On Ned Kelly's trail

By accident we found ourselves following in the wake of Ned Kelly on our way from the Murray River down (or up?) to the Victorian High Country.

First (quick) stop was Glenrowan, site of The Siege that ended Ned Kelly’s run. Glenrowan has milked the Kelly story for every last drop – Kelly tearooms, Ned’s Burger shop, everything is Kelly themed in some way. And of course there is a Big Ned. Not sure why we would have expected much different, but it did all feel so very tired and hokey.




Beechworth on the other hand is a small town that is so intact from the mid 1800s it seemed like a bit of theme park, until we looked more closely and saw that it is in fact a thriving town in the present, its just housed in all these amazing old buildings. There is still a strong Ned Kelly theme (where he was tried and jailed at various times) but it is understated. Even their middle sized Ned had more class!

The Mighty (?) Murray

Tim picked Nic up from the airport in Melbourne after her very fleeting and really rather secret visit home to meet new nephew Ishan George. Because of such a late arrival we had rented a cabin in a caravan park, this time it had a little bit of history!


It is not a bad ploy… it makes you feel better about spending good money to stay in such a utilitarian and depressing park-home! There was a hastily repaired hole in the wall above the bed, which got us to wondering who had stayed in it? Romanian shot-putters perhaps?

We headed north via Bendigo and then onto Barmah Forest just east of Echuca. We loved being on the Murray, it’s a bit of an Australian icon isn’t it? Even if it wasn't looking quite so mighty. Parts of the river looked very low indeed – we thought drought, drought, drought. But after talking to a few people in Echuca we realise that the current level is not actually the lowest of recent times, and the fluctuating levels are more to do with irrigators taking water from it, rather than solely being caused by the drought.



In Echuca Nic was able to check out all the old paddle steamers, and relive her teenage passion for All the Rivers Run - the book and the mini-series with Sigrid Thornton and John Waters.


Tim has been able to put in some serious fishing time on the Murray. But same old river problem – too many wee little fishies and not enough of the eating size ones! Murray cod were in plague but not keeping proportions. But at least the fishing is right next to our living – Tim got to sit on the riverbank in a very civilised fishing style. And a brace of silver perch saved the day.



We had a bit of fun being on the Vic/NSW border, looking over the bank at the green lawned caravan park in NSW compared to the State Forest bush camping on our side. But it did pale into comparison to our experience (so many years ago) on the Mekong River looking at the jungle of Laos compared to the developed Thailand.

Bendigo

We were only in Bendigo for a few hours – long enough for lunch, a wander through the centre of town and a look in the art gallery. But we feel it deserves its own blog entry for having so much great relics of the Victorian era!

The architecture is obvious, but there were also so many great signs and architectural details around. This homage to Queen Victoria, on the base of her statue, was a personal favourite.

Great Ocean Road - Tim goes solo

Whilst Nic went home to Perth to meet her new nephew – the enchanting Ishan – Tim and Elsie continued the adventure (the camper-trailer having a rest in a yard north of Melbourne). After kissing Nic onto the plane at Tullarmarine we barrelled down the highway past Geelong to the little towns guarding the entrance to Port Phillip Bay.


Camp that night was at the welcoming Barwon Heads – where a tidal river meets the ocean behind a sheltering headland. After overnight rain, the next morning the hunt was on – SURF! Conditions were fair but the swell was down, and after cruising the coast, catching a few waves at Winkipop (adjacent to Bells Beach) was a good feeling for somebody who’d been out of the water far too long!


Following another night at Barwon Heads, conditions for surfing were perfect but the swell even smaller! The hot tip was 13th Beach – a Saturday crowded but fun beachbreak as seen in the TV series ‘Sea Change’!



Along the twisty turning road that hugs the coast – the Great Ocean Road – to overnight just south of Apollo Bay in a very squeezy clifftop caravan park.


