This Adventurous Age

Adventures travelling and working around Australia.


by Leave a comment

1999 Travels December 18

SATURDAY 18 DECEMBER    COLES BAY

This was our last day here.

The weather was showery. What had happened to summer?

We had a driving day, to try to explore a little more of the east coast area, because I couldn’t see us getting back up here on this trip.

We drove north to Bicheno, then a bit north of the town, took the road inland to the Douglas Aspley National Park and the Aspley Gorge area.

There, we did the Lookout/Waterhole circuit walk. There was not much water at all in the river, but it was a pleasant short walk. We dawdled, looking at birds. Back in the carpark, John found $4 on the ground.

12-18-1999 apsley gorge.jpg

Aspley Gorge

Refuelled at Bicheno. 87cpl.

We then continued driving up the coast. Had lunch at Seymour Beach, looking south towards Bicheno along a superb long beach. We’d had to do a bit of moseying around to find a spot to access the beach, as most of the little tracks led to private property, but John found one beach access track.

On the beach, we saw the rare hooded plover again, and a dotterel type bird we could not identify.

Continued driving north, then left the coast road and climbed up the winding Elephant Pass, to St Marys. That road was narrow in places – almost single lane. Fortunately, we met no logging or business trucks on it.

St Marys seemed small and languishing, but with some nice old houses.

We then followed the Esk Highway further inland, through Fingal to Avoca, down the valley of the South Esk River. This was sheep country, though there was coal mining at Fingal.

At Avoca, we turned off for Royal George – quaint name, but a real little backwater. Then took the unsealed track through the forest – the old coach road – to Cranbrook, back on the highway.

Overall, it was a pretty day’s driving, though John was getting tired towards the end. We drove 256kms, which he said was about 100kms too long! But we got to see some varied country, and places I’d not been to before.

12-18-1999 circuit

Today’s driving circuit

We decided that all the packing up could wait until tomorrow! It was still very windy at Coles Bay.

Tea was smoked salmon, avocado and salads, followed by raspberries and fruche.


by Leave a comment

1999 Travels December 17

FRIDAY 17 DECEMBER     COLES BAY

This was the day to do the big circuit walk! The weather was supposed to be fine, although there were some clouds about through the day.

The circuit we wanted to walk would take us up to a lookout over Wineglass Bay, then down to the Wineglass Beach, across to Promise Bay, then back around the coast to the car park where we started. It was about 11kms, so quite a decent walk.

12-17-1999 walk.JPG

We began the walk at 10.55am – not early starters, us – after driving in to the carpark at the walk start.

From there, the track climbed steadily up to the Wineglass Bay Lookout, which gave great views over that Bay and the Isthmus, the narrow neck of land that joins the two mountainous sections of Freycinet Peninsula. The view from the Lookout, though great, was not quite as good as the ones I remembered from the top of Mt Amos, just to the east, which I climbed in 1970. But this one was a lot easier to get to!

12-17-1999 01 J on Wineglass Bay walk tk.jpg

On the Wineglass Bay track

12-17-1999 04 hate hills.jpg

I hate uphills!

12-17-1999 02 wineglass bay

Wineglass Bay from the lookout

From on top, we descended steadily to Wineglass Bay, which is just so beautiful. The climb up to the Lookout, and the descent to the beach were both steep, but manageable. John did really well.

We had not been alone on the walk up to the Lookout, but no other tourists came beyond that point, so we had the beach to ourselves.

12-17-1999 05 on beach Wineglass Bay

On the beach at Wineglass Bay – turquoise water and white sands

We walked up and down the beach for a while, just enjoying the place. Then ate lunch, sitting and drinking in the views, to Mts Graham and Freycinet to the south, and to the Hazards and Mt Amos, to the north – the way we had come.

12-17-1999 06 The Hazards from Wineglass Bay.jpg

The Hazards, including Mt Amos,  from Wineglass Bay Beach

Took the track that crosses the Isthmus to the western side of the Peninsula. The track was fairly flat and through scrub, to The Hazards Beach. This beach was much rougher and more open to the weather than Wineglass Bay, and without its turquoise water and headlands of orange lichen-coated granite.

12-17-1999 hazards beach

Hazards Beach looking north – the way we were going

As we walked north on The Hazards Beach, saw several huge shell middens. Clearly, these were the rubbish dumps from the aborigines who used to camp here and feast on the shellfish to be found.

