Day 7
The North, Breadalbane, Elephant Pass (St Mary's), Bicheno and Swansea

You tend to meet all kinds of people while travelling. Though it would seem not all of them want to meet you.

We had a long day ahead, covering perhaps the longest leg of our trip. Therefore, we were checking out of Lemonthyme Lodge quite early that morning. While Yi Peng dealt with the paperwork, Tim was setting up for another one of our "RAV4 shots" (right).

From out of the lodge (just behind the car) walked a young Asian woman, the same attractive woman we had seen at dinner the night before, sitting quietly in the corner with someone who was presumably her mother. Throughout dinner, she had studiously avoided eye contact with us, but it seemed like she was subtly watching us all the same.

Like the night before, she wore a baseball cap low over her face, but that didn't hide her stunned deer-in-the-headlights look when she saw Tim with his largish Nikon camera pointed in her direction. After an interminable few heartbeats, she lowered her head, hunched over and quickened her pace to get to her car. Mum was already in her seat and the car literally spun gravel leaving the lodge carpark! How weird was that?!

We theorised that the pretty, well-groomed, casually-dressed-in-designer-labels lady with the baseball cap was a Hong Kong or Taiwanese starlet that was trying to avoid some scandal at home and had "taken a break at an undisclosed location". Then along come Tim and Yi Peng, presumed undercover papparazzi journalists, threatening to blow her cover! She needn't have worried though, we aren't the kind who would even recognise, much less care about scandal-prone East Asian starlets... *grin*

And no, we didn't actually take any photo of her...

Anyway, we were so fortunate that we had one of Mike's route descriptions for this leg again. He had detailed a choice of two routes through the spider's web of roads in the area. We picked the faster, less mountainous route. We had had enough of mountain driving! We passed through Cethana, Sheffield (the "Town of Murals", where we made a short stop to find a public toilet), Kimberly and Elizabeth Town before finally reaching Deloraine.

In contrast to the above towns, Deloraine was bustling with traffic and activity. In yet another unplanned coincidence, it was the annual Tasmanian Craft Fair in Deloraine. We thought about having a look in, but figured we didn't have the time to spare, so we just grabbed pastries from a bakery for our breakfast, and proceeded on our way.

The next logical stop would be Launceston, Tassie's central city in the North. But our plan was to visit Launceston later in the trip, while we were staying in Hobart. Highway 1 connects the two cities, making travel quick and easy. Therefore, we bypassed Launceston and turned south. There were numerous road diversions for road works and to this day we are still somewhat confused as to our actual route. But fortunately, we did manage to find our way to Breadalbane where we were looking for the Tasmanian Glassblowers.

James Dodson of Tasmanian Glassblowers, crafting a glass penguin

We had been wanting to visit a glass blower's since our previous trip to Western Australia. We were just fascinated with the craftsmanship and spent quite a while there, watching James Dodson create several glass penguins. In the photo above, James is pointing at the notch where a glass egg will nestle, just like how real penguins incubate their eggs, balanced between their feet.

There was a mini gallery of their work, and plenty of others scattered throughout their workshop. Many of them were in various stages of packing to be sent to far flung corners of the world.

While James specialised in the solid glass (non-blown) art pieces, his younger colleague did many of the blown pieces. He let Yi Peng have a go at it. Unfortunately, she huffed and puffed a little too energetically and, as the British like to say, it went all pear-shaped. The over-blown glass was so thin, it was exactly like cellophane in our hands. Amazing!

After much deliberation, we finally decided on a vase as a keepsake of our visit and something to decorate our home with. It happened to be the very first piece of a new "design", although, being handcrafted, each one has a unique swirling pattern of it's own. To think that we nearly skipped this stop because we were rushing to get to Elephant Pass, near the town of St Mary's, along the A4 for lunch, which involved a long roundabout detour instead of the straighter route to Swansea where we were staying for the night. And by this time, our stomachs were growling pretty loudly.

The odd thing about Tasmanian roads is that the usual A, B or C prefix to the route names do NOT necessarily indicate the "class" or "condition" of the road. In many areas, the "B" or "C" roads are actually better than the "A" roads. The determining factor is how old the roads are. The newer the roads, the better they are.

And you guessed it, the A4 is an old road. In some places, it was really narrow and bumpy, and for much of the way, it was back to driving in mountainous hairpin loops and turns. Imagine: late, hungry, tired and dizzy, go figure! Then suddenly, as if in the middle of nowhere, we finally reached the legendary Mount Elephant Pancake Barn.

		"Don't even THINK about blocking these gates! Our elephants will stomp your wretched hire car down to the hubcaps. Your cooperation is appreciated."
Everything about Mount Elephant Pancake Barn is totally zany. From the bell at the counter (Right photo: "If you ring bell... We Come"), to the menus, to the signs on the walls... There is even a "surcharge" for rowdy children!

