Tassie Adventure Day 5

Had a bit of a sleep in and a leisurely brekkie but still managed to get going by 8 am. I headed west along the Bass Highway towards Stanley, stopping off along the way at Rocky Cape National Park for a quick look. Also had a look at a couple of the little beach towns along the way. Turned off towards Stanley and found access to the beaches on either side of the narrow isthmus.

 Stanley is a very quaint little town with quite a few old buildings and its best known feature "The Nut". I had a drive around the town first and from a quick look in the restaurant window it looked like a lobster meal was going to be around $140, which is just a little rich for my taste. 

Then it was off to the Nut and I wimped out and paid for the chair lift to the top and back, much, much easier than walking. The 2 km walk around the top is quite nice and the views are spectacular, the clockwise direction is the easiest way. After this is drove around the rest of the peninsular and there were even better views of the Nut from the western side. 

Back to the highway and into Smithton for a quick look and some lunch before heading west along the Bass Highway again, all the way to the west coast. I stopped for a look at the beaches of Marrawah and there were some brave souls surfing, although there was next to no wind and the swell wasn't too big, they still looked cold in their wet suits. 

I headed south and stopped in at few places on the way to Arthur River which seems like quite a nice place, with a very long single lane bridge to negotiate. I kept going south but all the little beaches and townships started to look the same so I concentrated on the road as the signs were telling me that I may run over a Tassie Devil at anytime and they are endangered. Didn't even see one let alone run over one. From Couta Rocks I took the Tarkine tourist route through the forest back to Smithton, stopping at the occasional lookout. 

A quick refuel in Smithton and then I headed back to Somerset and camp for a nice hot shower, dinner and a relaxing evening. 

Tassie Adventure. Day 4

Had a good nights sleep and woke up to a dry tent. Not only wasn't there any condensation inside the tent, the outside of the tent was bone dry, no dew at all overnight. I had a leisurely brekkie and folded done the awning in case we had more strong winds today while I was out. I headed off about 07:30 to Cradle Mountain via the Murchison highway, stopping off at the odd scenic spot along the way. I got to the Visitor Centre at Cradle Mountain around 10'ish and the wind was pretty chilly so I changed into the warm clothes and put my new walking shoes on before catching the shuttle bus up to the Dove Lake car park. By now nearly all the clouds had disappeared and the view of Cradle Mountain over the lake was spectacular.

I set off to circumnavigate the lake in a clockwise direction which had been recommended as the best way. The first half was pretty easy with mainly flat walking but on the way back to the start a couple of hilly bits intruded onto the serenity. In total it took me about 2.5 hours for the nearly 6 km walk, this included many stops for me to take photos, which is actually a euphemism for I needed to stop for a bit of rest. 

Then after the shuttle bus trip back to the Visitor Centre I found that they had Magnum Ego double caramel ice creams in stock and this became lunch. I set off for a drive to Sheffield to look at the murals and took some back roads to view a bit of scenery.  

I was a bit disappointed in Sheffield but that may have been from the very ordinary pie and cappuccino rather than the murals. On the way back to camp I found a few more back roads with the odd waterfall or two. 

I was back at camp just after 6 pm and decided to extend my stay here by another day to explore the Stanley region. Then a nice hot shower and dinner topped the day off nicely. During the day I had booked a boat cruise at Strahan for Friday, hopefully this good weather continues on. 

Today's drive in blue. 

Tassie Adventure. Day 3

Woke up stiff and sore after spending the night in the Ocean Recliner but at least the Kwells did their job and I didn't get seasick. The crew woke everyone just before 6 am and at 06:30 started sending everyone down to their cars for the first wait of the day, then we were off the ship and into another line before ending up in 8 lines in the car park where we went through "Customs" again. As always happens I was at the end of the line and one of the last to be set free. I had a quick Brekky at a local bakery before finding the Bass Highway and heading for Burnie. 

I ventured off the highway to explore some of the little towns before Ulverston and then continued onto the town of Penguin and continued along the coast until I got to Burnie. There doesn't seem like much to support these towns but I suspect people live there and commute to the bigger towns to work. Burnie was a bit of a disappointment as the parking around the main city centre was all metered and there didn't seem to many places a visitor could park and explore. I found the penguin centre and may come back one night. I didn't find a place to stay so headed onto the next little town of Somerset where I found a reasonable caravan park and booked in for a couple of nights. 

