Saturday, March 21

Yesterday, we flew from Melbourne to Launceston, Tasmania where we picked up another car, stayed overnight, then took off this morning in a circular-ish route along the A3 up to Scottsdale, across to St. Helens, then down the coast to Swansea, where we are staying tonight.

On the map of Tasmania I posted a few days ago, if you scroll up and to the right from Launceston, you should be able to follow the route we took.

While waiting to go to the Melbourne airport, I took a couple more shots. This is one of St. Kilda Road, near our hotel.

Once we were settled in at our hotel in Launceston, we set out in search of a bottle shop (liquor store) and dinner and found both at a pub just down the road from our hotel. Although no five-star restaurant by any means, my salmon fillet and fries was done to perfection. Colin ordered the roast of the day, which was beef. I will let him give you his own review: "It was possibly the worst meal I have ever had. If the vegetables had been cooked 30 seconds longer, they would have been vegetable soup. The baked potato turned out to be thickly sliced potatoes with (I think) cheese sauce (I'm not sure because it was burnt and I scraped it off). The roast beef was sliced and put on to a griddle top to re-heat and covered in a thick dark brown 'gravy' that looked more like chocolate sauce. The plate was so small that when cutting the beef, the gravy slopped over the side onto the table. Altogether, an unforgettable meal. Thank god we had wine to take back to the room with us!".

You can order bottles of wine and liquor from the bar to take away. We had each tried a glass of Tasmanian Chardonnay with dinner and neither of us cared for it. I found it very citrusy and overly tart. Very puckery. So, I bought a bottle of Rosemount Australian Chardonnay, which I recognized from home, so we enjoyed that back at the hotel.

This morning, we got up and got on the road. I needed to find an ATM (going through cash like water!), so while wandering the streets of downtown Launceston, I took this shot (the ATM I stopped at is just out of view on the left).

We headed northeast-ish out of Launceston on the A3 going towards Scottsdale. Along the way, there was a scenic lookout that we stopped at.

The name's Bond. James Bond.

After leaving the scenic lookout, we drove for about 20 minutes or so before we reached Scottsdale, a little town of about 1000. There was a nice little bakery cafe where we stopped for blueberry pancakes for breakfast. Colin had a large cappuccino and I had my usual flat white (really going to miss those when I get home!). Across the road was a bottle shop and I had the brilliant idea of running over and picking up a couple of bottles of wine so we wouldn't have to search around for one later in the day in a little village. Amazing! I bought a bottle of Yellow Tail Pinot Grigio for $12.95 AUS (about $9.50 CDN) and a Jacob's Creek Chardonnay for $7.95 AUS (about $6.00 CDN).

After leaving Scottsdale, the road narrowed and wound its way up into the mountains. This made for some very scenic, James Bond-ish driving which was enjoyable for the first little while, but after an hour or so of jostling up and down and left and right, we were both feeling a little queasy, so Colin pulled over at a guided forest walk and rested for a bit while I did the walk. Lots of very old myrtle trees and tree ferns.

After we had rested, we drove on to Pyengana, a tiny hamlet off the main road that has a wonderful dairy and cheese factory. They have about 250 cows that generate over 1 million litres of milk a year! And they use only their own milk to make their cheese. We bought some of their year-old cheddar and a bit of caraway cheddar to have with our wine tonight. Another 10 kilometres or so past Pyengana are the St. Columba falls. At 90 metres, they are one of the highest waterfalls in Tasmania. It was a 10 minute walk down the canyon to the base of the falls, but it was well worth it -- they are breathtaking!



After that, we decided it was getting on in the day and we had a ways to go to reach Swansea, so we drove straight there (well, non-stop anyway -- the road was anything but straight!) and got to our hotel (actually, they are a set of cottages) around 4pm.


Tomorrow, we will drive back up the highway about 30 km or so to the turnoff for Freycinet National Park. The drive into the park is about 25 km, but the scenery is supposed to be spectacular. After the park, we'll drive back down through Swansea again and on into Hobart.



So far, the weather's been fabulous -- sunny and warm. The only cool, overcast weather we had was back in Adelaide, although they're calling for showers here on Tasmania tomorrow.