Easter 2015. Torrington National Park

I started packing the car on Thursday night but as the rain started I had to stop and hope that it wasn't raining in the morning. Not a good omen for a weekend away camping. I was up at 6am on Friday morning and although overcast it wasn't raining, so I finished packing the car, showered, changed and headed off before 7am. A quick stop for fuel at the BP just over the border and then I headed south on the motorway before turning off to Lismore and then onto Casino where I had a late breakfast at Maccas. The weather continued to look horrible, overcast and drizzling as I headed toward Tenterfield and combined with the twisty road meant it was slow going. 

Just before Tenterfield the rain cleared away and the roads were dry, there was even some blue sky. I turned south towards Glen Innes and the weather seemed to be getting better. After 30 odd km I turned off towards Torrington via a dirt road shortcut. Torrington was a nice little town, bigger than I expected. Then I followed the signs to the national park campground for another 15 kms or so of dirt road. At the entry to the campground I caught up with Greg, Debbie and their new camper trailer and after paying my camp fees followed them to the furtherest camping spot over the rocky creek crossing. Adam and Meagan were there and had spread out a bit to deter anyone else from thinking about staying in this spot. After a quick chat it was time to setup camp and have a bit of lunch. 

I setup the new tent fairly quickly but I still need to find a better way to get the fly setup as it is a bit difficult for one person. I then thought I would try out the new wide angle zoom lens (Tamron SP AF 10-24 mm A-mount, my camera has a crop factor of 1.5 so in reality it is a 15-36 mm lens) I bought for my camera, so I took a few photos of the car and tent at different angles.

This is about 15 mm (in 35 mm parlance) and close things like the Paj's bull bar get quite distorted. 

A bit further away and the lens at roughly 27 mm which is the widest my main lens goes. 

And finally further away and about 36 mm. I need to play around with it a lot more before I take it away to Antarctica next year. 

We'd just finished lunch when it started drizzling, so we all crowded under the camper trailer awning hoping the rain would go away. In one of the breaks I went and got my gazebo and we put that up to give us a little more room under shelter. Around mid afternoon the others (Kemsley, Josh and Phil) rolled into camp and they crowded under the shelter until there was a slight break in the rain and then they put their tents up. We then added the awnings on Kemsley's and Phil's cars to give us a comfortable area under cover and proceeded to have a few drinks and a chat for the rest of the afternoon. Cheese and dips and crackers sustained us until dinner, which was a communal affair consisting of several curries and rice. I was to cook damper for dessert but the weather hadn't been kind to the fire which Adam had been nursing along and there wasn't enough coals for the camp oven. 

Sometime after dinner the rain stopped for awhile and we were able to sit around the rejuvenated camp fire. 

This however didn't last too long and when the rain came back we moved under the awnings and then onto a nice warm and dry bed. Overnight the rain kept drizzling and things were getting wetter in the morning. After a sleep in, a leisurely breakfast and some more chatting under cover we took advantage of a slight break in the weather to head back into Torrington for their Easter Saturday fair. We had an early lunch at the sausage sizzle, followed by a nice coffee and home made dessert in the local community hall. Then it was back to camp for an afternoon of lounging under the awnings chatting, unfortunately there wasn't a long enough break in the rain to sit around the fire but after dinner I managed to make my damper with Kahlua soaked raisins using the Weber Bbay Q that Greg and Debbie had in their camper trailer. The consensus of opinion while sitting around under the awnings was that we would probably pack up the next day and head home early as it wasn't much fun camping in the rain. 

The rain persisted down all night and that sealed our fate. After a quick breakfast there was a period were it wasn't raining so we all quickly packed up and got ready to leave. Greg and Debbie and Adam and Meagan headed home via the bitumen while the rest of us followed Kemsley on a magical mystery tour through the back roads to Tenterfield. We lost count of the creek crossings and the cars were covered in mud. At Tenterfield we got some lunch from the Fish and Chip shop and ate in the park as the weather had cleared up a bit. Phil then ended up heading home on the bitumen while the rest of us found some more dirt roads going past Boonoo Boonoo national park. Then it was through White Swamp and onto Rathdowney before a quick stop in Beaudesert to discuss the possible itinerary for a trip away during winter. Kemsley and Josh then headed back to Brissy while I turned east to Canungra and Nerang and then finally home. All up I had done just over 750 kms and was feeling wet and soggy but we still managed to have an enjoyable weekend. 

