Tasmania Part 1 of 4 (North East Tasmania): Mishaps, Mountain Biking and Unexpected Adventures

Every journey has unforeseen twists; ours in Tasmania's Northeast was no exception. From the moment we set foot in Devonport, the chill was a brisk welcome to an adventure teeming with wildlife encounters and majestic sunrises tempered with the real-life dramas of health scares and road mishaps. We break down our travel approach to embrace the Tasmanian landscape's splendour. Come along as we share tales from serene hikes to our camaraderie with locals like Rosie, who turned our mountain biking escapades into stories worth telling around the campfire.

Navigating the unexpected is part and parcel of any travel experience; ours came dressed as healthcare hurdles and navigating Launceston's one-way streets. A health concern for David led us into the arms of the Tasmanian healthcare system, revealing both its quirks and unexpected efficiency. During the back-to-school frenzy, the journey's comedic relief was found in pursuing a simple haircut. Then, a sudden car accident tested our reflexes and introduced us to the heartfelt support of the local community, serving as poignant reminders of the mindfulness required on unfamiliar roads.

Our episode wraps up with heart-pumping tales from Ben Lomond National Park's icy slopes to the mountain biking haven of Derby. While our camping misadventures range from managing overcrowded sites to containing an accidental fire near our campsite, these stories of setting up new camps and tearing down bike trails genuinely capture the essence of Tasmania's great outdoors. If you've ever longed to understand the bond between travellers, locals, and the land they explore, let our experiences from Tasmania's picturesque Northeast be your guide.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome everyone to another episode in our podcast
series.
This is our trip aroundAustralia and this episode we're
going to be talking about ourfirst two weeks in Tasmania.
We're wearing jumpers for thefirst time in two weeks, so it's
a little bit unfair.
You think that Tasmania is cold, but we have had some epic
weather.
It's been Summer weather, beachweather, t-shirts, shorts, no

(00:24):
problem.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
For those that have been watching a few of our
podcasts, you might realise thatwe're in the same spot.
It's because it's a good day todo podcasts.
It's not super clean, it's abit of a cloud, it's a bit of a
covery, a bit of breeze around,so what better day to do some
podcasts than today?
That's why we've got a littlebit more on.
I've got a long sleeve and ashirt on underneath and tracky
pants and hug boots that youcan't see under the table.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
Alright, if we're going through clothing, this
what I'm wearing here issomething very special.
It's made from alpaca and wepicked it up along the way at a
quaint little shop.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
Nice to have something local At Branksome.

Speaker 1 (00:59):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
With the little town that that happened in.
So Alright.

Speaker 1 (01:03):
So we got off the ferry in Devonport and in the
last two weeks we've just stayedon the northeast and this is
our fifth camp, and we've onlytravelled a distance of 160
kilometers.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
From the terminal.
If we navigated back to theterminal we're about 160 k's but
we've actually done 730 k's oftravelling, of driving around.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
Because we have been touring and day-tripping and
looking around.
So look straight off the ferry10 o'clock in the morning or
whatever it is, we get goingLike anyone.
The first port of call had tobe the IGA, because they take
all your fresh fruit and vegaway from you and for us that
means we can't eat anythingbecause we don't eat meat and
dairy.
So that was a very importanttop-up.

(01:47):
I think we bought five things.
It cost $15.
Anyway.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
It was a little.
It was the closest IGA to theboat.
It was not even a block awayfrom the boat, from the boat.
It was a little IGA.
It happened to be open at thathour of the morning.
It didn't have a great deal ofstuff, but I got one avocado.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
Probably cost me three dollars.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
And a couple of tomatoes.
Something simple, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:08):
Yeah, and look, we probably should have bought a
bit more because we drovefollowing our nose and made our
way up to the coastline and wewent to Norandapu National Park
and Norandapu National Park is agorgeous spot.
We got there and camping atBaker's Beach Campground.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
Now is it Norandapu or Narawantapu?

Speaker 1 (02:30):
Well, it's spelt Narawantapu, but the locals
corrected our pronunciation.