I set up the Oztent this time and had a great hot shower before walking back into town to do some shopping and get some lunch. The Flake and chips was excellent, with crispy chipies and a good sized piece of flake with a very thin coating of batter, not the normal thick fatty stuff. Then it was back to camp where I had parked the car to act as a windbreak for the tent as there was some quite strong gusts. 

I had a look at the map and decided to go for a leisurely drive along the coast. I went through Wynyard and went up to the lighthouse at Table Cape where it was extremely windy and very cold, before I found a beautiful little spot called Boat Harbour. It is a protected little cove with very white sand and is very picturesque and they serve a great cappuccino as well. 

Then it was off to the town of Sisters Beach and the Rocky Cape national park. It wasn't as spectacular as Boat Harbour but I was able to put the Paj into AWD and explore a rough track into the park. It wound along beside the beach but there wasn't a lot to see. My maps suggested there may be a better track on the other side of town but it turned out to be a walking trail. As it was getting on in the afternoon I headed back to camp only to find that my tent fly had torn in the wind, so I took it off the tent and I'll see if I have a problem with condensation tonight. 

I was feeling a little tired as I hadn't slept very well last night, so I had a late afternoon nap, then cooked some dinner before sitting down to write up my blog for the day. The wind has dropped off a bit but it is getting quite chilly so I think it'll be an early night in bed where I'll plan a trip to Cradle Mountain for tomorrow.

Tassie Adventure. Day 2

I was woken up bright and early by some bloody noisy birds so I figured I may as well get up. After packing the tent, swag and getting changed I hit the road at 06:30. It was a very easy drive as its double lanes and not a lot of traffic but it also not a particularly interesting or scenic drive. I had decided to refuel body and car at a roadhouse just before Seymour but they had closed off all their fuel pumps, so it was back onto the highway. Around here I noticed that it was getting very windy but it wasn't until I got out of the car at Wallan to refuel that I realised it had also got chilly. 

I also had a spot of lunch here before getting the GPS app on the iPhone fired up to make sure I could find my way to the dock. I was doing well until I got off one exit early but the app recalculated and got me there no worries. The parking around sea front was hard to come by and expensive so I dropped back a couple of blocks and found a 2 Hr spot. I then went for a walk and found out where I had to go to get on the ferry. 

Then I had to kill another hour or two until boarding so I continued to walk around the sea front before wandering back to the car to get ready. Then at 16:30 I drove to gate and then proceeded to wait in three different queues before finally boarding at 18:00. Nearly ready to go, the ocean recliners are not looking too comfortable so I may not get too much sleep tonight. 

Hopefully not too many other people will be crowded into this area as they will have to put up with my snoring. 

Tassie Adventure. Day 1

I got up at 5 am showered, put the last of my gear in the car and headed off at 5:30 am, powered by an Ice Break Iced Coffee. The weather was perfect for driving and there wasn't that much traffic on the road, so I was able to cover a lot of distance. The only really slow spot was Coffs Harbour and the odd toilet break. I refuelled the car and me at the fake Ayers Rock at North Arm Cove and stopped off briefly to catch up with some Overlander Forum friends camping at Norm's place for the weekend. 

Then it was back on the road heading to Sydney. I missed one turn early on but the GPS soon got me on track and it was an easy run out to the M7. The Hume highway is an easy drive and being able to cruise on 110 km/hr meant I was making good time. 

I got into Goulburn just after 6pm NSW time and checked into the local caravan park. I set the tent up and went off for dinner at Maccas before refuelling the car on the way back to camp. 

It wasn't until after the nice warm shower that I started to feel tired but now I'm ready for a nice early night in the swag.  I ended up covering about 1050 km during nearly 12 hours of travelling. Looks like the SPOT tracker is working fine now so it must have just been a battery problem. I'll head off early in the morning to Melbourne which is only about 650 kms away, so I should be there in plenty of time for the ferry loading which starts about 5:30 pm.  

