Tasmania Part 2

Now, where was I?

After the Strahan-Queenstown train trip, I arrived back in Queenstown at about 5pm. My intended stop over for that night was Cradle Mountain National Park, normally about 3 hours away. No problems at all, though it was cold and we and dark and i had to drive slow... The problem was... The reception of the caravan park at the national park closed at 7pm. I was there after that. There was a little buzzer near the door that I could press. So I pressed it. And nothing happened. I pressed it again. Same result. So after much deliberation, I decided "Bugger them" and left.

A couple of hours later (about 15km outside Launcestern (sp?) there was an all night pie shop (great hot chocolate-- jeeze it was cold [not the chocolate, the weather]), and out the back of that there was a paddock where you could park camper vans for free. I obliged.

I was in Launcestern by about 8am the next morning. And there was fog. Lots of fog. There was a lots of fog until about 10am. I parked up the top of a hill near Cataract Gorge and followed a goat track along the top of the cliffs into the city. It was rough, it was steep. I was buggered.

I wondered around there for the day. Went to the muesum and saw a movie, saw a gallery. Was pretty good. Except then I had to walk back to my van :o(.

I drove back out of town to a caravan park where I could get an ensuit (which had a heater supplied-- yum). And was back into town early the next morning. It was a saturday so I could park closer to town for free. Woo hoo. There was lots of fog. I took some photos of the fog but at 9:30 decided I'd had enough. I headed north, right to the mouth of the river, whatever river it is. There was fog there as well. And from there to the home of Launz, aka Dirk Flinthart.

Launz was/is in the process of adding an extra floor to his house. There was crap everywhere. I mean every where. There were kids everywhere. Well, not really, there are only two of them, but they seemed to be everywhere. (not in any horrible way-- just in the way of young boys). But the food was great. fish stew. Fresh custard for desert. Pancakes and bacon for breakfast. I could have stayed forever.

But I didn't. The next day I headed across to the east coast then southwards. I stayed the night at... some town. Just north of Hobart on the bay... or... something. Another of those free camper van places. And McDonalds has great hot chocolate too. And from there down to Port Arthur.

Port Arthur was great. Lots of old buildings and... ummm... a museum in an old building. And... ummm... It was raining, of course. As it had been raining just about every day. I took lots of photos. Was stalked by two women from Melbourne. Or maybe they were just looking at the old buildings in basically the same order as I was. It's hard to tell. The second day at Port Arthur I basically didn't leave the campervan. It was raining more than usual and I wanted to have a bit of a rest.

And that's basically the end of my Tasmanian oddessy (sp?). I returned to the air port the next day with a long list of jazz and classical music that I wanted to buy. Tasmania only seems to have about 3 radio stations (well, ones that can be picked up any way) and the only decent one was ABC classical.

The day after i got back from Tassie I started EnVision. That was great as well. 5 solid days of writing. My novel improved a lot. But I haven't looked at it since.

I can feel that I'm building towards writing. It happens like that. I go through my slow periods but I can feel when things are going to change. The fact that I'm writing this is something. Basically the first thing I've written for 6 weeks or so.

I did write half a scene from a feature film... I did come up with an idea for a short story in Tasmania that I'm thinking about. I did write my Tax Return (there's some fiction in there :o)-- just joking, in case the Tax office is keeping track of my Blog.)

My sister leaves for a year in China this sunday. She's teaching english over there. She's going to have a blog too, I think. I'll link to it on here. It will probably be a lot more interesting than mine. :o) And my parents now live in Woodford. So I can get a decent home cooked meal and time I like, as long as I don't mind a 50 minute drive each way.

That's all from me.