Speaker 2 (02:35):
One local and said it's.

Speaker 1 (02:36):
Narandapu, but she was at a visitor center and she
also corrected.

Speaker 2 (02:40):
No, she was a nurse at the hospital.
Oh, a nurse at the hospital,Anyway don't tell them all the
secrets yet.

Speaker 1 (02:44):
We've got some stories for you, yes, and one
involves a hospital, in fact,it's one that we didn't end up
there three times.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
Two dollars but let's continue on.

Speaker 1 (02:52):
So Norandapu National Park Tons and tons of wildlife,
lots of venets, wallabies, lotsof bird life and a couple of
nice hikes.
We went up to the Arches knob.
A beautiful scenery from thetop up there.

Speaker 2 (03:09):
That track logs published now as well.
So if you're interested inhaving a look at that Arches
knob, if you search that up inthe track log system, you should
be able to find that.

Speaker 1 (03:17):
From there we then came back down and moseyed our
way around.
There's a track across toGreens Beach, yorktown, and we
did that.
That's just a dirt road butthat's a good shortcut rather
than coming back down thehighway.
So Yorktown, greens Beach,kelso, clarence River and we

(03:38):
found our next free camp atGardens Island, which is on the
Tasman Sea at the beginning ofthe entrance into the Tamar
River, and wow, what an epicsunrise view.
Have a look at the photos onsocial media.
Got purple sky looking acrossto Georgetown.
Really really pretty littlefree camp.
Could have stayed there longer,but we're already beginning to

(04:01):
realise everywhere you go inTasmania is just so beautiful
you don't have to travel veryfar, I think.
What was our distance that day?
It was like we haven't doneover 100 kilometres in a day and
we're busying our day withseeing beautiful things.

Speaker 2 (04:19):
After our camp at Gardens.

Speaker 1 (04:20):
Island.
We awoke and David gave me thesorry tale that he was in a lot
of pain Now.
He'd been complaining of this alot of pain in his calf for
quite a few weeks.
Actually, if you were listeningto the couple of podcasts back,
you'd know that I had to flyback to Perth for a family

(04:40):
medical emergency.
Meanwhile, while I was turningto that, David was telling me on
the phone that he had a soreleg.
He's on blood thinners.
He's had a history of havingdeep vein thrombosis in the past
, DVTs, and he had a sense thatthis might be another one.
It didn't seem to make muchsense to me, because if you're

(05:01):
on blood thinners, the doctorstell you that you can't get
another DVT.

Speaker 2 (05:06):
You shouldn't be able to get another DVT.

Speaker 1 (05:08):
So, yeah, we really didn't know what was going on.
David had been doing a fair bitof mountain bike riding in
Sydney with my dad and that hadinvolved a few falls.
So we worked through the usual.
Was it a muscle injury?
There wasn't anythingparticular, but we made this
decision at Gardens Island thatwe went very far from Lawnceston

(05:32):
Hospital and that was probablysensible at this point in our
trip to go and get some peace ofmind and get an ultrasound.
So we spent that next daydriving to Lawnceston but David
was avoiding going to hospital.
I could tell, becauseeverywhere we went there was a
diversion.
Oh, let's see this or let's seethat.

Speaker 2 (05:53):
But we did go to the Beaconsfield mine.

Speaker 1 (05:55):
Yes, so we went through Beaconsfield.
Now those of you that mightremember what was it 2012?
There was a terrible miningdisaster the collapse of the
underground mine in Beaconsfield.

Speaker 2 (06:09):
Killed one in Trap 2 when they were there for two
weeks.
We might remember the diggingout process.

Speaker 1 (06:13):
Yeah look, it is an excellent display that they've
put on there.
There's no longer any mining inthe town, so it was very
interesting to see how the townhas survived and lived through
that incident.

