Monday morning, after Cameron’s school work, it was back into Devonport for a few errands, shopping, and sightseeing. Our first port of call was an Auto Electrician. Our Waeco Fridge wouldn’t work from our auxiliary battery. I suspected a fuse but didn’t know where to find it. That was soon sorted. Next on the list was to buy a blanket. We had all been freezing at night. Christel found a huge one that covers all three of us, for $16.00. It is very lightweight, folds up quite small, and has certainly done the trick. Then it was the usual groceries and lunch by the river before we checked out an interactive science display. Interesting but we were all a little disappointed with it. Later we had dinner by the river and watched the ferry from Melbourne, the Spirit of Tasmania, come in. It literally fills up the river as it comes up to dock. Quite an impressive sight.
Back at camp, just on dusk, we joined another camping family, from Darwin, and went down to the river for another platypus hunting expedition. This time we were more successful. Christel and Cameron saw two, but I missed them as I was looking on a different part of the river. Never mind. Cameron had been complaining of feeling a bit off colour for the last couple of days, and was continually complaining of being cold. We are wondering if he is coming down with something.
Tuesday morning Cameron still not 100 percent, but keen to do some more sightseeing. Next to our campground is the Australian Axeman’s Hall Of Fame and included a Platypus and Trout Encounter Centre. Sounded all very exciting and was very well advertised everywhere we went. Naturally we were keen to see it, but a quick look inside the door and we soon realised this was very overrated, and certainly not worth the exorbitant prices they were asking. We then went into Latrobe to visit a museum come shop, of a collection of all sorts of memorabilia. An absolute rabbit warren, actually an old bank, jammed packed mostly with rubbish, but with a few interesting relics of the past. Cameron was going downhill and wasn’t very interested, so we cut our visit short and went back to camp.
Wednesday morning Cameron wakes up feeling better, but with his face and parts of his body covered in red blotches. We suspect measles even though he has had his immunisation shots. Nothing much we can do except give him some paracetamol and keep an eye on him. He is certainly a lot brighter than he has been for the last couple of days.
We have heard that there is a huge wooden boat regatta and display being held in Hobart this coming weekend, with tall sailing ships from around the world coming to visit. Apparently this is bi-annual event, but this year is expected to be bigger than ever. As a result there will be a shortage of accommodation in the area, so we have decided to head down to Hobart today as we definitely want to see the regatta and want to get in early for accommodation. We will then continue our trip around Tassie from there.
We packed up and headed across to LAUNCESTON, then down towards HOBART. We stopped at CAMPBELL TOWN, where the road crosses over the oldest bridge in Australia still being used on a main road. This bridge was built between 1837 and 1838 by convicts out of brick and stone. They made their own bricks first, all 1,250,000 of them, and then built the bridge on dry land. They were then told to divert a branch of the nearby Macquarie River to go under the bridge. This meant digging a trench over 1 kilometre long. Amazing what you can do with a few thousand convicts at your disposal for cheap labour.
Our next stop was the town of ROSS, famous for having the oldest bridge in Aussie. This bridge features in most publicity brochures about Tasmania, and was also built using convict labour, and was built in 1836. The whole town is very historic, and of course mostly built by convicts using stone hewn out of the surrounding ground. They built some fantastic buildings. Today it is a lovely peaceful historic town, hard to imagine what it must have been like back in the days when the convicts were slaving away building it.
We continued on south towards HOBART arriving about 4.00pm. We had driven nearly the whole length of Tasmania, a distance of about 280km. We are booked into a camping ground at a town called NEW NORFOLK, which is about 30 km west of the city.
No comments:
Post a Comment