12-17-1999 07 midden

Shell midden

The walk track followed the coastline back around to the carpark. This was scenic walking – at one point we could see south to Maria Island. I found it very reminiscent of walking on Wilsons Promontory. This coastal section of track was less groomed than the Wineglass Bay one and we had some steep scrambles up and down gullies, so it was quite tiring.

12-17-1999 09 hazards tk to maria is.jpg

From the coastal track

We reached the car park about 3.45pm, so it took us near enough to 5 hours to do the 11kms.

It was an excellent walk – not too totally strenuous, but demanding enough to make me weary by its end. In other words – just right! It was a walk I had long wanted to do, and that was satisfying.

It was fish and chip night, too! The local seafood takeaway was mainly a cafe with pretensions, and expensive. John bought fish and chips for himself – a generous serve – for $6. I bought $2.50 worth of chips and went and bought frozen oven-bake fish from the supermarket and cooked myself a couple of pieces of that. I did better than John, at a much cheaper cost – and it was nicer!


by Leave a comment

1999 Travels December 16

THURSDAY 16 DECEMBER     COLES BAY

My birthday today.

It was still blowy and rain was forecast. So, that made it a “drive and explore” day, rather than a long walk day – that is not fun in the rain.

12-16-1999 coles bay area

Places we visited today

We drove to Sleepy Bay, to the east of Coles Bay, on the Cape Tourville road. It is in the National Park. The short walk from the cap park to the bay was a pretty one.

The orange lichens on the rocks around the bay really stood out, in colour contrast to the dull hues of the rocks and background forest.

12-16-1999 sleepy bay.jpg

Brilliant orange colour on rocks at Sleepy Bay

After that, continued on to the Cape Tourville Lighthouse. There were brilliant views up and down the coast, from here. We could see part of Wineglass Bay, with its distinctive curved beach. The Lighthouse was really just a concrete cylinder, with the light structure on top – clearly a fairly recent build.

12-16-1999 front passing & view nth from Cape Tourville

Outlook north from Cape Tourville, with a weather front passing over

 

12-16-1999 Wineglass Bay from Cape Tourville

Freycinet Peninsula seen from Cape Tourville. Some of Wineglass Bay just visible distant right.

John was determined to drive the 4WD track from here to Bluestone Bay. This was only a couple of kms, a bit rutted in places, but not too bad.

Bluestone Bay was a little cove, with rounded blue-grey large pebbles and stones – like very large bird, or dinosaur, eggs. When the very strong waves broke on this pebble beach, the stones made a loud noise from being rolled together. It was an unusual place.

12-16-1999 Bluestone Bay.jpg

Bluestone Bay

We ate lunch at Bluestone Bay and John made a few fishing casts.

From there, went back the way we’d come and through Coles Bay, taking the main road to the north, then turning off for the Friendly Beaches. I love that name!

12-16-1999 friendly beaches and john

On the Friendly Beaches

From the car park, we did not have to walk far to reach a beautiful, white, long beach. We walked for a while on this, then sat on a rocky outcrop, watching the big waves break – until they started coming a bit close.  So we walked back to Truck.

12-16-1999 at Friendly Beaches.jpg

Sunny break at the Friendly Beaches

Drove a few kms further south, to the other end of the Friendly Beaches, and walked across the dunes to the beach, again. The outlooks to the north and south were extensive.

12-16-1999 friendly beaches

Friendly Beaches southern section

On the way back to Coles Bay, we detoured a little, to try to look for water birds at Moulting Lagoon, a large wetland area supposed to have lots of different wetland species. Unfortunately, it was too windy by now for any sensible bird to be out and about. So we headed back to camp. Managed to drive 78kms today.

Tea was crayfish legs, mixed salads raspberries and yoghurt.

K phoned – good to hear from him.

All in all, a very pleasant birthday!

Maybe Cyclone John will become a nickname in this establishment. There are times it would be appropriate!


by Leave a comment

1999 Travels December 15

WEDNESDAY 15 DECEMBER   WHITE BEACH TO COLES BAY   266kms

We slept in a little, and so did not leave White Beach until about 10.30.

At Dunalley, stopped at the fish place where we bought some smoked salmon and a crayfish – these were very expensive luxuries because tomorrow is my birthday.