With both savoury and sweet pancakes to choose from, we decided to share a Chicken and Mushroom crepe (which they were kind enough to cut in half and serve on two plates without being asked to) and followed that with a Banana and Chocolate crepe and an Apple Cinnamon crepe, both served with vanilla ice-cream and finished with two coffee lattes. We had been so hungry by the time we had gotten there and so driven to distraction by the sight and smell of the pancakes, that we forgot to snap our, by now customary, picture of our meal. It was only when we we had devoured much of the first pancake that we suddenly remembered to. Pictures taken, we proceeded to devour the rest of the food faster than two shakes of an elephant's tail.

Definitely worth the aforementioned hassles getting there, and pancakes we'll never forget, just like... well, elephants!

A really long day of driving

After another short stretch of the A4, we finally reached the A3 and the East Coast of Tasmania. Turning south, our next stop was the popular sea-side town of Bicheno. By this time, the gloomy weather we had been facing the whole day was quickly giving way to bright sunshine.

Bicheno's attractions include a penguin rookery, sealife centre, marine centre and a blowhole. Since this was just a transit stop on our way to Swansea, we decided to go looking for the blowhole...

... And when we did finally see it, we were rather underwhelmed, unfortunately. The blowhole was barely blowing and occasionally managed a gurgle of sorts. We quickly realised that the very calm sea wasn't creating enough breaking waves to "power" the blowhole. Every couple of minutes or so, the wave action would build up sufficiently to produce a small gush of water through the blowhole. Patient waiting eventually got us these pictures (Yi Peng took a picture of Tim taking a picture of the blowhole).

The Blowhole at Bicheno - But the sea was too calm that day

Of course, these things have a life of their own and as we were leaving, some other visitors got showered when, lulled into thinking the blowhole was just a gurgling spout, they came in too close just as a single large wave swept in and bwoooshh!

The ubiquitous "Penguin Crossing" Sign

It was here that we shot what we consider the iconic image of our trip to Tasmania: The ubiquitous "Penguin Crossing" sign. Actually it probably indicates an area for penguin watching or something like that. And of course, Tasmania has plenty of such sites.

As we continued southward, we took note of the vineyards along the way and decided to visit them the next day, when we came back that way to go to the Freycinet Penninsula. We passed through Swansea and on the southern outskirts, we finally reached Piermont Retreat.

Set in a beautiful plot of land by the sea, Piermont is a series of quaint, seemingly old stone cottages, some of which, perplexingly, were still under construction! Of course, it is a new development and the cottages were designed to have that old look and feel. After checking-in, we took a walk around the grounds, and even stopped to have a look at a few of the cottages still being built. Very interesting how they managed to put in much in the way of modern convieniences and yet making it an almost authentic experience.

On our walk around Piermont Retreat

Piermont has its own picturesque beach, and in the course of our walk, we saw yet another one of Tassie's rainbows framing a lone fisherman out in the Great Oyster Bay. We would have explored the grounds further but it was getting late and we still hadn't actually seen most of Swansea, nor had we found a place for dinner yet.

Around Swansea

On the drive back into Swansea, we explored the surrounding coastline, and the town itself. We found the historic Schouten House, which Yi Peng had read about in one of our guidebooks, and decided to have dinner there. When we rang the bell, the nice gentleman who answered the door was somewhat puzzled and asked if we had a reservation. It turned out that they didn't have any guests that night, nor any dinner reservations and were therefore not actually planning to open for business. Yet again, we were reminded of the need to book ahead for meals!

We were lucky. He asked if we were still keen, we could come back in an hour and he would "tidy up and set the table" for us. We told him we would and used the time to explore the area. Just behind Schouten House is a road named the Esplanade, at the end of which there was a little coastal reserve site known as the Waterloo Point Short-Tailed Shearwater Rookery.

The path leading around and through Waterloo Point had the unusual name, Loon.tite.ter.mair.re.le.hoin.er Walk. We took a walk around and reading the various signboards, we realised that it was a place to observe a type of nocturnal marine bird, the Short-Tailed Shearwater. Of course, we would have to be there after dark to be able to observe them.

Dinner was pretty good. We had garlic bread followed by entrees of Seafood Chowder and Oyster Mornay. We both had the same main course of Pan Fried Trevalla with Cream and Cajun Sauce. We were quite full, but shared a Blue Berry Ice-cream Surprise anyway. We also had a pleasant chat with the man who had originally answered the door, who as it turned out, was the new owner of Schouten House, having bought over the place with his wife not too long before our visit. Like everywhere else, the Ansett Airlines shutdown had drastically cutdown tourist traffic. Yet, just for the two of us, he had gone and changed into his serving "uniform", complete with bow tie. Now that's service!

