Nothing planned for today as it is a public holiday and not much is open. We spent the morning reading a doing “nothing” – after all, we are on holiday 🙂
Such at the pub was deemed a good idea, so we went to the restaurant and had Eye Fillet and Lamb Rack.
In the afternoon, we decided to go back to the land “just because” and again marvel at the view.
Every Sunday, Hobart has a Farmers Market in the CBD. We decided to get the bus to the city and have a look around.
It was a quick 20 minute trip on the bus from the Shoreline shops to the Elizabeth St Mall in the centre of town.
The farmers market is good but did have limited stalls thanks to CoVid and also a number of stall holders had taken the Christmas break as a holiday.
We bought some lovely “melty” cheese from a farmer to make ham and cheese toasties for our dinner.
From the market, we walked down to the waterfront. Even here CoVid restrictions had changed things, with the winning yacht of the Sydney-Hobart being parked away from the main wharf. Ordinarily, the public is able to chat with the sailors from the wharf side.
Wandering along the marina, I noticed something you don’t see in every marina…A PLANE!!
We decided on a fisherman’s basket from the famous Mure’s seafood restaurant.
After lunch, we walked to the corner of Argyle and Davey St to prove unequivocally that I AM silly 🙂
For some time I have been looking at the Tas Traffic cameras and I really wanted to “be on camera” 🙂
The cameras refresh every 30 seconds or so, hence I did not have to wait long before I could see us on the camera.
The resolution is low, so you will have to take my word for it that the blobs in the circles are us 🙂
We caught the bus back to the Eastern Shore. We decided to get off the bus at Eastland Shopping centre ta have a look around. Eastlands is Tasmania’s largest shopping centre and has two floors of shops.
One level has Coles and Kmart and the upper floor has Woolworths and BigW as well as many specialty stores.
Back on the bus we returned to Shoreline and had a cuppa before having a quote afternoon and then making our toasties for dinner.
A quiet day of sightseeing today. We decided to head south along the Huon River. It is a lovely pretty river with rolling hills and large orchards.
We arrived at Franklin at around lunchtime, and the Lady Franklin Hotel looked good for a meal. We have eaten here before and we remembered it was a nice meal with great views overlooking the Huon River.
After lunch, we took a left turn toward Glen Huon to visit Nick Haddow’s dairy farm shop. We thought it may have been closed and it was. It is not open again until the 4th of January.
Back onto the Huon Hwy, we took a right hand turn toward Kingston Beach to take the scenic Channel Hwy route back to Hobart along the coast. This road takes in the suburbs of Taroona and Sandy Bay before heading back through Hobart city, across the Tasman Bridge and home.
At Taroona, I realised we were looking across the Derwent to “our” hill. So, of course, I had to take a photo 🙂
Once back at the hotel, I sent off a couple of messages to the land owner and our builder to arrange a meet up with each of them. We are meeting with the builder on Tuesday.
A quick dinner of BBQ Chicken and vegetables, a quiet night of TV finished off the day nicely.
New Years Eve 2021. We hope that this year will be the last of the pandemic and we can get back to a “normal” life (whatever that means)
I do wonder if we will ever have a “pre CoVid” normal. When considering how other major events like 9/11 etc have changed our “normal”
I think we will see masks on planes for a long time into the future and the need for testing for some time as well.
Today we had a light day planned. I wanted to see were a couple of businesses were located so it would be easier to find them once they were open and there would me more traffic on the roads.
We also needed to extend the hire car drop off time as our return flights had been pushed forward from the original times when I booked the car. I thought it would be FAR easier to go to the Hertz office Hobart itself than trying to get to the airport branch. I was correct 🙂 It proved no issue to change the drop off time from 9:00am tp 12:00pm on the same day and there was no charge for this change.
While we were in the city we took the advantage of not much traffic to call into Hobart BMW for a look… Let’s just say Coastline BMW is MUCH larger 🙂 The young sales guy we spoke to was very friendly and welcoming but the dealership has no where near the amount of vehicles as Coastline.
We went back to the land to see some of the Sydney-Hobart yachts, but I missed a bunch of them by about 30 minutes and, while we could see a couple further in toward Hobart, there were none out the front of “our place”
We picked up a hot chook for sandwiches and after a late lunch, had a quiet afternoon and got a picnic ready to have on our land later this evening to see the 9:30pm fireworks.
It was a lovely clear night for a perfect view of the fireworks. There were a number of cars taking advantage of the view. Although the fireworks were scheduled for 9:30pm it was still quite light.
We laid our towels out on the bottom of our block and again wondered at the view. In these photos you can see the city as well as the Tasman Bridge lit up on the right. Even though we are not drinking, I spoilt myself with one little glass of bubbles 🙂
I really wanted to watch the show and not just through the screen of my phone, so I only took a short video.
Hobart Council, however live-streamed the event here
After the fireworks, we went back to the room, had a cuppa and off to bed. We thought we might have had a bit of noise, as the Hotel was having a NYE party, but neither of us heard anything. (I think we must be getting old 🙂 )
HAPPY NEW YEAR to all our friends and family.
We both slept well and woke around 5:30am. We had some of the pastries for breakfast with a cup of tea, packed our bags back up and drove the short distance up the road to see the Country Club Resort and Casino (the Villas we stayed in are part of the resort)
The Country Club is a typical Aussie Casino with lots of poker machines and opulence. There is a lot to do within the resort complex. There is a golf course, Pony tours, bike hire, a huge pool area, gyms, a number of restaurants and of course the main casino area.
After a look around at the Country Club, we set off for the Cataract Gorge cruise, which was due to depart at 9:30am. There were only 14 of us aboard the “Lady Launceston” for the 50 minute cruise and our captain, Graham, was very knowledgeable and gave a good commentary of the Cataract Gorge, the Tamar River and Launceston in general.
I found this video on YouTube of the Cruise. (Great YouTube Channel with some nice videos)
The last time we were in Launceston was January 2010 and we did a 4hr Tamar River cruise with this same company and it was also excellent.
After the cruise, we were travelling south again back to Hobart, but today we would travel down the coast via Bicheno, Swansea and Sorell before crossing midway and back to Hobart.
We had decided on perhaps Fish and Chips or a Burger for lunch and Google told me that the best place was “The Gulch” in Bicheno. It must be good because after finally finding somewhere to park and securing a table, I was told there was a 1 HOUR wait for food….um no… it was already 12:30 and we were hungry 🙂 Back into the Main Street of Bicheno and we found a nice cafe and shared a huge burger and chips ( in 10 minutes )
After Bicheno, it was a nice drive back to Hobart. The highway is quite narrow and windy but quite often we would get amazing views of gorgeous beaches and bays. Given that this is only 60-90 minutes from the Hobart airport, it really is amazing that developers have not jumped on these areas. I can easily imagine a “Noosa of the South” with great Tassie produce creating “celebrity chef” restaurants with good wine and awesome views thrown in.
We arrived back at the Shoreline Hotel around 5:00pm. I put on a load of washing in the free guest laundry, ordered a pizza to eat in the room and another early night was in store.