Speaker 2 (06:25):
What we didn't know was that they did actually
continue mining after the guysgot taken back out for quite a
number of female years, I thinkit was 12 or I don't know, it
was another few years anywaythat they continued to mine,
until the price of getting themthe gold out was more expensive
than the cost to pump the waterout from the bottom part of the

(06:45):
mine to make it so they can getthe gold out.
They have to pump so much waterout.
The cost of running the pumpsto pump the water out and the
extraction price of the goldmeant that it was not feasible.
They were actually losing moneyto take the gold out.
So they ceased mining there afew years later.
But yeah, they've converted.
The town has sort of beenrevitalized by being put on the

(07:08):
map by the disaster.
I guess They've put anexcellent visitor center and
display it around theBeaconsfield mine.
You can basically walk throughthe whole place.
You can get up into the areawhere the guys came out and all
that sort of stuff right on thathole.
What do they call it?
The?
rig and the shaft and everything.

(07:28):
It's all sitting there.
You can go and climb up anddown four flights of it and you
can get right immersed in thewhole place and they've put on a
really great display.
I think it was like a $20 orsomething.

Speaker 1 (07:40):
Yeah, $21 a head for an adult.
There were concession pricestoo.

Speaker 2 (07:43):
We were apparently rushed to get to the hospital
and it was still worth the hourand a half that we spent there
touring around.
It was really great and thefacilities in the town.
It looked like it's still alittle thriving town.
There was actually people in it, Some of these other towns that
we've driven through are almostdon't seem to have any people

(08:06):
in them.
They seem to have buildings andnobodies.
But Davenport sorry,beaconsfield was not like that.
It was a thriving little,bustling little place.
Not really sure how it reallygoes but for all intents and
purposes, certainly during theschool holidays and tourist time
down here, which we were stillin school holidays it was a
bustling little area.
It was worth it, worth the stopat Beaconsfield.

Speaker 1 (08:29):
Yeah, and because we're staying to the highway
heading towards Lawnceston.
The next part that you travelthrough is the beautiful Tamar
Valley, and David was very itchyto taking off to all the
wineries.
Another distraction fromgetting to Lawnceston it was
very upset that we were drivingpast so many.
So finally I agreed.
Finally I agreed to be taken tothe winery and they had a

(08:54):
gender silvery.
It was Tamar Ridge and we had avery steep arrival into their
driveway and thought, oh, itreally isn't catering for people
that are touring the caravan.

Speaker 2 (09:05):
The camper van.

Speaker 1 (09:05):
Oh my god, there's nowhere to really park, but we
managed and stumbled our wayinto the most beautiful,
beautiful winery, beautifuloutlook.
We didn't stay for wine tasting, we just knew what we wanted to
buy pop that in the bag.
So then they gave us freetasting anyway, so that was
handy.

Speaker 2 (09:24):
We just went in and bought their most expensive
bottles off the list and thenthey said would you like to
taste them?
We thought, why not?
So Michelle had a bit.
We went to the gender silverynext door Next door.
What was it?

Speaker 1 (09:33):
Three cuts is it yeah , three cuts gin.

Speaker 2 (09:35):
Three cuts gin.
What a great little setup.
Being a bit of a being a bit ofa gin distiller myself, it was
great to go in and see acommercial operation.
It looks exactly like the homeoperation, but a fair bit bigger
, and we tasted their fivedifferent gins or something, and
that was great.
Bought a bottle from there.

(09:55):
So we've got that sitting inthe camper for when we run out
of my home brew, which is goingto be a lot quicker than it was
going to be, except for I keepstopping at people's houses that
can't seem to like my home brew.
Gin, yeah, but Tamar Ridge andthree cuts gin.
That was a great littlediversion.
Another way to slow me downfrom getting to Lonseston.

Speaker 1 (10:16):
And then we drove through that Gnomesville no,
what is it called?
The place with the Swissvillage.

Speaker 2 (10:25):
Oh yeah, what was that called?
There is Grindelwald.
Grindelwald, yeah, it's alittle Swiss, a little Swiss
village just out of Lonseston.
You drive in there and, yeah,you would think you were driving
maybe Through the Swiss Alps orsomething into a little, a
little Swiss town.
Everything was made in thatgenre every street, every

(10:47):
frontage every home.
Immaculate and they wereimmaculate.
It was very clean, very tidy.