After dinner, we headed back to explore the Shearwater Rookery by night. Not reallly knowing what to expect, we bundled up (it was quite cold) and brought our small torchlights along. It was initially quite freaky! Plaintive wails were interspersed with piercing cries in the dark. Yikes! The fact that there was a cemetary nearby contributed to the creepiness factor...

... then a giant, bat-like shape with an almost 2 metre wingspan came swooping in, crash-landing next to us and thrashed around on the path, screaming and wailing before disappearing under a bush, still thrashing and wailing. Had someone taken a photo of us at that moment, it would have been worth the proverbial thousand words.

***

The wails and cries were from the birds. They burrow underground in the thick bushes lining the path and lay their eggs there. The hatchlings depend on their parents to fish and supply them their food and communicate via all the screeching and wailing. While they are large black pointy-winged seabirds that are graceful in the air, they are quite awkward on the ground, hence the thrashing about on land. Most remarkably, they travel annually all the way north to the Arctic Circle and back to Tasmania, in the longest migratory flight of any bird. Their wings were built for long endurance glides, narrow and streamlined, but don't provide the lift at slow speeds near the ground, hence the horrible crash-landings and the ungainly running takeoffs that seem like the bird wants to beat the ground into falling away from it so that it can get airborne.

All this we learned from a group of 6 or 7 middle-aged (we think), mainland Aussies (we think), who were came up the path. We were actually on our way to getting the heck out of there when we bumped into them. They didn't have any torchlights and were keen to borrow ours to have a look around. One man was particularly knowledgable about the birds and once we were assuaged of the notion that this wasn't some ghoulish path to the netherworld, we decided to follow the group and learned quite a bit. But talking in whispers and shielding the torchlights so as not to shine upwards (which would scare away the birds coming in) or into each other's eyes, we never did know who those really friendly people were.

Day 8
Swansea and Freycinet National Park

In the morning, we had breakfast consisting of provisions in the fridge of our cottage supplemented with the King Island Brie we had been given at Skyescape, before setting off for the Freycinet National Park on the Freycinet Penninsula.

Enroute, the coastline of the Freycinet Penninsula was particularly inviting and is known as the Friendly Beaches. We stopped to explore and the beautiful white sands, and the crystal blue-green waters were just spectacular.

When we got to Coles Bay, we tanked up the car and watched the weather threaten, with winds picking up the surf on the bay and dark clouds gathering over The Hazards, the distinctive peaks marking the start of the Freycinet National Park. We drove to Mount Dove and treked up to the Wineglass Bay Lookout.

The hike was supposed to be an hour return, which means an approximately half-hour one way trip. But even with the trail being well maintained and neatly stair-stepped all the way, Yi Peng found it very hard going and we took the better part of an hour to get up there. About halfway up, Yi Peng was about to give up and Tim was alternately dragging her up and then pushing her up that mountain, when we met a spritely old lady and her middle-aged daughter coming down. They smiled at the wheezing heap that was Yi Peng and told her that it was "only" halfway more to go.

Of course, all the waiting around for Yi Peng to catch her breath gave Tim lots of time to take pictures of lichen-covered rocks and what-not, while many more couples and families streamed up the path, some even carrying their younger children in backpack harnesses. The weather continued to threaten, with pockets of sunshine between the dark clouds.

Wineglass Bay

When we finally reached the crowded Wineglass Bay Lookout, the sky was mostly overcast and we had to wait around for clear shots between the people and the weather. We got some other tourists to help shoot photos of us and we did the same for them. Then we got adventurous and climbed the rocks to get some clearer views.

On the way back down, the weather broke and we got showered, but not too heavily. We had lunch at Richardson's Bistro at the Freycinet Lodge nearby. We shared a Seafood Chowder (yes, we had decided to try all the wonderful seafood chowders we could in Tasmania!) and both had the Tempura Battered Trevalla with Chips (aka Fish n Chips?) served with Chilli Lime Mayo whilst taking in the breathtaking view of the Great Oyster Bay. This helped us recover somewhat from our trek.

We then drove out to Cape Tourville, where there is a lighthouse and supposedly great coastal views. The road was gravel but in good shape, with some parts being improved. It became obvious why when we reached the lighthouse, where they were building a tourist boardwalk overhanging the cliff, and other works suggesting they were gearing up to put it on the tourist map.

However, the wind was so strong that the car was being buffeted about when we got to the lighthouse, and only Tim got out to snap a few photos of the car, lighthouse and the dramatic scenery. With the boardwalk complete, as we are sure it is by now, it would be well worth the drive to admire the view. Just be careful you don't literally get blown away!