The next day after checking out Johana Beach – out of control onshore – it was inland for a reacquaintance with rainforest in the Cape Otway NP. Aah, nothing like the smell of moist decay and the filtered light through tree ferns and towering trees. Chuck in a waterfall and it’s heaven on a stick!


Back down to the coast – if the wind is coming this way but there’s swell building then a point on this side combined with a low tide should should do the trick? And it did!! Just a dozen or so locals and a nice right hander that got hollower as the tide retreated.

Big city lights

In the act of getting off the Spirit of Tasmania in Melbourne we discovered just how much we had slowed down to Tasmanian-rural/wilderness-time. It should have been very obvious to us that we would struggle with Melbourne a little when we arrived in Launceston at about 5pm the day before and found it very busy and the traffic all a bit much.

Driving Elsie through busy Melbourne roads and negotiating the trams for the first time ever was pretty stressful. Just ask Tim who was driving. Nic meanwhile was giving the Jesus-bar a bit of a workout.


But we managed to negotiate the city relatively unscathed, we just increased our stress levels significantly. Which we weren’t that happy about, given how hard (!?!) we have worked to create our very chilled-out demeanours!!

To minimize further stress risk we checked into a hotel in St Kilda, somewhere we’d visited before but never in depth. A funky, happening kind of place (especially if you’ve just spent 2 months in Tasmania!)

It was fantastic to catch up with old friends in Melbourne, and to meet new friends (babies)! And thanks especially to Julie Red for hosting a bunch of people at her place so we could catch up with a whole heap of people all at once. But ultimately, we were both pretty happy to leave the city and get back to a much quieter life, and in particular one that doesn’t involve spending so much money. Where does money go when you are in a city? It just bleeds out of your wallet doesn’t it?

Great Sheds of Tasmania

Great sheds of Tasmania was one of our many other ideas for a coffee table book in Tassie.

Problem was we were so busy taking shots of everything we didn’t specialise… so now we’ve got about 127 photo themes on the go.

Anyway, here is a selection of sheds that caught our eyes – mostly in an advanced state of disrepair!

Shacks of Tasmania

There are so many things that we love about Tassie, we could fill the blog with them forever. But there were a few Tasmanian themed coffee table books that suggested themselves to us.

Like Shacks of Tasmania. We did eventually see a book that focused on shack owners and shack culture in Tassie, but the sheer number and architectural variety of shacks in Tasmania did intrigue us. Especially as they were in some special areas, often right in the middle of National Parks, but that is another whole story.

Here are some…

Final fling in Tasmania

Left Hobart for the Tasman Peninsula, where we camped in the national park and walked to Cape Huay, an archetypal example of fluted dolerite columns rising from the sea in cliff faces. We also briefly dropped into Port Arthur, even managing to slip in for free, as we weren’t interested in paying $25 each for the 30 minutes we could spare. The irony of slipping in illegally to such a famous penal colony was not lost on us!




We were on a mission at this point, running out of time in Tassie, so we kind of raced up the East Coast. Unfortunately the weather was consistently overcast and grey for the entire week, so the turquoise water on the beautiful coastline wasn’t very obvious – Wineglass Bay and Bay of Fires weren’t anything like the postcards!



Got in a surf just north of Bicheno where Tim wisely waited until after we’d got out of the water to disclose ‘You know, we ticked all the boxes for a shark attack there, it was an overcast day, there was a little warm freshwater stream running into the ocean, there were dogs playing on the shore, AND I peed in my wetsuit.’

We also drove through some of the areas that had been burnt out in the bushfires a couple of months ago. With Tassie rainfall, they were already starting to regenerate, the blackened trees were covered in green fuzz and the ground blanketed in green grass. And some people still had their sense of humour. There was a block for sale which was completely charred that had a big sign ‘For Sale 25ha - Fire Hazard Free’.


