A very busy week exploring Tassie.

A huge week since I last posted.... Big photo share this week as I document our holiday for future memories. Since I lost posted our older two kids flew down for a long weekend to visit us. We didn't stop the whole three days they were here. We picked them up from the airport and headed off to Deloraine for the Tasmanian Craft Festival. This was way bigger than I could have imagined. I think there were 11 venues, and once you paid your $15 entrance fee, you were able to catch free buses between each venue. There were over 900 exhibits and they covered everything from patchwork, teddies, food, wine, woodwork, painting, wax painting, jewellery making, alpaca's and weaving, card making, kite making, marble making, glass blowing..... the list just goes on and on. We had a great time, and the highlight was running into some really good friends of ours from Qld who also happened to be down here holidaying. We all had lunch together.
Both Sarah and I fell in love with the town of Deloraine though. Just a beautiful beautiful place.

DELORAINE
Highlights of the craft fair, and having lunch with Alan, Vicki and Naomi in one of the pubs at Deloraine.
We also spent time by the river ( our favourite part of Deloraine) it was so peaceful, loved the weeping willows, ducks and even platypus.

We headed back to Launceston late Saturday afternoon and then headed out to dinner with these guys to the Jailhouse Grill in Launceston.
We had a good catch up. Vicki and Alan had just spent the previous three weeks in Tassie, so we were able to pick their brains and get information on not to miss places.

On Sunday it was overcast so we decided to head to Hobart for the day with the kids. We left around 8.30am and drove to Campbell Town where we had breakfast.

CAMPBELL TOWN
We ended up having breakfast at Banjo's this great little bakery which also did coffees and breakfast. We could tell it was good because it was packed out. Sarah bought buns for us to take with us as well. They were delicious.We had a little explore around town before we had breakfast, good thing we did because by the time we had finished it, it was pouring rain, so we sent off for our next destination stop on our way to Hobart.

ROSS
Ross is one of the Historical towns on the Midlands Highway. We fell in love with it, all the old sandstone buildings and quaint cottages, and of course the old red phone boxes. Like a scene out of Dr. Who.

OATLANDS
Our next stop was Oatlands - I fell in love with this little town. It really was like an old English village. I think the rain helped to create the atmosphere. There was also some free camping by the lake behind the main part of town. Seriously thinking we will have to come back and explore this area some more. From Oatlands we headed to Kempton.

KEMPTON
Not quite as pretty or as old as Ross or Oatlands. Kempton seemed to be more of a farming community, but we are just loving the whole countryside in Tasmania. Everything is so green and just rolling hills or green grass, cows and sheep. It wasn't long before we hit the outskirts of Hobart.

HOBARTOur first port of call in Hobart was Salamanca - Sarah and I would have been happy to explore some of the shops around here, but Pete had been very patient the day before when we were in Deloraine, and he felt that he was over shops and shopping so we all went for a walk around Battery Point.
We did a big walk through this area, through Princess Park and up and down hills (some very steep) along the waters edge through Sandy Bay - I couldn't get over all the beautiful gardens and flowers, especially the roses. They were HUGE, and the bushes were covered in buds and flowers. Flowers bigger than my hand. We just see them like that at home. Of course I had to take lots of photos. The thing the camera does capture through is the scent, the scent of lavendar, roses, camillias. Whilst we were out walking, the rain cleared and the sun came out. All of a suddent we noticed Mt. Wellington in the background, and since the clouds had lifted, we followed the advice of others who had been before and decided we would go and scale Mt. Wellington.

We set the GPS - big mistake, it took us half way to Huon before taking us up the mountain, only about 27kms out of the way, but still a lovely drive.
The views were spectacular - well worth the drive, but it was so windy and so COLD. We were not really dressed for the cold. Our hands and feet were burning by the time we got back into the car.

After we left Mt. Wellington to head home we crossed the river via this bridge.


We decided to head back to Launceston via Richmond, so that we could see the oldest bridge in Austrlia

RICHMOND
Another lovely Historical town that we enjoyed exploring, and one which we will need to come back and spend some more time at.