On our way back to Swansea, we stopped by the Freycinet and Coombend vineyards. After some taste samplings, we bought several bottles of wine from the highly-regarded Freycinet vineyard to bring home as gifts and would have bought more for personal consumption if it weren't for luggage weight limits.

Kate's Berry Farm

Just before reaching Piermont, we paid a visit to the famous Kate's Berry Farm. On the drive in, we passed these dilapidated old shells of cars that had been turned into a flower garden of sorts. Other visitors were busy snapping photos and we joined in.

At the farm, we had some wonderful home-made ice-cream and (regretfully) bought only one bottle of berry sauce (again, darn those airline weight limits!). We were just on time because it turned out Kate wasn't in and her friend who was running the place that day had to rush off for to pick up her daughter from school and we barely finshed the ice-cream before we had to leave.

Sunset on Coswell Beach, Swansea

We had earlier asked around and discovered that Fairy Penguins sometimes came ashore at the isolated Coswell Beach near Piermont. We drove around until we finally found the place at sunset and took a walk to recce the beach. We wanted so badly to see some penguins! At one end of the beach, several hundred metres from the car, there is a small headland jutting out, sheltering the beach and there is a big beach house at the top. We decided to return later that night to camp out at the base of the cliff, to hide among the rocks there to wait for the penguins to come in to roost.

We had dinner at the Shy Albatross Restaurant located in the Oyster Bay Guesthouse in Swansea. Seafood Chowder and the Seafood Platter (Oysters Kilpatrick, Fresh Oyster, Steamed Prawns, Breaded Crumbs Prawns, Scallops and Trevella) were followed by Fusilli Marinara and Fettucine Carbonara. After spending the whole of dinner listening to a string of hauntingly beautiful songs, we asked what they were playing and the guy serving us got all excited to know we enjoyed it too and told us that it was the late Eva Cassidy. We had heard of her and her tragic story, and resolved to get the album he recommended.

After dinner, we returned to Coswell Beach, bundled up really tight and stumbled across the beach to our selected vantage point. We were camped out in the cold for about 45 minutes, intently scanning the sea for any sign of penguins. Unfortunately, we didn't see a single one. It was only later, at Bruny Island (Part 5) that we learned that the sharp-eyed Penguins had probably spotted us crossing the beach as they waited offshore. Anyway, it was a bit of a silly thing for us to do, since we were completely alone, without a clue as to what to do or not to do, and for all we knew, we might have been trapped there had the tide moved in.

Day 9
Nine Mile Beach, Destination Richmond

We made a quick stop at the Swansea Visitor Centre in the Swansea Bark Mill where we bought a bottle of fabulous Cajun Dressing from a local brand, "Kelly's" if memory serves. Yi Peng has been obsessed with recreating it ever since.

We had earlier been intrigued by the seemingly inviting patch of coastline on the map just north of Swansea, so we first headed to Nine Mile Beach to have a look before setting off for Richmond down south. Disappointingly, there was nothing much there to see at all and it was in fact quite deserted. Once we'd reached the end of the headland, we turned back.

At this point, we were keen to have another one of our "RAV4 shots" against the rolling sand dunes. We pulled over to the side of the road to a patch of sand. Unfortunately for us, it was soft sand and we immediately sank a couple of inches into it. In a "real" 4WD vehicle, it wouldn't have been a problem, but without the differential lock, we just spun our wheels. We were stuck! The obvious solution was to get momentum by reversing further into the sandy patch and gunning the engine to accelerate out, but Yi Peng was worried we would sink right into it. So instead, we were digging, stuffing wood and stones under the tires to get grip, but nothing worked for over an hour.

In that hour, we saw only one car pass, and the driver didn't see us. Eventually, an old man came cycling by at a leisurely pace. He stopped long enough to casually comment that we shouldn't have gone off the road onto the soft sand before cycling on his way. DUH!

With nothing left to do, we gave the original idea a try and voila, out on the first attempt!

But the time "wasted" turned out to be in our favour, since our planned lunch stop was to be at Kabuki-by-the-Sea on the A3 south of Swansea. When we got there, we discovered we still had a 15 minute wait before they opened for lunch. If we hadn't been delayed, we might have been tempted to skip this restaurant and have lunch somewhere else along the route to Richmond. Thank goodness we didn't! We had the Chicken Teriyaki, a plate of Gyoza, Sashimi Tayaki (Fresh Salmon & Tuna with soya sauce, spring onions and wasabei sauce), Beef Yakiniku (stir-fried with vegetables) and Michi's Magic Bento (Rice, noodles, potato balls, crumbed fish, beef yakiniku, steamed prawns, chicken teriyaki).

And we were getting perculiar looks from the other diners. Wonder why...

Go to Part 5 - Richmond & Bruny Island