Travelling MoyJos

After a relaxing night in our Wilderness Cabin, we got up and ready early for a 7:00am breakfast.

We decided to go for a walk around the lodge park and have a look at Lake St Clair.  I could see from the map we had, that there was a jetty not far from our cabin.

It was a lovely walk along the forest paths to reach the lake, before reaching the main lodge building where our buffet breakfast was waiting.

The ferry moored at the jetty is used to ferry walkers from the Overland Track.

The Overland Track is a 5-7 day walk that begins at Cradle Mountain and finishes here at Lake St Clair. ..Madness 😄

The breakfast had the usual buffet fare, and we enjoyed our breakfast before returning to the cabin, packing the car and traveling a short 10 minutes to “The Wall in the Wildrness”

We visited The Wall when we were here 20 years ago and have seen in a few times since on various travel shows.  The artist is certainly talented and we enjoyed our time here. (No photos allowed)

The next stop was Tarraleah.  This town was built for the construction of the Hydroelectric station.  The village is a collection of original 1940’s bungalows and a stately lodge, that was originally built to house visiting dignitaries, engineers and management.

In the late 1990’s Hydro Tasmania sold the entire village and it is now run as luxury accommodation.

Read about Tarraleahs history here

Sadly, I could not get any decent photos as the sun was in my eyes the whole time 🙁

From Tarraleah we had a 130 odd km trip to Hobart.

Around 11 o’clock we came across the little town of Ouse. The pub looked like a good place to stop for a break and perhaps morning tea/lunch.

Tea/Coffee and scones, jam and cream were enjoyed before stopping off in New Norfolk. We did a little shop and made our way to our Hobart accommodation for the next 3 nights.

We have stayed her a number of times before and we like it for its convenience.The bus stop is one house down from us and goes directly to the Bus Hub in the city.

We put on a load of washing and settled in for a quiet night.

Tomorrow we will take the bus to town and eat!  The Taste festival opens at midday.

We had breakfast and packed up the car ready to leave for the Wilderness Railway.

Before we left, I made sure to suitably clean the unit so as not to get a $50 charge 😀

We arrived at Regatta Point station in plenty of time to check in and get our boarding pass for the train.

We chose to go on the “Wilderness” carriage which included a glass of sparkling wine or juice and canapes.  Our canapes were cucumber rounds with an avocado cream and salmon topped with a piece of dill.  I said they were very nice, but apparently I lied 🙂. So I got 3 canapes 😃

A little further along we were served a choice of tea, coffee or hot chocolate and a warm scone with herb butter.

The first half of our trip was good with a commentary of the history of the surrounding area and the construction of the railway in the late 1800’s

Stopping at Lower Landing we were offered a guided walk through the surrounding rain forest, but we chose not to as it had been raining on and off all morning.

Soon enough and we were back on the train for the return journey.

Our next stop was Queenstown. The road was as windy as we remembered.  A slow 40kms later we reached our destination, the Empire Hotel.

I had read about this hotel as being part of the towns rich history.  The building has a beautiful Tasmanian Blackwood staircase.  The wood was cut from the local area, sent to England to be crafted and shipped back to Tasmania to be assembled in the hotel.  The whole staircase is now heritage listed.

We had a good lunch at the hotel before having a look at the Queenstown Station.

Our final stop for the day was the Lake St Clair lodge where we are staying for the night.

After our big lunch, we had just cheese and crackers for dinner.

Tomorrow we head to Hobart for 3 nights

They say Sunday is a day of rest, and that is what we had planned :). A whole lot of nothing.

One of the reasons for revisiting Strahan is to ride on the Wilderness Railway, but it does not run on a Sunday.  The plan is to have a rest day, do a load of washing and just generally look around.

I had thought we could have dinner at  lovely restaurant that is situated high above Strahan Harbour and has lovely sunset views…until we realised that the sun does not go down until after 8:30pm…  Too late for us 🙂

So we thought we could perhaps go up and have lunch.   No such luck. :(. They are only open for buffet breakfast and buffet dinner.

I was able to take some lovely photos from the deck though.

