was alive then drag it off the road.

Now this next picture is really quite rubbish but it was the only spot I could find to pull off and get a photo. You might be wondering why I would even want the picture, well two reasons, firstly the road number, and secondly the next town, the same as my home town on the other side of the country.

On the way to Launceston I stopped at the wetlands centre, there were vast areas of boardwalks through the long reeds.

 

OK, I decided I’d play this game and I started checking out all of the bird poo left behind on the boardwalks, wow, interesting.

Here’s a selection of a few poos, there’s bits of rubber, string, bits of plastic in all shapes, sizes and colours. Glass of all shapes sizes and colours, beads, a steel screw and then what I thought was the real winner for the most painful thing.

Oh yeah, that’s a pointy piece of a wooden skewer.

You may have noticed that the photos aren’t quite up to scratch lately, I’ve been using the phone and not my real SLR camera. I’d been finding it so much easier on hikes to only take my phone, in the past I’d always carry the big camera, though when I’d forgotten my camera charger on the last trip I’d had to use my phone, now it’s become a bad habit that I should get out of.

I spent the night not far from Launceston and decided that I should head down to Freycinet national park, I’d tried to go there on my last trip and was told no chance of camping and 2 hour wait to get into the car park at wineglass bay. Now school holidays are over, surely I’m in. I got up first thing and drove down, I saw campers coming out on the road and with each camper I passed I would say “thanks, I’ll have your spot”.  But alas, all camp sites were full, I could have one night if I waited another 4 days, then there was another single night in a camp site available the following week. This really wasn’t my sort of thing. I knew for sure when the ranger woman I wanted to speak to, was on the phone with one of those wireless head pieces taking a booking for late next month and she was standing at the “Camp Booking” section of the counter. That’s twice now I’ve driven to Frecinet and not even gone passed the rangers station. The fact that all of the camp sites were full and the car park at the ranger station was also full of cars was enough to make me high tail it out of there. Perhaps if I ever visit in winter I might try again, but there are plenty of other places to see.

This was a very strange bridge, but the coast line directly over from it was nice.

I headed further south and stayed at Eldee camp spot, lovely spot, met a friendly local there, I love these camps in Tassie, $10 a night and there are brand new toilets and showers with a very well set up camp kitchen with a fire going, big comfy lounges, this is how it should be. From here It was under an hour to get down the coast where I could do some more walks.

The cape Hauy walk seemed to keep going on and on, you might see in the image above that the path goes off over the hills in the distance. Then I have to walk all the way back to the furthest point of the bay back in there.

 

The trails here are well made, it must be quite an effort to walk all the way out he path and then work on rock trail for the day. Tried to visit cape Raoul the following day but the track was closed for repairs, a helicopter was flying in loads of supplies for the repairs, so I found a nice walk to do at Marion bay, a long sand spit and beach not far from where I was.

Lovely water and beaches down here, and I found what I think would be an ultimate fishing spot.

There’s an enormous bay here perhaps 12km by 12km but the mouth is quite narrow from the end of the sand spit to the other side is only perhaps 200m. The water here drops from the beach straight down into deep blue water only a few metres from the white sandy beach. But, and there’s always a but, it’s a 3km walk along the beach to get to the end of the spit and I hadn’t brought any fishing gear with me.

So much has happened since I started this post and I haven’t kept this updated as I should, so I’ll just hit post then try and work on the next one.