Speaker 1 (10:52):
It is a residential area, but there's a
Commercialized resort and thereis also there's a golf course
and a putt-putt and Tamar Valleyresort is the resort that
operates in there.

Speaker 2 (11:05):
What it was?
A great little place.
We went just did a tour aroundanother distraction from getting
to Lonseston.
We tried more distractions butI couldn't keep them going.

Speaker 1 (11:15):
I've got a friend in Lonseston so I've been in touch
with her.

Speaker 2 (11:18):
We have a friend.
Yes, helen we have friends.

Speaker 1 (11:21):
Thank you to Helen, who Will helped me stay sane in
trying to Plan whether we weregoing to the hospital and where
to stay.
So we Set up camp at Old Maxfarm, which is four and a half
cases out of Lonseston, and itis an old farm that they've
turned into an RV camping areaso you need to be self-contained

(11:42):
.
But it's a beautiful big openpaddock, a couple of lakes that
they've made and we were able tohave a waterfront frontage set
everything up and it waspossible that when I took David
to hospital that he may stayovernight.
So David wanted to have it allset up so that I could just
drive back.
The camp was all set up and youknow we really didn't want to

(12:05):
have to go through that.

Speaker 2 (12:07):
But what was that?
20 bucks a night as well there,I think wasn't it yeah, max
farm yeah bad toilets and.

Speaker 1 (12:14):
Yeah, I was.
You could have a fire, they had.

Speaker 2 (12:17):
But not at this time of year.
Yes, yes, actually, yeah, youcould have fires in there, just
in barrels that they can provide.
If you had a barrel, theyprovide that and some wood.
Some people did have a fire.
We were kind of getting used tonot having a fire because all
the national parks and stuffhere Done allow fires.
Obviously the colder ones, likesome of the ones that we're

(12:38):
coming up to after Lonseston,you could have fires.
But yeah, I'll max farm it was.
It was a nice, was a nicelittle stay.
It was quite busy, there wasquite a lot of vans and a lot of
people camping in there, butyou can find a little niche and
yeah, you select your own spot.

Speaker 1 (12:54):
You select your own spot and then just go and fill
out the honesty box and you puteither cash or You're paid by a
bit direct deposit.

Speaker 2 (13:03):
Oh, yeah, and so after we'd set up camp and made
all that happen, it was time togo to hospital.
Yeah, we went at five.
I knew I needed an ultrasoundand that could probably was
going to be the next day.
You've got no idea how big thetown Hospitals are when you come
into a town like Lonseston oryou know anyway, hobart.
You've got no idea what theservices are like.

(13:24):
We knew it was a 24 hour ed sowe loved in there at about five
o'clock, which was just the timethat it happened to work out
and We've got free Free parkingon the main street opposite the
emergency.

Speaker 1 (13:38):
Yeah so free parking after five a year?
That was just incredible.

Speaker 2 (13:42):
And then we walked straight into the emergency and
it was tiny and that was wherewe were told how to pronounce
Miranda poo, or narrow one topoo, by the triage nurse who was
telling us not to tell everyoneto come to Tasmania.

Speaker 1 (13:57):
But they all had.

Speaker 2 (13:58):
They all had two heads in there, we're all in
bread and you didn't want tocome here because it's such a
bad place and it's cold, andit's cold and it's horrible.
That was the triage nurse.
She was classic.
It was quite good.
Yeah but straight from thetriage nurse to the check-in,
people going through, you know,giving you Medicare cards and
all that sort of stuff, and andwithin no ticket taking no, you
know, you know no tickets juststraight in your name and she

(14:19):
said that's why she startedtalking about the inverse,
because she said everybody knowseverybody.
Yeah, she said around this,around this area, half of the
half the people in this room,they will knows each other.

Speaker 1 (14:29):
So, yeah, it was a they called out David's name to
see the doctor in 50 minutes.

Speaker 2 (14:34):
Mind you, they just come out of the back back room
and say David.
I don't even say Martin, theyjust said David.

Speaker 1 (14:39):
It's like number five and I'm going.