Of course I had to unpack all the wet stuff from the car and get it set up in the garage to dry. 

Luckily the next day was nice and sunny and I could roll out the car awning and let it dry as well. 

The water proof tape on the seams of the awning had degraded to a useless state so I removed it and tried the old candle wax trick on the seam to try and weather proof it. Hopefully, next time I need to use it in the rain there won't be anymore drips coming through. 😄💧💧💧

Australia Day Weekend 2015 - Paddy's Flat, NSW

Due to the rain persisting down all day Friday, I didn't get a chance to pack the car until Saturday morning. By this time it was down to just Shane and I as the plague had infected Jo and Ron's household and laid them low. The plan was for me to head down the highway to Lismore and Casino (Warning pies purchased at an  Organic Hippy bakery are simply disappointing) and finally Tabulam before turning north onto Paddy's flat road and getting to the Clarence River from the south while Shane would head out through Tamborine and then south to Wodenbong and Urbanville before getting to the river from the north at around lunch time on Saturday.

Along the way I took a little detour into the Richmond Range National Park and there was some very nice views over the farmland, there was also a nice lookout at Mallanganee. 

At Tabulam there was a very long one lane timber bridge crossing the Clarence River but because of traffic I didn't get chance to take a photo. A couple of kilometers west of Tabulam I took the north turn onto Paddy's Flat road which started out as a bitumen road before turning into quite a well maintained gravel road.  I got to the river at about 12:30pm and stopped for a bit of a look as it was running quite quickly under the bridge. 

Then it was across the bridge and a quick drive around the very empty camping area (there was only one other campsite at that stage). While I was walking down to have a look at the river Shane rolled in from the north and we selected our camp site and proceeded to get setup. About this time I realized the first thing I had forgotten was the UHF radio, the first of several things that I had forgotten. As I had a new tent (Coleman Instant Up 4 man tent) that I hadn't even unpacked, I decided to make a time lapse movie of the setup. So I set the iPhone 6+ up on a tripod and used the time lapse mode in the iOS 8 camera app. The app handles everything and produces the movie which I then uploaded to YouTube. 

We had camp setup pretty quickly and it became obvious that only red cars were allowed at our camp. 

As it was quite warm and no hint of rain we settled in under some shady trees with cold beverages and caught up on the state of the world since we had last been camping. As it got a little later in the afternoon we decided to go and find some wood for the evenings campfire but the supply in the immediate vicinity of the camp site was minimal so we headed off for a quick drive back along the road and collected suffient wood pretty quickly. I then started dinner cooking (lamb roast) in the Cobb Oven and had a few more drinks around the camp fire which wasn't really needed for heat but for visual appeal. Around this time the mossies made an appearance and they were pretty thick, so it was out with the Bushmans repellant which worked a treat but left that horrible smell of DEET. 

Dinner ended up being  sort of souvlaki, with roast lamb in a wrap with tzatziki, tabouli, tomato, lettuce and a squeeze of lemon - excellent, even if I do say so myself and the bonus was tons of left over lamb for later lunches and dinners. I also remembered why I don't normally get too fancy with cooking while camping as things are just harder to cleanup without a kitchen and hot and cold running water around you. Then it was back to chatting around the campfire while the clouds zipped by over head but there was no real threat of rain they just obscured the stars. We headed off to bed around 10 pm and it was still fairly warm. Over night there was a very heavy dew and the fly ended up quite wet on the outside and wet underneath from condensation however the inner tent was completely dry so I was glad that I had taken the time to put the fly up. 