WD My Passport Wireless

Just got a WD My Passport Wireless 1 TB drive for my upcoming Tassie trip. It is a battery powered hard disk with builtin WiFi and an SD card reader. When I fill up a sd card on my camera I can copy the photos to the hard disk for backup and then access them from my iOS and Android devices via the builtin wifi and the WD Apps. So once all the photos are on the disk I can copy just the images I want for my blog posts to the iPad (via wifi) to write the blog. When I get home the disk will connect to my iMac as an external USB 3 device making it pretty fast to copy the photos and movies onto the computer. 

The battery life is supposed to be 6 hours and it charges from a USB port, so I shouldn't have any problems powering it from the car on the trip. For those with kids it is also a media centre and can play back movies to several (5 I think, has builtin DLNA server) wifi connected devices. I got it for $246 from Hardly Normal and I think it is also available at Officeworks and JB HiFi for roughly the same price.  The details and specifications are here :- http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=1330

I've had an initial play now with the drive and the iOS app and can see they have some idiosyncrasies. For instance I have copied photos and movies from both my camera sd card and my GoPro micro-sd card (in an adapter) and in theory they go into a DCIM directory similar to the file structure seen on the camera sd card but that directory doesn't show up in its iOS app file browser. You can see the photos and movies only from its own "Photos" and "Movies" browser but with no folder support you just see a long list of the appropriate files which won't be too useful with several thousand photos stored. I may have to go full nerd and turn on the ftp server function and use that to transfer files. Disconnecting and reconnecting to the drive solved the problem of not seeing the imported sd card directory. Looks like each sd card ends up with its own directory, so I can separate out the GoPro photos and movies from the ones taken using my Sony camera. The WD android app on my Nexus 7 also seems to work in a similar fashion and allows access to the saved files. 

In a pleasant surprise I took the above photo using my iPhone and then started editing this blog (using Blogger) on the iPhone, inserted the image and then saved as a draft. I then went to my iPad opened Blogger and the draft showed up there ready for editing, I initially thought the draft may have been stored locally on the iPhone but no it was stored on the Blogger server. :) :) :)

However, I tried editing using the Blogger app on the Nexus 7 and it also saw the draft but proceeded to crash and burn when I tried to edit and save this text. :( :( :(

Unfortunately, the blogger app also doesn't seem to recognize the emoji from the iOS keyboard, so I had to revert to good old ascii smilies and sad faces. :( :)

Sundown National Park, Qld. Labour Day Long-weekend.

While my home iMac is being backed up prior to loading a new operating system (Yosemite - MacOSX 10.10) I thought I should get around to catching up with my travel blog and write up the trip to Sundown National Park over the Qld Labour Day Long weekend in October. As we were meeting up at the quite reasonable hour of 10 am at the Beaudesert Maccas, I was able to have a bit of a sleep-in as the car was packed and I just had to strap the OzTent to the roof racks. I left home at around 8 am and had an uneventful trip to Beaudesert with hardly any long weekend traffic to hold me up. I got there a little early so picked a newspaper, a sausage roll and an iced coffee from the local shops and had a second Brekky in the park. Then it was off to Maccas to meet up with Adam and Meagan, Josh and Phil, unfortunately Kemsley had been kept back at work (in Mackay from memory) and wouldn't be able to make it away. 

We left Beaudesert around 10ish and headed south towards Rathdowney where we saw heaps of motorbikes and their riders meeting up on some sort of organised trip. We turned off towards Boonah to take the back way to Stanthorpe and avoid any holiday traffic. This involved going past Lake Maroon, White Swamp and Legume and staying on as many gravel roads as possible. We got into Stanthorpe around midday and found a little bakery open and proceeded to have a very pleasant lunch before continuing on south towards Ballandean. We stopped quickly on the way so that Adam could fuel up as he was the only one of us without long range fuel tanks. Then onto the national park where after a short stop to let some air out of the tyres we headed off to our camp site at Reedy camp ground. The road in was rough as usual with lots of dust and rocks but taking it slowly meant we coped quite easily although at one stage Phil had the return of a problem where the engine would cut out but it disappeared after he switched from lpg to petrol. 

We got to the camp grounds at about 4 pm and found only one other family there, so we set up camp on a reasonably flat piece of ground around a nice campfire pit. 