We called into the Gordon River Cruise office to ask where we needed to go for the Wilderness Rail and were told to “keep following the harbour around to the other side and you cannot miss it.”. The only reason we could miss it from where we were was that the cruise boat was in the way 🙂

Sure enough we found the station and where we needed to park.  The carriages were at the station so we got a good look at both them and the station cafe.

There are also great views across the harbour looking at Strahan itself.  I am sure they would be extra lovely without the cloud 🙂

We have not decided yet if we will have lunch at the station when we return, or whether we have lunch in Queenstown on our way to our next night’s accommodation at Lake St Claire.

Back to the cabin for a cup of tea and find somewhere for lunch.  We had decided to go out for lunch and then finish the last of the roast chook on sandwiches for dinner.

Well that proved easier said than done:(. It appears that not much at all in Strahan opens for lunch 🙁

We found “The Kitchen” on the Esplanade and had nice meals. (Meatball Linguine & a Seafood Basket.

Back to the cabin and I did a load of washing (and typed this blog) while he had a bit of a nap 🙂

We will get up tomorrow,have breakfast, pack the car, head to the station for our Wilderness Railway trip and then head east again toward Hobart.

Today was one of our longest drive days at 184 kms.  Although Google maps might say 2 and a half hours, we knew that it would take a lot longer than that.

We had breakfast in our motel room, loaded up the car and headed west just after 8:00am

I knew that there was not a lot to see but extremely windy, up and down hilly roads.

The first destination was Cradle Mountain.  The road was certainly a lot better than we had encountered in 2005 when we were here last.  There is a lovely new Visitor Centre.

After a look around we drove down the road to the Cradle Mountain Hotel for lunch.

The hotel is tucked into the wilderness and is much larger than I expected. I had planned to have lunch at the “Altitude” restaurant. Their menu had a nice range of little slider burgers.

We chose a Chicken and a Fish slider than then a Pulled Pork and a Beef one and a serve of chips.

After lunch, we asked the reception girls if we could look at a room. We were shown a couple of rooms. they were quite large and we thought we would like to stay here when we move down.

Back on the highway, our next stop was a little “nothing to see” town called Tullah.

Tullah was built to be a workers camp for the damming of rivers to create Lake Rosebery.

I was turning around to get back on the highway, when I saw a little sign that said “Tullah Jetty”. Of course I had to go that way 😀. I little bit off the road was a car park with a walk down to a (strangely enough) jetty.

The jetty is on the side of Lake Rosebery. The lake is now a primary fishing lake stocked with brown and rainbow trout. Although today was a drizzly grey day, we could see that the lake area would be lovely on a fine day.

Further along the highway, we passed through Rosebery which was a tin ming town then on to Zeehan and then finally to our final destination in Strahan.

I had received an email from the Big 4 park where we had booked in for the next 2 nights to say that check in was from 3:00pm.  Well, silly us, turned up at 2:45pm and were tersely told to come back “well after 3:00 – you would have got an email”

So we left 😀

We thought we would find the petrol station and fill up the car, and get some veges for dinner.

As it turned out, the petrol station was right next to IGA. We had the rest of the BBQ chook left, so we just needed potato, carrot, broccoli and some gravy.

We drove around and had a look at Strahan to get some ideas for tomorrow, before heading back to the caravan park just before 4:00pm.  We were allowed to check in and were shown where our cabin was.

We unpacked, cooked our veges and finished off our chicken dinner and settled in for the night.

Tomorrow is a quiet day and we have absolutely nothing planned.

We had a good night’s sleep and did actually have bit of a sleep in, not waking until just after 5:00am. 🙂

After hot showers and poached eggs for breakfast we packed up the car, checked out, and headed west to Deloraine.

We stopped at the information centre where there was a statue of a racehorse named Malua. Neither of us had ever heard of him, but he certainly was an impressive horse.

Click on the images below to see them full size to read.

From the information centre, I bought a large map to keep and we drove around this pretty town.

Our next stop was Ashgrove Cheese. This has grown to be a huge building now, but sadly without the large tasting room they had when we were here years ago 🙁

We did buy a couple of cheeses and some crackers before heading to our next stop.