Speaker 2 (14:41):
How many other Davids could there possibly be in the
room?
There must have been 30 peoplein there, but obviously no other
Davids, because I was the onlyone that got up and, yeah, that
was about 50 minutes.
And then we're told that we'dneed to wait for about an hour
to get the ultrasound donebecause the the the doctor on
charge that night was astenographer and so he was quite
happy to do the ultrasound,that we didn't have to wait and

(15:03):
we could get that done.
So Some two hours later we wereable to leave the hospital.
The results were okay.
Oh we don't really know what itis, still don't.
It's not as bad now, but thatwas a week and week ago.

Speaker 1 (15:16):
Now it's just a good piece of mind.
David was just Decide himselfwith concern.
And that's just not how youwant to do your trip.

Speaker 2 (15:24):
No, so so we, we got that out of the way, we got that
out of the way, and, and thenin Lonseston I'll let you keep
going.

Speaker 1 (15:32):
Yeah, well then that night that night.

Speaker 2 (15:36):
No, so that night we've come back the following
morning no you wanted to getyour hair cut.

Speaker 1 (15:41):
I decided well, we're in a main town, it's time to
get my hair cut.
I've just been so busy, whatwith flying back to Perth and
dealing with my son in hospitaland all that I just had no time
to look after myself.
No self care was going on.
So we tried to find somewhereto get a haircut, but what was
the problem?
Oh, it was the day beforeschool going back.

(16:02):
It was the final Friday beforeschools go back and I could not
even get an appointment at themost basic just cut hairdresser.
So it should have been thesimplest thing to do, but we
were fussing around trying toget that done.
At the same time, david thoughthe would try and buy a pair of
Compression calf socks you knowskins just to support the calf

(16:23):
muscle where it was sore, and hedropped me off at hairdressers
that I finally found availablein the heart of Lonseston.
And meanwhile he went to parkthe car and was going to go to
the shop and, and next minute,five minutes later, I get a
message from him and the messagesaid oh shit, I have just hit

(16:44):
up a Destrian.
This is going to be a drama,drama.

Speaker 2 (16:47):
She's all right, this is going to be a drama.
That's exactly what I put inthe message.

Speaker 1 (16:51):
It's a pedestrian hitter pedestrian.

Speaker 2 (16:53):
I've never done anything like it in this ever
before, but these things canhappen and you know,
interestingly enough, davenportsorry, lonseston, the town has
got lots of, lots of one ways inthe heart of the town and you
end up turning right from theright hand lane into a right
hand lane and you know we're allleft hand lane drivers here.

(17:17):
So it was a little bitdisconcerting and I think what
had happened is I was waiting,the light was green, I had the
green light to go, it was aright hand turn.
There was pedestrians on thecrossing and I'd obviously been
watching them because I hadn'talready gone and the other car
that was pointing straight at me.
There was two cars, it was likea Two-way intersection coming

(17:41):
into a one-way right hand.
It was complicated anyway.
So there was a car pointingstraight at me turning left.
I was turning right from theright hand lane up a one-way
into the right hand side and Oneof the things that I found with
the 200 series is it's got thisvery large blind spot from the
door pillar, from the driver'sside door pillar and the mirror.

(18:02):
I also have my phone mounted inthere, which probably makes it
worse.
So it has a really large blindspot and I suspect, or I believe
now, you know, thinking backover a few times, that the
people were in there.
It was a family, there was amum and two kids that just got
in my blind spot.
So I just taken off from thelights and, sure enough, as soon

(18:23):
as I got part way around thecorner I'd realized I could see
that I, I could actually see Meknocking the lady and she, she
felt that she basically fell tothe ground.
It wasn't fast, it wasn't hard.
She's obviously hit the groundand grazed her elbow and had a
bit of a sore back and shewasn't a hundred percent.
But you know, like like smalltowns, within minutes someone

(18:48):
that knew I was there, a nursewas there, an ambulance
paramedic was there and then tenminutes later another Nurse
arrived.
So we had like three nurses ina paramedic all arrived there
just street walking, all withinminutes of the issue happening.
One of them called an ambulancebecause we realized that she

(19:08):
shouldn't really move.
Makes you do all the the usualchecks and make sure she's a
hundred percent.
So the ambulance was called andthe police were called and they
came and spoke to me and took astatement and and and and did
all of that and I turned up atthis point because I'd been in
the headdress.