Caught up with Nics aunty Lyn and her partner Mike in St Helens which was good fun. Then went on to Devonport and had a lovely dinner and stayed the night with Vicki, which was also great. So after a bit of a drought we’ve had a run of friends and familiar faces.

So it was back on the Spirit of Tasmania (this time upgraded to a cabin – woo hoo!) and back to ‘The Mainland’. We are very sad to leave Tassie, we’ve both completely fallen in love with the place, and starting to feel like part of the landscape, we’ve been here that long.

Hobart Town again

Not sure if it was the dodgy Strathgordon food but we both had a minor gastro thing the day after eating at the workers mess. It was quite a warm day which translates to really hot inside the camper trailer. The march flies outside the tent were the size of small Splendid Wrens which meant that we really couldn’t safely leave the tent, so we didn’t have a very nice morning.

In order to slightly pamper ourselves we decided to get a cabin in a caravan park outside Hobart – our only other experience of such a thing had been quite OK. But this one was awful, really awful, it looked like it hadn’t been touched since it was first delivered by the park-home manufacturers in 1978, and was parked next to a very busy road. With us both feeling a bit fragile, we were not a little disappointed, but hey, at least it had a toilet, which was important at the time.

After another night down south of Hobart (to check out a block of land that Kate and Pete were in the process of buying) we finally got to Hobart, where we stayed for a night with Aidan & Dale & Angas & Mara. They have a beautiful house near the water in Taroona, and we were there for a Hobart-style-heatwave, so there was even swimming at the beach to be had, for us only the third time in our time in Tassie. While we have wandered along many beaches, it has been rarely warm enough for two West Australians to swim.



It was so good to be with a wonderful family, in a beautiful house, and to have conversations that are so much more interesting than your idle travel/campsite chatter.

Nic: For example, if one more woman says to me in a caravan park laundry ‘The washing never stops for holidays does it?’ I think I’ll scream! I shouldn’t be so harsh, I realise they are just trying to break the ice, but I get a little jealous of Tim coz he at least has fishing in common with most of the blokes. It’s as though all women have in common to talk about is laundry, but I’d be much more interested in talking to old fellas about fishing trips.

Tim: And honestly I don’t really give a toss whether you think your Mickey Thompson Desert Stormers are better than the BFG All-Terrains on our Elsie. F’cryin’ out loud - they are only tyres! What did you SEE whilst you were driving??!!

Lake Pedder

From one amazing lake to another. The drive into Lake Pedder was spectacular, through mountain ranges and through forest that is still being fought over right now (like the big protest camp at Florentine Valley, and the Styx Valley where some big old trees were recently saved).

And then Lake Pedder - which was in an absolutely, amazingly beautiful part of Tasmania, surrounded by mountain ranges in every direction. Felt a little bit treachorous in loving Lake Pedder quite so much, given it is (in)famous for being the Tasmanian environmental movements’ big loss in the 1970s. And when we saw on a map the extent of the original Lake Pedder, it became clear just how much of the land was lost in the dam flooding.

But we got the tinnie into the lake anyway, and spent an afternoon exploring and trying yet again to catch a trout! Apart from a slightly strange couple of guys in a foot operated kayak, we had the lake to ourselves, and it was an eerie heavily clouded day that was reflecting in the calm lake – it was quite special.

Late that afternoon we decided to drive another 70+km to Strathgordon, so that Nic could ring (dearest brother) Jezza on his birthday, and we could check out the Gordon Dam. Strathgordon is a utilitarian Hydro town, and the only place to eat was basically the workers mess, where we had a really really ordinary Valentine’s Day meal!

We got to the infamous Gordon Dam with the very last snippet of light, just as the lights came on the dam wall, which all combined to make it a kind of freaky experience, what with vertigo looking down the 140m dam wall. No one else was around in the twilight, and looking at the stains from obvious leaks we just kept thinking – ‘what if the dam’s useful life is about to end NOW while we are standing right on top of it?!?!?!?’