Saturday, June 19, 2010

No we didn't fall off the tip of Tasmania whilst we had a fantastic 10 weeks there. Now I will be testing my memory to relate all the places we visited and things we did. We spent the first 5 weeks touring along the North coast and staying at Devonport, Burnie, Stanley back to Burnie and Ulverstone before heading down the Midland Highway to Cambridge. We spent many days visiting lots of gorgeous little towns incl Sheffield (famous for their amazing murals), Railton (with their town of topiaries) Penguin has beautiful beach views and Stanley was very windy but a cute little place, whilst we were there we did a day trip across to Marawah (has some of the best surf breaks in the world) but was flat the day we were there so couldn't get any great photos for you Brent, and lunched at Arthur River, quite remote but a lovely place. We left our van at Burnie for a few days and went to Strahan and did the amazing Gordon River cruise (lots of yummy seafood for lunch) and then onto Queenstown and Cradle Mountain where we stayed for a night. At Ulverstone we stayed awhile, beautiful park, lovely beaches to walk along nice shopping centre and a great patchwork shop, where the 2 Lyn's looked after me and of course didn't mind taking my money. I thought it was time I made a quilt for our bed (and as yet I still haven't even cut it out). Woops - I forgot that we went to one of our favourite places in George Town and whilst there we did a day trip to Bridport, Scottsdale, Lilydale (nice patchwork shop) and back. Another day on the other side of the Tamar River was spent at Beaconsfield and found there tribute to the mine disaster simply fantastic. After staying at lovely Longford and seeing the sights of Launceston we did day trips to the Great Lakes area and Deloraine. We travelled to Cambridge to stay over the long weekend in March and Rita visited us there. We did the retail therapy bit - Salamanca Market and tripped around Snug, Kettering, Cygnet and Huonville. After she flew back to Melb (and work) we did a day cruise from Hobart down to Bruny Island and went on the open boat trip south of Bruny, we had a incredible day out. Then we were off to New Norfolk and enjoyed the views across the Derwent River and a day at Lake StClair. I enjoyed trawling the Antique shops in New Norfolk. From there we went back up the Midland and across to the East coast and spent a fantastic week at Bicheno, where we had beautiful weather visiting the Freycinet Penin, St Helens and Bay of Fires and BinalongBay the scenery is out of this world along there. Our time was coming to an end and after another night at Longford and Easter at Ulverstone again (of course I wanted to visit the patchwork shop again) we boarded the Spirit for a day sail back to Melb and of course we were keen to get back to meet our new granddaughter Alyssa Jade Norley born on 26th March. Our 10 weeks in Tas was fantastic and we were fortunate enough to see almost all of it and we were blessed with perfect weather. We are now heading up the East Coast of Aust, looking for some warm weather and have only one appointment and that is in Oct on the Gold Coast for son Troy's wedding (I guess we should be there a few weeks earlier as I have the wedding dress to make). Will try to find time to post again further up the Coast - ah this retired life is sooooo busy!!!!