Today’s drive was a BIG one, in Tasmania! We opted to stick to the main, sealed roads, so went towards Hobart, as far as Sorell, then took the standard route up the east coast. More direct, shorter routes would have seen us on dirt roads of unknown quality, and we just wanted to play safe and get to our destination in good time.

Stopped to eat our packed lunch at Buckland, where we were able to pull off the road beside the Prosser River.

Just south of Swansea, we stopped to photograph the Spiky Bridge, which was convict built in the 1840’s. It is unusually topped with jagged pieces of rock, perhaps to stop cows from falling over the edge, as it is otherwise quite low.

12-15-1999 spiky bridge.jpg

Convict built Spiky Bridge, near Swansea

We went back to the Iluka Holiday Village – and even back to the same site we were on last time! It cost $14.40 a night, after discount.

There were gale winds forecast, which was not so promising. Apparently these were somehow related to the influence of a huge cyclone that was due to hit the WA coast today or tomorrow. The system was Cyclone John – its namesake was rather chuffed that it was the strongest one on record – a Category 5, with winds in excess of 295kmh.

Our site here seemed fairly sheltered, but the van was still rocking about a bit.

I made lobster thermidor with mashed potato for tea. John likes crayfish done that way – it was his idea. I think I prefer them eaten fresh and chilled, plain. Raspberries followed – never get sick of those!

V phoned in the evening, to find out where we would be for Xmas mail, and to wish me happy birthday. She has a job with the Commonwealth Bank and now thinks they will settle and defer any further travel. In the absence of the current family matriarch – me – she has assumed the traditional family Xmas role and is organizing a Boxing Day BBQ for a family get together.

John kept me up till midnight, to ensure he didn’t forget my birthday this year! He gave me two books – Bryce Courteney’s “Jessica” and the latest Patricia Cornwall one. Both should be good reading and I will appreciate them.

12-15-1999 to coles bay


by Leave a comment

1999 Travels December 14

TUESDAY 14 DECEMBER     WHITE BEACH

This was our last day in this lovely place.

We took all the Xmas mail to the PO. The parcels to the offspring cost about $7 each to send. They contained T-shirts, calendars, and zircon earrings for the girls.

We played social bowls in the afternoon – it was a pleasant enough time. The day was quite warm – enough so for me to wear shorts.

We did some packing up of the camp after getting back from bowls. Got diesel on the way back, too – 86cpl.

Tea was steak, mushrooms, potatoes, beans, with raspberries to follow.

We would be leaving the Tasman Peninsula without having visited the Port Arthur ruins. We had talked about this, and for some inexplicable reason, neither of us really felt in the right mood to revisit this tragic place. The whole area is so beautiful, I guess, that we preferred to focus on the natural environment.

We had decided to have a quick trip back up the east coast, as far as Coles Bay, to explore that area a bit better, before the school holiday crowds. By the time the holidays ended, we should be heading towards the west coast, so this was really the only chance to spend any time on the east coast.


by Leave a comment

1999 Travels December 13

MONDAY 13 DECEMBER     WHITE BEACH

The weather improved again today.

We had a big burst on the Xmas card printing and John’s letter and got all finished. John did have some problems with the printer and with his computer, but despite all the frustrations, it all happened. It was a long and wearying day.

We drove around to the fruit and veg shop and stocked up a little.

Late in the afternoon walked along the beach – we really needed to get out of the van!

The shape of the beach had changed – it had become much wider after the gale.

I made fish cakes for tea, with salad, followed by raspberries.


by Leave a comment

1999 Travels December 12

SUNDAY 12 DECEMBER     WHITE BEACH

We had gale force winds all through the night, and today. The van fairly shook at times, and we made sure the awning roof was tied down very securely. The weather certainly kept away most of the weekend visitors.

The Saturday Age arrived today – I was surprised it got through at all.

John worked on Xmas card creation, trying out a number of variations. It will be a better and clearer reproduction, this year, but I was not as pleased with the photo range – not sure it would mean a lot to most people without an accompanying letter to relate to the photos.

After lunch, John bowled, with C. He was very pleased that John was still here. Think he must be quite lonely, a lot of the time.

The day was quite cold, but John enjoyed his bowls, despite the still high wind.

Tea was cold lamb, mashed potato, and raspberries.