Speaker 1 (19:25):
I've got this message from David and I'd said shall I
, shall I call you?
And you'd said not yet and I'dheard nothing for a few minutes
until I heard and saw the sirensgo screaming past on the road
that I was on, and so I had thethought that I'd use my phone

(19:45):
and I looked up the tracker appand I'm following the car, which
David had is our main tracking,and I was able to see exactly
where David was, because hehadn't told me where he was.
So I was able to see on the mapthat the car was stuck in the
middle of the intersection ofBrisbane Street and St John
Street or whatever it was, andliterally I just ran and

(20:05):
followed that tracker and I wentstraight to him and, as I said,
he was really only just aroundthe corner and when I arrived he
was being interviewed by thepoliceman and the lady was being
put into the back of theambulance.
It was horrible to come upon ascene like that with all the
flashing lights and theemergency services.

Speaker 2 (20:24):
It's pretty awful and I didn't know what I was going
to say and the media arrived.
So I'm thinking, uh-oh, uh-oh,the media's here.

Speaker 1 (20:31):
No, they didn't speak to me.

Speaker 2 (20:32):
They just spoke to the police.
It was obviously just a nothing.
So they you know that that wasobviously not a serious thing,
so so that was all kind of bythe buy side.

Speaker 1 (20:40):
But you know, I didn't know whether I was going
to be in the Advertiser the nextmorning or not, but but the
lady did go to hospital forobservation, obviously just to
ensure there was nothing wrong,and the policeman said to you
that he'd try not to.

Speaker 2 (20:55):
He could see there was a total accident, it was a
thing, but they were able to.
They wanted to go back andexamine the CCTV footage to make
sure the lights were as they,as we both had said, as she'd
said and as I'd said, they arefairly sure that she had no
major injuries and that there'dbe no ongoing complications.
So they took my details, tookmy email address, asked if I

(21:20):
would accept being, you know,receiving any notices via email,
which I said yes, all recordedon there on their chest cams and
everything else.
So it was all all okay andwithin a few minutes.
You know it took quite a longtime to get all that dealt with,
but Within a few minutes of ofall that happening, I was
basically allowed to go on againand continue with my day.

(21:44):
Obviously, the lady and her twokids, they've obviously gone
off to the hospital for acheckup and that might have
taken a little bit of time.
I don't know how long she wouldhave been there for and I'm
sorry for any delay to her daythat she had and and the kids,
but we dealt with it as best wecould.
It was just totally an accident, something that can happen,
something that you don't want tohave happened to you.

(22:05):
I still play it back in my headalmost all the time when I'm
driving.
But you know it was.
It wasn't bad, it was a thebest result that could have
happened.
No one was injured.
The car didn't cop any injury,so you know we were able to move
on and that afternoon we wereable to go and you got your

(22:30):
haircut.
I got my socks and mycompression socks and we went
and did some we went to cataractgorge cataract gorge, which is
a lovely place gorgeous spot.

Speaker 1 (22:38):
We've featured that in some social media, but
there's a beautiful hike out toan old power station.
It was apparently Australia'sfirst hydro, oh, first power
station, and it was hydro.

Speaker 2 (22:49):
Yeah, first, first electricity provider, 56 or
something like really old,incredible Concept and a massive
construction.
You know, big tunnels throughthe sides of mountains to bring
the water from the, from theother side, down in through the,
through the power station andand and then down into the, the
South Esk River, which is whatthe power station was built on,

(23:12):
great walk.
You know it's kind of aboardwalk it's.
It's high up the valley.
There's bridges and couple ofsuspension bridges, and and it
was.
It was a really nice, was itsix K, seven K's or something
eight K, something like that.
It was a really nice walk, wellworth doing.
The only the the hardest partis climbing the steps on the

(23:35):
other side of the power station.
If you do it the way we did,you could come through the snake
gully way first and then do themore boardwalk side second.
The stairs are on the snakegully side, just Near the power
station.
There's why it's a bit.
It's a bit of climbing, butthey're nothing if you enjoy
hiking.