Anvers Chocolate is a lovely chocolate factory and cafe. We were able to have a small taste of a couple of their chocolates and, of course, there was chocolate and fudge purchased 🙂

We decided to have a snack in the cafe and were shown to a table.  After a good 10 minutes or so without our orders being taken, we realised other table around us had not been served either.  They were very busy and we figured even if we did get attended to, the wait would probably be quite long :(. We. decided to leave and head toward Devonport for lunch.

We arrived in Devonport around 11:30am and had a look around before finding the Mersey Bluff lighthouse.  It was very windy but not too cold.

Further down the beach we came across the Devonport Surf lifesaving Club and “Drift” Cafe.

We had a VERY nice lunch of Fish and Chips and Mushroom Arancini with Salad.

After lunch, we drove around the town to see the Spirit of Tasmania ferry.  I knew it was a big ferry but I must admit I did not realise how big it actually is.

Soon it was time to head to our overnight stop at Sheffield.

On the way we saw Spreyton Cider Co. We thought “why not”.  They had a tasting flight of 5 different ciders and a ginger beer for $20.  I asked if we could share one flight and were told Yes!. 

While it was $20 we felt at least we now know we are not cider fans 🙂 

None of them grabbed us enough to say, Yes we would drink that”. In fact, we did not finish any of the little glasses.

We made it to Sheffield just after 2:00pm, checked in to our motel room,  walked up the main street to have look at some of the murals.

I did not ake too many photos as I had takem a lot when we were here in 2005.  You can see them all HERE

We stopped off at the local IGA to buy a hot chook.

We made some hot chook sandwiches for dinner, watched some TV and had an early night.

Tomorrow we head to Cradle Mountain and Strahan where we stay for 2 nights.

And we are off:)

After a lovely Christmas Day lunch with family, we had a quiet night, finalised packing and we were ready to go.

We still did not have a sleep in 🙁 (Up at 4:30 am as usual) We had breakfast, a bit of a tidy up , packed the car and headed off to the airport at Maroochydore

We hd 2 flights:  Maroochydore to Melbourne then Melbourne to Launceston.

We left on time from the Sunshine Coast. We had a very nice lunch of Turkey with Roast Vege(me) and Chorizo and Olive Pasta with Napoli sauce (M) and of course a glass of bubbles 🙂

Arriving in Melbourne we had a short wait of around an hour and we were off to Launceston.

The flight to Launceston was a short 55 minute “ take off – just enough time for a cup of tea – and land” flight.

At the airport, I decided to beat the queue and get the hire car while M collected our suitcases off the carrousel.  This proved to be a good plan, as by the time I had finished with the Hertz lady there was a long line behind me 🙂

The hire car we have for the trip is a Kia Sportage.  It is nice but not the Mazda CX3 I was hoping for.  Why is it that hire cars advertise a car and you always get the “or similar” option? 🙁

From the airport, we drove to a local Woolworths for “pantry staples” Tea, Coffee, Milk, Bread, eggs etc and made our way to the CountryClub Villas.

We have stayed here before just after CoVid and we decided it was a good top for the first night.  It is close to the airport and is a very short distance to the Country Club Casino resort that has a selection of nice restaurants for our dinner. I

When I had a look at the website to decide which restaurant we might choose, I saw that the “Link Buffet” had their Christmas Buffet available for Boxing Day.

At first I was thinking that the 7:30pm time slot was too late and we would be hungry before that, then I remembered that we are now 1 hour ahead of Qld time, so for us it was only 6:30pm…perfect.

When we were checking in to the Villas, the lady asked us if we had plans for dinner and told us the Casino had a courtesy bus :). Great!! I did not need to drive, so I could have a glass of wine with dinner.

The little bus was ready for us at reception at 7:15 and we were duly delivered for our dinner.  And what  a dinner it was.  We did not go hungry 🙂

Feeling quite full we got the little bus back to our villa, had a cup of tea and pretty much went straight to bed after a big day.

Tomorrow we have a travel day to Sheffield.