When it wasn't pouring with rain overnight it was blowing a gale. I was pretty protected and was warm and dry in my swag within the mini-tent under the awning. However next morning packing up wasn't good. I was awake early and got everything ready to go but put the wet tent and ground sheet under the camp kitchen roof to give them a chance to lose some water while I had some coffee and toast. I chatted to a German couple who were riding their pushbikes north to Devenport and the ferry later in the week. It made me feel much better that I had a nice warm car to sit in while I travelled.
I was going to walk to the falls but it was still drizzling so wouldn't have been any fun at all so I put the still damp stuff in the car and headed south to Hobart. It was an easy drive and as I got to Hobat I refueled and then set the GPS app to take me to Mt Wellington and as usually happens I didn't listen to the instructions closely enough and got in the wrong lane and ended up going over the big bridge when I didn't need to. Once I was back on course there were signs saying the road to Mt Wellington would be closed tomorrow for some visiting dignitary and the road crews were patching potholes, painting posts and generally slowing down traffic. At the top it was cold, bloody cold. The weather app said 1 deg and felt like -9 deg with the wind almost too strong to walk against. I took some photos and got back in the nice warm car and headed back down the road and south.
I got to Huonville around lunch time and found a great cafe/bakery with superb pies, then it was off to Woolies to stock up on a few foodstuffs. Then it south again where I stopped in at Dover for a quick look and found the caravan park which had been recommended to me the pervious evening. It was a bit early in the day so I continued south to Cockle Creek which is supposed to be the southern most point in Australia that you can drive too.
It was a great looking place but the last 20 kms of road to get there was a pretty rough dirt road with lots of potholes. I went for a walk out to the whale sculpture and I was going to camp there but the wind was so strong that it would have destroyed either of my tents, so I returned to the little town of Southport which has a caravan park behind the pub.
The wind wasn't nearly as bad here and I managed to find a spot behind some trees that acted as a windbreak. Unfortunately, almost zero phone signal so the blog posting will be delayed until later. Tomorrow I'll head off to see the Hastings cave and hot springs before heading over to Bruny Island.
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