13 Feb 10 - Sheffield region Tasmania

By Lou: Arrived at Devonport at 8am a little bleary eyed. I had foolishly allowed Samuel a top bunk with only a splinter of a barrier so both Craig and I kept waking up worried he was going to roll out of bed even thought it was not particularly rocky. At one stage in his sleep he was kneeling up on his bunk calling out to Grandma and we thought he would step out as if he was on his stretcher bed at Grandmas. Of course, no such thing eventuated.

Sam thought we were arriving in another country and was amazed that this city didn’t have high rise buildings.

We bought breakfast and then headed to a fresh fruit and veggie market in Devonport and stocked up. At this point we still had no particular game plan for touring Tasmania – 3 or 4 weeks? Go east then west? So based solely on a random conversation with a potato stall holder who said there were easterlies blowing at the moment so good time to head west, we headed west. We got about a dozen kilometres west of Devonport thanks to Karen when I pulled out a map and considered the red lines. Craig pulled over and we consulted a map of Tasmania together for the first time. If we wanted to do Cradle Mountain as well as drive down the west coast, we’d be best to head south first and loop back up to the north west corner. So we reprogrammed Karen and headed south.



We headed to Sheffield in rainy weather and admired the mural-studded town (By Craig: Bowen eat your heart out) mainly from the car. We decided to camp for free 14km out of town at Lake Barrington. Although the first day or 2 were wet, we found it was a good base for day drives and a lovely spot to return to for an evening fire. Craig and Sam tried for salmon in the lake with lures and apart from Sam reeling in something within 4 feet of himself it got away. We didn’t have internet connection at the lake so a couple of times that week we drove into town so Sam could join in on his audio lessons.


In our time there we visited Deloraine (did some school in the car; observed an artist making a clay bust; picked up a coat for Sam at the op shop;) toured a salmon and ginseng farm(caught a big salmon),



visited Trowunna Wildlife Park
(held wombats, fed kangaroos, patted Tasmanian devils),










climbed Marion’s Lookout near Cradle Mountain (6km in 2½ hours), gorged on samples of cheese (look out for Ashgrove’s wasabi cheese…delicious), overloaded on honey samples at Chudleigh and generally enjoyed the beautiful scenery. Many a time it has reminded me of England – narrow and winding roads, speeding locals, hedge-lined roads on approach to towns and everywhere only a stone’s throw away. In our travels through the west of Queensland and NSW I had a good 3 hours or so to read up about the next town before we got there. Here, I haven’t even read aloud the first paragraph and we’ve arrived. But it does always feel like a lovely Sunday afternoon drive (but in Autumn cos a Tasmanian summer aint very hot).



By Craig: Camp fires are the best, best in cooler spots & best taken with a Red and some damper, 20 mins and damper with a little butter is hard to beat, I just love it!
Lake Barrington gave us an opportunity to get back into real camping, Ok so it was a little too cold to shower naked on a river bank but the camp fire was the best way to stay warm and look up at the stars each evening.
I must say our warm nights were compliments of a nearby farmer who after chatting with us one morning whilst collecting the campside rubbish thankfully returned in our absence with a load of old (dry) timber, a note left for us simply said 'demolishing a shed thought you could use the timber' and signed 'The rubbish man' although we did exchange names in conversation, regrettably the gentleman's name escapes me, we are however thankful for his generosity.

One little piece of excitement broke my ever increasing laid back mood. The roads around Cradle Mountain are windy and unfortunately Toyota Landcruiser brakes once hot are not the best for down hill bends, so after many Kms of bends and lots of braking we proceeded to descend from Mount Roland down to Chudleigh. After finding my foot felt like it was pressing a sponge I said to Louise in a rather serious tone (slightly higher than normal pitch as my $%^£ was tighter than a pinhead), 'We have no brakes'. Of course Lou thought I was playing one of my usual tricks however with one hand on the handbrake and able to knock the auto down a gear the vehicle started to slow using some of the engine compression (Diesel's are good for this) we slowed to about 40k's and made our way down to the plateau. Parting comment 'It would never have happened in the old LandRover'