It was about now when Adam wanted to go for a bit of drive that he found out that his main battery hadn't survived the rough roads but he was able to jump start the car easily using his auxiliary battery. After making the short drive to have a look at the Burroughs waterhole camp ground, Adam came back and proceeded to go into fire bug mode and got the camp fire going. We had several bags of firewood for each evening so he was able to pile the wood on, with the rest of us sitting around with drinks and some cheese, dips and crackers. I got the quadcopter out for a bit of a fly but stuffed up the filming on its first run, which also scared the Kangaroos off, I then swapped batteries and had another go which was much more successful. Then it was time to cook dinner as it was getting a bit dark and we ended up back around the campfire for some more drinks and chatting, before heading to bed around 10'ish.

We slept in a little in the morning before having a leisurely breakfast. Then at around 9'ish we headed off for a drive, stopping in at the other camp ground to make use of the pit toilets and to see how crowded it was. All the spots along the river were taken and there wasn't a lot of space left, so we were glad we opted for the less crowded camp ground. Then it was off for a bit of a drive down the wombat hole hill along the creek, finally crossing over the river at the rock shelf with only a little bit of scrapping. 

It was about now that Phil noticed that one of his rear tyres was low so he added some air to it and kept driving carefully. It wasn't long before it became apparent he would have to change it, so we started to look for a nice shady flat spot off the road to do this, however the good spots were taken with campers. We ended up crossing another part of the creek and then found somewhere that the change could happen while we had some morning tea. 

While Adam helped Phil change tyres, I was being closely questioned by another group about the conditions on the Canning Stock Route as they heading there in May of next year. One guy was definitely going to have fun as he was driving a V8 petrol Landcruiser and was going to need a fuel drop well before the halfway point. Some video shot by someone else in his party showed that he used speed and momentum just a little too much in his earlier hill climb where he had the front end of the Landcruiser well and truly up in the air. After the tyre was changed we explored a little more before crossing back over the two creeks and heading back towards camp. 

On the way up the wombat holes hill I found it more difficult than last time as the ground seemed drier and dustier with less grip and deeper holes. I made it to the top with only some beeping from the traction control, fortunately I didn't get the tone of death that indicated that the traction control had overheated would no longer help with the hill climb. As I was first up the hill and I wanted to try out the video on the new iPhone, I got the others to wait while I parked and walked back to a suitable spot. Out of all the cars Phil's long wheel base Paj made the climb the easiest as it seemed to be able to span the holes much better. Adam had his mud tyres on and they made it easier for his shortie than Josh and I with the ATR's. Then it was back to camp for some late lunch and a nice relaxing afternoon. After a bit of snooze and some reading I went for a bit of a wander to try and get some photos of the Kangaroos I had scared off the previous day. The were fairly shy and I took awhile to get close enough to get some nice photos. 

By this time Adam's pyromaniac tendencies had come to the fore and the fire was lit even though it was neither cold nor dark. The remainder of the cheese, dips and crackers made their appearance and disappeared slowly as night descended. 

We sat around the fire for awhile but ended up turning in early as we had had a very tiring :) day and we needed to pack up in the morning to head back to civilization. 

The packing was fairly leisurely after a nice breakfast of bacon and eggs and we ended up leaving the camp site at around 8:30 am. The slow drive out of the park was going well until we caught up to a group in front of us and the last vehicle in their group managed to get a flat tyre on a rocky hill a little bit before the turnoff to Red Rock Canyon Lookout. It looked like he pinched the tyre against a rock and broke the bead, leading to rapid deflation. As Adam was the lead car in our group he somehow became the designated tyre change helper even though there was another four cars worth of people in their group who ended up standing around watching. After that was fixed they waved us on and we continued to the exit of the park where we aired the tyres up and not long afterwards hit the bitumen. 

At this point I split off from the others as I couldn't face heading back through Beaudesert and Canungra as I knew it would be slow and packed with rubber necking tourists, so I said my goodbyes and headed south over the enemy border to Tenterfield. From here I travelled east on the Bruxner Highway to Casino where I stopped for a quick bite of lunch, hoping that the grumpy RBT cop from my last visit here wasn't on duty. Then for something different I headed to Lismore and from there up to Mulimbimby and across the roads at the back of Byron Bay before joining up with the M1 and cruising home with no traffic problems at all. 

I got home around 3'ish and unpacked the car, did some washing of both my clothes and myself and generally relaxed for what remained of a very pleasant weekend. The map below shows my rather roundabout trip, all up just over 650 kms for the weekend.