Speaker 1 (23:54):
If you enjoy hiking, it's not a problem.
They can go clockwise oranti-clockwise.
Most people went anti and wewent clock.

Speaker 2 (24:01):
That that that track log is also available on the
website or in the track tracklog system.
So cataract gorge or duck reachpower station, they would be
the search terms if you'relooking for those.
It's probably still on thefirst page of results anyway at
this point.
So that was another decent dayaround Lonseston, and we finish
that night again.

(24:22):
No, we finish that night withan invite to our friends place
for dinner.

Speaker 1 (24:26):
Yeah, and we've gone back to old Macs to have our
showers and clean up and getready to go and see them.
Helen had been hiking, oh, overnear Cradle Valley the two
nights and then she'd stilloffered to cook dinner for us
and see us.
And she's been living inTasmania for the last three
years.
I haven't seen her.
We know them, originally fromPerth, and so, yeah, we turned

(24:49):
up, had Dinner with them, sawtheir new home and they live
right near cataract gorge.
We might just pause here.

Speaker 2 (24:57):
We've got Some campers just no, no, they're
just driving.
Okay, that's okay, they're justdriving there Okay okay, so we
continue on with okay.

Speaker 1 (25:10):
After visiting Helen, we had a bit of a chat about
her suggestions for where to gofrom there and we put together a
bit of a plan.
So we realize that Ben LohmanNational Park, which is where
the ski fields in Tasmania are,was not far out of Lonseston, so
that's where we went to startour day and, oh my god, ben

(25:33):
Lohman is just fantastic, butfreezing.
You definitely don't want totow anything up the switchbacks
of Jacob's ladder, so at thebottom you could possibly leave
it.
At the base, which is the firstpart that you'll see when you
turn in, is a cafe and afireplace.

(25:55):
You can continue driving a lotfurther up there is a campground
.
We dropped our camper trailerthere, thinking, wow, this is a
gorgeous place, will stay.
But after experiencing a coupleof hours of that biting cold
wind, we changed our mind.
It's also really really tight.
We struggled to get our campertrailer in and ours is only four

(26:16):
and a bit meters long.
Imagine it would be impossiblewith a larger caravan.
You just couldn't do it.
They're really tight littlebays and there's rocks in all
the wrong spots.

Speaker 2 (26:24):
And we tried to reverse it in and yeah, we
obviously got it in and left itthere for the drive up to the
top and you know, talking aboutthe elevation change, you know
when we drove into that areawere about 400 meters and the
top of the, the top of the BenLohman Drive that we did was
1400 meters.
So a one kilometer climb, a onekilometer vertical distance is

(26:50):
is significant.
I'm looking at the profile onthe track log while I'm talking
to you and you know it was a itwas a fairly steep drive and the
switchback part so there's ajust near, just near the top,
there's a thing called Jacobladder and it's a set of
switchbacks for the car and andyou know you think you probably
like driving through the hillsin France and stuff and

(27:11):
Switzerland a Nice little switchback.
It was a bit of fun.
There's nice look out at thetop so you can watch all the
cars coming up and down.
And as we were going throughthere, there was a guy on his
e-mountain bike that startedfrom the bottom and was going to
do the whole, the whole, thewhole journey up with his e-bike
from the base where we had achat to him.
He was from WA and Well, he hasan ultimate cam he has an

(27:34):
ultimate cam trailer and whilewe were doing the the videoing
of the switchbacks and all thatsort of stuff for our footage,
he comes riding past with hise-bike.
So you would do it with ane-bike, you wouldn't do it
without an e-bike.
Yeah, and it's dirt, and it's adirt off-road, so it wasn't a
gravel road, so it's not likeit's tar or anything fancy like

(27:57):
you might have in Switzerlandand France.
It's gravel and dirt.
But yeah, it was a great placeand we went up to the ski fields
and we had a look around at theSnow machines and all that was
all very closed.
There was a very new visitor'sshelter it's called tourist
shelter, visitor's shelter orsomething.