I had a lazy sleep in next morning and spent some time reading a book while Shane went for a walk around the ridges where he found a serviceable dunny but the redback spiders chased him out and he vowed to return with some insecticide and get revenge. Next up was my usual camping brekkie of bacon and eggs before a leisurely reading of a book under a shady tree. The sky was perfectly clear and blue and it was starting to get very hot, so I changed into swimming gear and packed the towel for a walk down to the creek. We found a fairly shallow spot under some shady trees and simply sat in the flowing water and cooled down nicely. I would be back here a few times through the day to cool down. 

Then it was time for a walk around the south bank of the river to look at the old graves and the tank traps left over from WW2.

I stopped in to cool off in the river before heading back to camp for some lunch. It was feeling very warm and the thermometer in the car was registering 38 deg C. So I settled in for a lazy afternoon reading and trying to keep cool. I may have just dozed off for a little bit every now and then and Shane claims there was snoring coming from the tent but it must have been an echo from one of the other campers. 😄 It was back to the creek to cool off for awhile before a simple dinner and then we settled around the camp fire again. Tonight there were no clouds above us and we had a great view of the stars and of all the passing planes of which there were quite a few.  It had cooled down a bit once the sun had set and we didn't get the mossies visiting us like the previous evening. There were banks of clouds to the south and east and they showed quite a lot of lightning activity but we couldn't even hear any thunder. We went to bed around 9:30 pm as we were exhausted from a tough day of reading, swimming and relaxing although I'm sure the hot weather also took its toll. 

The next day started in a similar vein to the previous one for me as I had a little sleep in and reading session while Shane had launched his canoe and gone for a paddle. I had a leisurely brekkie and waited while the dew and condensation on the tent dried off so that I could pack up. About this time the low voltage cutoff on the fridge cut in and I started and idled the car for 15 or so minutes to put some charge back into the battery. This was pretty good, one and three quarters of a day from a 90 amp hour battery in very hot conditions while keeping the fridge cold. Once it was dry I packed the new tent up and of course had problems fitting it back in the bag it had come in, ended up leaving the fly separate and putting it in the car without trying to stuff it in the bag. 

At about 10 pm Shane and I parted company, me heading to the north and him heading south to do a bit of exploring. Just before Urbanville I dropped into Tooloom Falls to have a look. There was a lot of water flowing over the falls and the campground was pretty full although it looked like quite a few people were in the process of packing up and heading home after the school holidays. 

Then it was onto Wodenbong were I stopped on the eastern side of the town at a park where it looked like you could camp for a grand fee of just $5. I then headed towards Kyogle but turned off towards the Lions Road and then went exploring the Border Ranges national park. The camping ground at Sheep Station creek was virtually empty but it looked like it would be a reasonably nice spot to camp. Going further into the national park they had closed off the loop around some of the lookouts and picnic spots, so I continued on the main section of the road which eventually comes out on the Kyogle to Murwillumbah road. At this stage I could see where all the storms that went around us the night before ended up. There was a lot of leaves, branches and even trees down on the road. The Rangers who were clearing it all up said that a nasty storm had passed through the area over night. I stopped at one of the lookouts for a photo and could see some rain clouds heading towards me.

So I headed onto the Bar Mountain lookout picnic area where I had a quick bit of lunch before continuing out of the park and into Murwillumbah and then connecting up to the main highway and onto home. All up I had done just on 500 kms over the weekend and got some serious relaxing done. While it was quite warm at the camping ground we had the river to keep us cool. The camp ground was pretty empty with only 4 or 5 other groups there and we hardly knew they were there.

Follow Up - WD My Passport Wireless

In the spirit of one of my favorite podcasts (Accidental Tech Podcast, atp.fm ) who love their FU (follow up). I purchased this wireless hard drive before leaving for my Tasmania Trip predominantly to back up photos from my camera's SD card and then share them wirelessly to my iPhone and iPad. This failed pretty dismally mainly because the drive was so slow to copy photos from the card that it ran out of battery once before finishing the copy. The card was class 10 in speed and only had about 950 x 14 megapixel photos (roughly 5 MB jpgs each). I don't regard this as an excessive number of photos, so taking more than the 5-6 hour battery life to copy them to the hard disk was very disappointing. The next evening I set the copy up with the drive plugged into a 12 volt power source in the car and let it run while I slept. The copy worked fine. 

