New Year in Hobart Town

We came down out of the forest to the (comparatively) teeming city of Hobart. Parked our trailer at a fairly ordinary caravan park in Richmond, which left us free to enjoy Hobart unencumbered.

We wandered through the Salamanca markets in the trail of Princess Mary - she’d visited not so long ago, and one stall in particular had big signs on a particular children’s book ‘chosen by Princess Mary’. The markets were fun – though the 37th stall selling Tasmanian wooden chopping boards got a little tedious. Where would Tasmanian craftspeople be without timber I wonder!

The Taste of Tasmania was on, a massive dockside hall featuring Tasmanian food producers, restaurants, wineries and breweries. It is an experience, if a little overly busy and foodhall-like. But we ate some good things, and tried some local wines, and the weather was beautiful for those couple of days. There was lots of other stuff going on for the Hobart Summer Festival, buskers and crowds mainly.


And of course, the Sydney to Hobart race was finishing, and we walked through all the yachts quite a few times - watching yachts come in, watching sunburnt yachties drink lots of beer at 10am, marvelling at the size of Skandia and Ichi Ban (see we REALLY got into the swing of it!). But we were most entranced by the small wooden and classically shaped yachts.


So New Years Eve we did some more hanging around the docks, interspersed with a bottle of wine at a Salamanca Place winebar, watching the antique merry-go-round, cheering in the very last boat at 9pm, and securing a good waterside spot for the fireworks. We'd parked Elsie nearby with a bed in the back and felt very clever as we piled in there at about 2am.


We wandered to a cafe virtually over the road for brekkie, and enjoyed the sunny day from there, wandering around Battery Point, stumbling across the prize ceremony for the Sydney Hobart Yacht Race at Sandy Bay Yacht Club, driving to the top of Mt Wellington in a clear patch to see the amazing view of Hobart and then cruising around the Huon Valley.

Christmas at Liffey Falls

We finally found our spot for Xmas, near the Liffey Falls, at the foot of the Great Western Tiers. We arrived on a very rainy day, but when we walked through the beautiful rainforest to the nearby Falls, the rain seemed entirely appropriate. After a few days of rain, we were a bit over soggy, but we coped!

Our trailer was right next to the Liffey River, and the first night as we sat and Tim wondered whether he could fish for trout from where he sat, he saw a platypus, the first one I’ve ever seen in the wild, which was very exciting.

We had a fantastic time at Liffey, we shared it only with one other, very nice, family from Queensland who had spent the last few Christmases at the same spot, and a more mysterious woman on her own who seemed to be escaping Xmas entirely.





Xmas day was absolutely freezing cold, literally freezing above 800/900m where it was snowing. So of course we went in search of snow, and didn’t have to drive very far up the side of the mountain to find it! It was blowing in over the Central Plateau, and when we got up to 1200m it was insanely winter. We laughed about it for hours, just kept looking at each and cracking up. And as I’ve said to so many people since then ‘I’ve had Christmases in winter in the UK where it didn’t snow and it is summer in Tassie and its snowing!’ Mental!



We spent so long frolicking in the snow that it was late afternoon by the time we got back, and breakfast was a long time ago. So not only did we experience snow, we were also RAVENOUS for much of the afternoon, something that doesn’t happen on Xmas day very often. When we finally got to it, we did have a lovely meal of Atlantic salmon and hot vegies, accompanied by a bottle of Riesling from the Clare Valley and a beautiful bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon that my folks had given us and had travelled with us all the way from home.


We stayed at Liffey for 7 days in the end, had loads of walks in the amazing rainforest - which we absolutely love, and went exploring higher up near the bluffs in the tall eucalypt forests and scree covered slopes.

Walls of Jerusalem NP

We had a mad dash across from the Victorian border to meet up with peak hour Melbourne traffic and get onto the Spirit of Tasmania for our overnight trip to Devonport. We arrived bleary eyed, and had a coffee with Vicki at the lovely place where she works, before heading off for Launceston to leave our computer for fixing.

From lovely Launceston we started looking for a place to spend Xmas and New Year, expecting it to be really busy in campsites all over the island. Spent a couple of nights at Lake Rowallan, which was one of our first rude awakenings. That ‘Lake’ in Tassie means flooded river for hydro purposes, and is likely to be fringed by dead trees, and be surrounded by logging. When we read Lake on a map I think we were expecting pristine, forested lake with trout leaping out of the water and a lovely campsite next to a bubbling stream.

So we only stayed by Lake Rowallan long enough to do a big day walk into the Walls of Jerusalem NP. It was our first big walk in Tassie and I think still the most amazing. It was a beautiful clear sunny day, which as we’ve discovered are to be TREASURED when you’re up high or in fact anywhere in Tassie! The walk started with a steep walk up about 500m, through some very tall eucalypt forest, with fabulous views through to some imposing rocky bluffs.


Then we got high enough for it to start getting distinctly alpine. Being such Tassie newbies at the time, we thought this was amazing and rare and fabulous and accessible only by foot. Little did we realise that there are alpine environments accessible by car all over Tassie!


Anyway, this was a particularly SPECIAL alpine environment, with little perfectly clear lakes in amongst the spagnum moss and pencil pines, and snow gums leaning out of piles of lichen covered rocks.



We walked right through to Herod’s Gate (someone was in a very Old Testament frame of mind when they named all the features of this NP – Solomon’s Jewels, something or other Damascus). By the time we got back down the mountain we’d been walking for 7 hours and were feeling a little toe sore.

Glenelg River NP

Victoria! We felt we’d really crossed into a different country with the border post, looking as if passports were required but it was merely a quarantine checkpoint. The lovely Glenelg River was not far from the border and we set up camp under a tree and right next to the river, that was full to the brim with water and flanked by forest on both banks.



We had a few days here of exploring the river in the tinnie, going up river, down river, puttering along, or getting out the GPS to find out what our top speed was. (Just out of interest it was 29 kmh - 2 up and all the fishing gear)

Tim spent a fair bit of time in a quest for an eating sized fish. On one of the days we found a BIG school of mullet that absolutely tormented Tim by getting hooked and then getting off the hook at the very last minute. Tim hassled out that school of mullet for hours, with still no result. Meanwhile I was having a great time hanging out in the front of the boat, writing and reading.



Then it was onto the bream. There were huge numbers of bream in the river but they were absolutely tiny. On our final day Tim was determined to catch a bream to eat, and they gradually got bigger as the time wore on, but the final fish was still nothing to cheer about – we ate it anyway!