Category: Uncategorized
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Friday, 19th October – Cradle Mountain to Launceston
Sad to leave the Cradle Mountain Hotel – certainly one of the better ones we\’ve been to on our travels. However, this place is very wet – yesterday was the wettest day we\’ve had since we arrived in Australia. However, we must move on. We decided to visit the local Tasmanian Devil sanctuary. I think…
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Thursday, 18th October – Cradle Mountain
Reasonable night\’s kip, not helped by the drumming of the rain on the roof overnight…… We awoke, not to put too fine a point on it, to pissing rain and temperatures of around 10 degrees, both of which remained more or less constant all day. So – a day for some necessary admin. Oh, and…
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Wednesday, 17th October – Strahan to Cradle Mountain
Strahan is certainly a pretty place: However, the room was a disappointment and we were not sorry to leave it. Only a short journey to Cradle Mountain, but we stopped at a place called Zeehan to visit the West Coast Heritage Centre. Zeehan, like so many of the towns in this area, got its prosperity…
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Tuesday, 16th October – Strahan
Relatively early start for us, as we had to be quayside by 8 a.m. for our journey on the catamaran \”Spirit of the Wild\”. Check-in trouble-free, and a very handsome lounge awaited us. Breakfast, mid-morning canapes and a really nice lunch also formed part of the experience. The boat took us out through Hell\’s Gate,…
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Monday, 15th October – Hobart to Strahan
Another leisurely getaway, as is our wont, and we decided to drive up to Mount Wellington, which sits above Hobart and was recommended as a viewpoint by the Hobart tourist information office. How right they were. Around 35 minutes out of Hobart, we were treated to some stunning views, albeit with the usual application of…
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Sunday, 14th October – Hobart
Reasonably good night\’s kip, and after a decent breakfast, we decided to walk around a popular neighbourhood of Hobart called Battery Point. This is a rather quaint part of the town, full of colonial-style houses and some nice views. A large cruise ship had also injected about 3,000 people into the town itself. We then…
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Saturday, 13th October – Melbourne to Hobart
This did not get off to the finest start….. Taxi to Melbourne Airport was fine, albeit expensive, but I realised as soon as I got into the Departures area of the airport that I did not have my phone. Cue panic. Had it in the cab, so must have left it in there. By dint…
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Friday, 12th October – Melbourne
Another beautiful, bright and sunny day. We started off by visiting the Immigration Museum, which proved to be both interesting and thought-provoking. Australia has veered between every extreme of racial tolerance in its relatively short history, and some of the stories were pretty harrowing. The focus was on the state of Victoria, of course, and…
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Thursday, 11th October – Melbourne
Awoke to a beautiful, sunny, chillyish morning (around 11 degrees). We decided to forego breakfast in the hotel and walk down the South Bank for brunch. Suitably sourced and demolished in lovely sunshine. We then decided to have a look around on the other side of the river, along the famous (?) lanes and arcades. This…
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Wednesday, 10th October – Apollo Bay to Melbourne
As predicted, a noisy night – the wind was really whipping around the eaves and, as there was precious little insulation in the bedroom, it was getting colder. Thank God for the electric blankets….. Not the greatest place we\’ve been to. It would have been nice for someone to have checked on us to make…