After tea I went off as usual to have my evening shower, got ready, put the requisite 40cents in the slot – and nothing happened! I had no more coins with me. So I had to get dressed and retreat back to the van – unwashed and definitely unhappy.


by Leave a comment

1999 Travels December 11

SATURDAY 11 DECEMBER     WHITE BEACH

Today was exceedingly windy. It seemed to have disrupted services and traffic in places.

John worked on his Xmas letter. I worked on mine, needing forty one copies in total, of which I already had seven, plus odd copies of some pages.

My plan was to print some photos on the otherwise blank back of Page 7, the last page of letter. So it would be printed on the special paper we bought, for photo printing. I made the requisite forty one copies of pages 1-6, back to back, setting up each page as before. I stood for hours, doing this. When I then printed a trial page 7 on the special paper, the letter did not end, but needed three paragraphs onto page 8. That threw out my photo plans.

John worked out that the fiddling needed to print each page had moved the cursor and hence made a gap. He though it would be easy to fix, by just printing a page 8 of the letter. Then I ralized that the movement had happened progressively so each page 7 ended at a different point! And likewise all the preceding pages. It was a total nightmare. It proved impossible to try to sort out matching pages, so effectively the whole printing was stuffed up. Waste of time and effort, not to mention paper and ink.

I was deeply disappointed – it would be the first Xmas in a decade that I had not sent out an annual letter. John’s letter was shaping up to be good, but it ran to seventeen pages! He would be lucky if the ink lasted out for him to make enough copies for his family.

I did not have any problems like this last year, doing my letter and printing it out, with the “primitive” program then on my laptop. This problem was due to John installing Corel Word Perfect on my machine – which I did not really want in the first place!

We scanned the photos for the card – could only use a few of the ones I originally selected. There was just not room for all the good ones!

Tea was roast lamb and vegies, followed by fresh raspberries. Yum.

12-04-1999 white bch dusk.jpg

White Beach dusk


by Leave a comment

1999 Travels December 10

FRIDAY 10 DECEMBER     WHITE BEACH

Today we drove to Hobart.

We needed printer ink refills and card sized envelopes, in particular, but it turned into a big hit on the shops.

The drive in was very pleasant, marred only by too much road kill evident of the native animals.

We went first to Myer in the city centre. John wanted to buy me a birthday present, so I went to the wool section and bought some cream coloured wool and a knitting book – will be baby knits for no one in particular – yet.

After that it was Fullers Bookshop. I had read good reviews of a book called “Travelling Inland”, which was about a couple taking time out and travelling north west WA – but also on a deeper level about self discovery. No luck at Fullers, so we tried A and R – they put it on order. It will arrive after Xmas, but I can wait!

At Office Works we stocked up on assorted stationery and John bought a manual on Office that will help him learn more about PowerPoint, which interests him.

At Glenorchy PO, got envelopes, stamps and Xmas mailing containers.

Printer inks came from Dick Smith.

We had lunch at the Glenorchy shops. John had a pie and sausage roll. I had a vegie roll. Most indulgent.

Did a grocery shop at Glenorchy Coles – oh, the choices available!

Then we’d had enough of “town”.

On the return journey stopped at the Dunalley Fish Market. The crayfish were way too expensive for us but we bought some smoked salmon – $4 for 100 grams.

I bought two punnets of raspberries from the stall at the house in Taranna – $1.50 a punnet. Such luxury. There are so many wonderful fresh foods available in Tasmania.

Tea was bought fish and chips. Fridays were coming around so fast, it seemed.

The weather forecast for the coming weekend was poor, and we noted that there were fewer of the regular weekenders in tonight. This was good – might be a quiet weekend.

Drove 236kms today.


by Leave a comment

1999 Travels December 9

THURSDAY 9 DECEMBER     WHITE BEACH

It was a fairly bleak day, outside, so conducive to staying in.

Today was devoted to working on Xmas letters. Got mine finished, and started to print mine and ran into difficulties. I think they were related to the new program I was using. The printer did not automatically feed pages for some reason, so after each sheet was printed, I had to set it up all over again. It was extremely tedious and I only managed to get seven full copies.

John was trying to put together photos on a page that can be folded to make a “card”. It involved scanning photos. Times like this we could do with a bigger van!

In all, it was a fiddly and frustrating day.

Tea was pasta with tuna, capers, olives, tomato – a very nice meal.