We arrived back in Launceston around 9.30pm, and still had to organise dinner. It was a great day, but we were pretty tired by the time we got home. It was so good to share it with the kids.

LAUNCESTON

On Monday we decided to stick closer to Launceston as we had to put them on a flight that afternoon. We decided to go for a drive into the Tamar Valley and see Batman Bridge. Had heard there was a good camping area there, and friends of ours had stayed there a couple of years earlier.


We saw our first echidna in the wild at Batman Bridge. We were all so excited to see it that we stopped the car and ran back. Steve was fortunate to get a photo of him before he curled up in a ball.

From Batman Bridge we headed to Beaconsfield, where we had a quick drive around the Mining Museum area and then stopped for lunch at one of the local Pubs.

Our destination was Beauty Point. We actually had planned to go visit Seahorse World, but the only car park we could find was right out front of Platypus House so we decided to visit there too. It was the highlight of our day.
I would definately recommend a visit here, you got a good view of the Platypus and the guide was excellent giving us plenty of information and answering any questions that we had, but I think we all enjoyed the visit into the echinda room the most. These little fellows were so tame and would come right up to you, sniff your feet and even waddle of them. They were such busy and inquisitive little things. We really fell in love with them.

We had to hurry from Platypus House to catch the next tour through Seahouse World before we had to get the kids to the airport for their trip back to Brissie.
This was interesting and the sea horses are cute, but no where near as interactive as the visit to Platypus House. The tour through here finished at 2.45, and by the time we got out and on the road it was after 3pm. The kids were supposed to be at the airport by 3.50pm and we still had a 50 minute drive to the airport.

We did make it with time to spare
We also got to say goodbye to our good friends Alan and Vicki who were also flying back to Brissie on the same flight as Pete and Sarah. We left the airport feeling pretty flat. We had really enjoyed having the kids down with us sharing part of our adventure.

We couldn't quite face going back to the van alone, so we headed off to Cataract Gorge which is right in the middle of Launceston to check it out.
This was a beautiful spot and one we will visit again when we go back to Launceston. We were really disappointed that we hadn't discovered it earlier and taken the kids there. They would have loved it.

On Tuesday we packed up and headed back to the North West Coast to Burnie. We had a pretty good trip although it rained on and off for most of the way. We stopped off at Elizabeth Town and visited Ashgrove Cheese Factory.
We have visited a few cheese factories these holidays but this was by far the best. Also one of the busiest. They had some really different cheeses, ones that we couldn't possibly get at home, cheeses like Lavendar Cheese (my favourite) wild wasabi, and bush pepper. Very suttle flavours, and we will be definately stocking up from here before we head back to the mainland.

We settled into our Caravan Park at Burnie, a lovely spot right accross the road from the beach, and then took off for a drive to Wynard and Table Cape.
Table Cape is well worth a visit. This is where the Tulip Farm is, fields of colour. This is a very fertile area in Tassie, and the scencery is breathtaking. There are just fields and fields of rolling green hills, the grasses just swaying gently in the breeze.
The red soil reminds me of my childhood and growing up among the canefields. We really fell in love with this area. Who are we trying to kid, we have fallen in love with Tassie as a whole.

Thursday Steve got to try his hand at fly fishing. If you want a fly fishing experience in Tassie, you can't go past the Natone Hills Fly Fishing outside of Burnie. Very reasonably prices, a whole day out fly fishing which includes your meals, and morning and afternoon tea, your equipment, and you are guaranteed to catch fish. There is a bag limit of two that you can bring home, but STeve actually caught five or six of them. He had the best day.
The scenery around Natone is absolutely spectacular also. I drove Steve there intending to drop him off take a photo of two and then come back into Burnie, but it was so relaxing just sitting on he banks of the dam, enjoying the fresh air, the quiteness of the countryside, and just watching the cows graze that I ended up spending most of the day up there.
The last couple of days have been pretty busy too with a trip to Stanley but this post is already way too long so I will leave that to share next post when ever that might be. We have had a pretty chilled out day today. It has rained all day so we have used the time to catch up on some photo editing, bill paying and catching up with the kids.

Tomorrow we take off again, this time accross to the West Coast to explore Queenstown, and Strahan.