When I got home I noticed a review stating the same problems (http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2014/12/mypassport-wireless-review-a-hard-drive-after-photographers-hearts/) and suggesting that it would be speeded up by a firmware update. So I went through a couple of arcane ways of updating the firmware one of which finally worked and found that it decreased the copy time substantially to around 2.5 hours for the same 950 or so photos (for comparison this copy took less than 5 min on my iMac). This is better but still not ideal. Also, I found that the iPad app to connect and download photos to the iPad was not wonderful with it being very slow to show thumbnails of the images and then not being able to actually put it into the Photo Roll where I needed the photos to be so that I could upload them to my daily blog. It was much easier and faster to read the SD card in the iPad SD card adapter and load them into my blog that way. I guess I now have a rather expensive 1 TB wireless hard drive that I'll have to find another use for. :(

A Sampler Tour of Tasmania. Executive Summary.

Over the 22 days of this trip, I travelled almost 8,000 kms, including roughly 3,500 kms getting to and from Melbourne, leaving 4,500 kms of travel around Tasmania itself. Fuel was by far the most expensive part of the trip and I spent around $1,500. The average fuel economy for the whole trip was almost exactly 12 litres/100 kms which was not too bad considering the car was loaded up with camping gear and the Oztent was on the roof. I took just over 1000 photos with my Sony alpha DLT and another 250 photos using the iPhone 6 plus all of which have now been location tagged using the track I recorded using the Hema Explorer app on my iPad. 

As I said earlier in these blogs 18 days is not nearly enough time to see the whole of Tasmania properly and I now have a list of places that I can come back and spend much more time exploring. This includes the Arthur-Pieman Conservation Area and the whole north west corner, the region to the south of Hobart, the Bay of Fires and the north east corner, Hobart itself and the districts between it and Launceston. Next time I will aim for a warmer time of the year, probably February when the school holidays are over and hopefully I will dodge the bloody winds. 

The things I enjoyed were the beautiful scenery and pleasant little villages which seem to pop up almost anywhere. The bakeries and coffee shops in these small places are very good and I think I consumed an above average quantity of pies during the trip and came away with a hankering for curried scallop pies. Also, the local produce cheese, ham, bacon, etc. was very good and the seafood was exceptional and I am already missing the simple meal of flake in a thin batter and chips cooked to perfection. The national parks on the whole seem pretty well run and the 2 month pass for $60 is good value, otherwise it's $24 per day per car to enter most of the national parks. Camping in the parks is a tad on the expensive side but they do seem to offer good facilities. A lot of the conservation areas also offer free or cheap camping but only provide minimal facilities. Most of the caravan parks in the towns were nice, if a little expensive but at the end of a hard days touristing I find that a hot shower is required to aid in easing the aches and pains that seem to becoming more common as I am getting older. 

The road to and from Melbourne via Sydney is a relatively easy drive with dual lane separated highway existing for about 2/3 the distance. This is a great improvement over the old Newel Highway which I used to drive regularly when I lived in Melbourne. The ferry over to Tasmania is an exercise in waiting at different points of the boarding process and sleeping in the ocean recliners is not a comfortable experience. I think next time I may splash out a bit of extra cash to upgrade to a cabin. The experience of the ferry is great and they must employ a huge number of people, to get the cars and trucks loaded, work in the bars and restaurants on board and generally be pleasant and helpful. 

All up it was a very pleasant couple of weeks and I look forward to returning at some point in the future. 

