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Tassie Shores, Tours & Chores!
Just a quick update to let you know that we’re doing okay.
We’re still in Tasmania with Martin and Charlotte and their daughters Katie and Emma. Tasmania is just like one big National Park with loads of wilderness, mountains and rugged coastline. It’s a very relaxed place and even the capital Hobart is chilled. It’s quite old fashioned, in a good way, with small traditional shops, very little traffic and a strong sense of community. We’ve seen a lot of (relatively) older architecture here, giving it more a sense history and culture. However the weather has been even more changeable than Victoria. Due to its positioning the island seems to be alternately affected between warm weather coming from the mainland and cold weather coming from Antarctica. For our first week here it was wet pretty much every day but since we’ve had nice bright days but varying from 17 to 35 degrees!
We’ve had some good little excursions, including trips to an old penal colony in Port Arthur, an olde worldy antiques town of New Norfolk and a trip to Launceston where we rode a chair lift with the longest single span in the world of 308 metres, across the Cataract Gorge. One of the best days was the National Holiday of Regatta Day when we went to the Hobart Wooden Boats Festival. Loads of traditionally made boats of all shapes and sizes along with displays of how they’re made. May not sound that fun, but it was really interesting with some amazing crafts (in both senses of the word) on display. We especially liked the remote controlled models on show, particularly the mini HMS Victory with opening flanks showing all the rooms inside.
While we’ve been here Bry’s spent most of his time doing jobs on Mario. If you’re interested, these have included an oil and filter change, brake calliper overhaul, brake pad and fluid change, emptied and flushed the fuel system, cooling fans fitted for the battery box and fridge, new leisure batteries, upgraded cupboard and door catches, stripped and rebuilt slider door and new toilet seals. We have swapped our huge generator with a smaller one Martin had, which has allowed us to reconfigure the garage area to give us more room and a more user friendly layout.
Over here they have recycling centres like at home, but here they have shops attached which sell off the best stuff that comes in. Not surprisingly these are called Tip Shops and you can pick up all sorts for next to nothing. One thing Bry wanted for the van was a “roo-bar”, like a bull bar. Not a fashion accessory, but a real necessity when driving out of town. We managed to pick one up from a tip shop for £12! It was for a VW camper, so Bry needed to get the angle grinder and welder out to make it wider. It’s still not as wide as Mario, but it should do the job. We also managed to buy some parts to make a roof-rack for less than £2 - proper job! Why a roof-rack? Well, we decided to get ourselves a couple of pushbikes, with the hope of using them to explore if we decide to stay somewhere more than one night.
So we’ve got bikes on the roof and we now look like a right couple of hippies. Gone is the incognito-stealth look we wanted for Central Asia – we’ve gone full blown “look at us, we live in our van”! The great thing is, camping and RVing is a national pastime here, so we get waves and thumbs-ups as we bumble along. We’ve even got a map drawn on our back door to show what route we’ve taken from home, which has earned us “much respect” at campsites! Quite amusing parking next to “Bruce” and his full-on Land Cruiser “ute” with off-road camping trailer and massive knobbly tyres, who’s just driven up from the city for the weekend – and we’re there in our 6 tonne rear wheel drive van, designed to move boxes up and down European motorways. Of course, we don’t brag, we’re far too British. Just a causal “Oh yeah, we drove here from England”.
Since cleaning Mario in Malaysia, Caroline has been struggling with tendonitis in her elbow, which was aggravated by hay baling in Victoria. It wasn’t getting any better, so she was forced to wear a sling for a week or so to give it some proper rest and remind her not to use it. Although frustrating for her, it seems to have helped.
We’ve been helping out around the house where we can and entertaining the lovely girls, Katie and Emma, who are a real delight to be around. We’ve also been helping Martin build an all singing, all dancing spa/steam room thing that’s got 3 showers, foot massager, whirlpool, LEDs that change colour with the temperature of the water, radio, phone, Bluetooth and God knows what else! This is in addition to their existing 2 baths. Our old house had 3 bathrooms, but only one bath. This place has got 3 baths in one bathroom!
We’ve booked the ferry back to the mainland for the 1st March and will then be slowly heading towards Sydney. We will be very sad to leave our good friends, they’ve provided a real home from home for us and have looked after us well, for which we’re really grateful. However, we cannot deny we’re looking forward to getting back on the road, doing what we do best – winging it and seeing where the road takes us!
Hoo roo.