Travelling MoyJos

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.

A couple of  months ago, I asked M where we wanted to go for our Christmas break this year.

The way Christmas falls this year means we will close up work on Friday the 20th and will open back up on the 6th.

We have not spent a Christmas Day with his family for  couple of years, as we have been there for “Santa” with the boys down south.  This year however, they are going away so we decided to stay around for Christmas Day and then head off somewhere.

He suggested we go to Tasmania   Although we have been there a lot, the last few trips have been “real estate reconnaissance missions”  and not so much sight seeing.

Looking into flights etc, I had to tell him that it might not be possible 🙁  The flights were crazy expensive and booking out fast.  Hobart has the “Taste” food festival as well as the Sydney to Hobart yacht race.  Add in people that just want to go to Tassie and it gets busy 🙁  I could see that our preferred motel at Howrah was booked out.

A few days later though, it dawned on me that we don’t have to fly to Hobart and I wondered if we could fly to Launceston instead.    YES!!!  That looked OK… reasonable prices and still plenty of seats available.

The next plan was to hire a campervan and amble around.  That proved to be the next problem.  I could get a camper no problem, but looking around, I could see that MANY caravan parks were booked solid.

So, it was back to a hire car and accommodation.

After, many days of planning I have finally settled on the following itinerary.  (Click on the image to see it larger)

I am confident that I have left plenty of time to see the sights and not get too tired with only me driving.

Our first stop when we arrive is The Country Club just outside of Launceston itself.  We stayed there a couple of years ago and we know it has a nice restaurant as well as the HUGEST bathroom in any room we have ever stayed in.   

As we get closer to Christmas, I will ring them to find out of the restaurant is open for dinner on Boxing Day we we arrive.  If not, we will cater for ourselves and spend the evening relaxing and soaking in the spa bath in the room.

Without specifically looking for spa rooms, I have managed to book 3 spas, so there will need to be some epsom salts packed in our bathroom bag 🙂

Our accomodation in Hobart is and Air BnB we have stayed at a number of times.   I was excited to find “Julie’s” place listed again, as she removed it from Air BnB over the pandemic years.

Our final few days are in Launceston itself.  We have not spent a lot of time “up north” and we had points at Mantra to make the stay a affordable.

From our Mantra base e plan on doing a few day trips around the North West.

We are looking forward to our trip and of course I will be documenting our travels here.