A Sampler Tour of Tasmania. Day 21 and 22

The ferry pulled into the dock in Melbourne before 06:00 but I wasn't able to drive off it until nearly 07:30 when I let the GPS app navigate me out of Melbourne to the Hume Highway. The weather was a typical Melbourne spring day grey, dreary, overcast and chilly. This changed the further north I headed as it warmed up and the clouds cleared. My first stop was the outbound service centre at Wallan where I refueled the car and had a bit of breakfast. Then it was back onto the nice boring dual carriage way highway for the easy cruise to Sydney. I stopped in at Holbrook for a quick lunch and found an unexpected submarine in the local park before continuing onto Goulburn for some more fuel. 

At this stage I knew I didn't want to try to get through Sydney and its Friday arvo peak traffic so I decided to stop at Moss Vałe for the evening. This wasn't such a good choice as the caravan park was a bit disappointing with no toilet paper or hot water in the men's amenities. 

I was up and gone by around 06:00 the next morning and once again the phone GPS app got me through Sydney with no problems. I stopped in at the fake Ayers Rock for some fuel and then continued north. The good road finished a bit before Kempsey but it still wasn't too bad a run. A quick lunch at Coffs Harbour and then the final run home. Once again with minimal traffic and no real delays. I pulled into home just on 17:00 NSW time. It had taken me 11 hours to travel almost exactly 1000 kms. A quick unpack of the car was followed by a collapse into the comfy lounge chair and then a hot shower and an early night in bed. Home Sweet Home. 

A Sampler Tour of Tasmania. Day 20

My final day on Tassie started with some glorious if very chilly weather. I ended up staying warm in the swag for a bit longer than usual but once the sun was up the day started warming up nicely. Then it was time to cook breakfast and pack up camp. 

I was on the road before 08:00. I headed west to Liffey Falls, the road was a little rough and twisty but it was well worth it. The falls are only 20 mins or so walk from the car park and there are a few little cascades before the actual falls making it a very pleasant stroll. 

After that I headed north to Delorane before heading west to Mole Creek Caves. I visited two caves - The Cathedral and King Solomons Cave both smaller than a lot of other caves I've visited but well worth the look. There were bonus glow worms in the Cathedral cave tour. 

After that it was into Delorane for a late lunch and the venison pie was quite good. Then north towards Devonport and the ferry. On the way I wasted some time visiting the beaches at Port Sorell and Hawley Beach and then waited for the ferry to board. 

It was the Spirit of Tasmania I this time not II but I ended up in the same parking garage in the bowels of the ship. 

I had their buffet dinner and it wasn't too bad, however after a night of sitting in their Ocean Recliners my bum is pretty numb. The trip was calm and uneventful, now time for the long drive home. 

A Sampler Tour of Tasmania. Day 19

The day started out clear and pretty chilly but not too much wind. I had a nice breakfast and headed off to explore the Highland Lakes via Poatina. There is a hydroelectric station here and that means that there will be a steep climb up to the hills behind it, roughly 1000 metres in only a couple of kms. 

Up high in the hills it got very cool with the external temperature dropping to around 7 deg and then the wind chill factor from the strong winds needed to be subtracted from that. Needless to say I didn't get out of the car very often to take photos. I had a look at Great Lake and then turned off to Arthur's Lake before taking a rather narrow unmaintained track to meet up with the turnoff to Interlakan. This small spit of land between two lakes is quite picturesque and the camping grounds seemed pretty good. 

From here it was back to the main highway at Tunbridge and turning north before taking the backroads to Cressy as they followed alongside the Macquarie River. At Cressy I had an early lunch and caught up quickly with Chris, one of the Overlander forum folks. Then it was north to Launceston where I went to have a look at Cataract Gorge which is very close to the centre of town. 

This is a beautiful spot for a picnic and a walk.  As I was feeling somewhat energetic I ignored the chair lift and walked along the track across the swaying suspension bridge to the lookout on the other side. The gardens here are very nice but not all that quiet as the Peacocks were making quite a bit noise. 

Then it was a quick walk down beside the gorge before returning the kiosk where I indulged in quite a nice cappuccino before heading back to camp. 

Along the way I took the chance to refuel the car for the last time before returning to the northern island tomorrow night. Back at camp I had a relaxing few hours watching the ducks annoy other people and the fishermen steadfastly not catching fish.