Speaker 1 (28:13):
Brand new building, nice, big, internal area, just
to let you know how the how thetemperature is.

Speaker 2 (28:19):
You go in and the air conditioning is.
There's two rooms the entryroom, the air conditioning set
at 8.9 degrees.
That's when you enter thebuilding to make it warm and the
other room, which is evenwarmer, is set at 10.9 degrees.
So you know you get a wholecouple of degrees warming
between two rooms and it feelsit feels warm in there, even at
10.9, 11 degrees or whatever.
It was certainly warmer inthere than it was outside,

(28:42):
because you're outside with thewind, but air, so nice
facilities.
Obviously, the whole ski fieldwas completely shut.
There was nothing.
All the bills, businesses andall the buildings were basically
closed.

Speaker 1 (28:54):
There was lots of lodges and and stuff like that,
but it is in comparison to whereyou might think a perisher or a
false creek or all those placesthat we have on the mainland.

Speaker 2 (29:04):
It was just a little ski field, maybe about five or
six chair lifts and tea bars andstuff around the place.
But you know no and there was awalk to the top but was too cold
.
We couldn't be stuffed, it wasjust too cold.
We basically drove back downthe hill, picked up the camper

(29:25):
trailer on the way back down,got down to around about the 200
what was it?
We got down around about 400meters and had a lunch.
You know where.
It was warmer again and wecould find a bit of sun that
wasn't in the biting cold.
We had our lunch then and wecontinued on on out on our
journey, but this is where wemade the decision that we would
head towards Derby.

Speaker 1 (29:45):
So Derby's been on the horizon for us and one of
the reasons we've got ourmountain bikes with us because
it is a world-renowned mountainbiking area and we didn't really
know much about it.
So we really wanted to go andspend a bit of time there, and
on the way, helen had given us afew places to check out along

(30:07):
the way, but again it was aweekend and we're getting closer
to popular places and we wentpast a few towns Scottsdale for
one, branks Home another, andboth of those, the free camps
that they have there.
These three are the stops.
They're okay, they've got allthe facilities all set up, but

(30:28):
they were literally jammed.

Speaker 2 (30:32):
Scottsdale's one was so packed we couldn't even sneak
in, even if you wanted to.
A couple of bikers pulled upwith tents and they were able to
jam themselves basically almoston the road.
It was full and there was noway that we would stay there.

Speaker 1 (30:51):
And then.
So we drove on a bit furtherthan we wanted to, because from
Ben Lowman's we took a foresttrack.

Speaker 2 (30:57):
So that was at Scottsdale.

Speaker 1 (30:59):
Yeah, but we took a forest track to get to
Scottsdale so we've taken alittle bit longer and we've
looked at the dam and done allthe usual that we do, assuming
that we just get to this sleepylittle Scottsdale and be able to
jag a spot.
But, when that was apparent.
And then we started continuingon and we get to Branks Home and
found the same thing.

Speaker 2 (31:18):
At Branks Home they have this very similar sort of
camping facility free campsystem there.
It's at the back of the cafeand right there on the corner.

Speaker 1 (31:32):
Yeah, it's right, basically right on the corner.
We ended up coming back toBranks Home, but we'll talk
about that in a minute.

Speaker 2 (31:38):
And again it was just full too many people, and so we
had to go to Derby.
So we got to Derby.
Same thing and worse.

Speaker 1 (31:49):
And so we looked to the campers all along the
Ringeroma River.
There's three sort of markedout spots where people were all
the way from the beginning oftown, from the centre of town
and then right at the end wherethe mountain biking is
Chock-a-block full Peopleeverywhere.
And David started to get a bitantsy by this stage.
And I'm madly looking on themap, looking at all those places

(32:12):
, and I found one that was a hipcamp and rang the number and
the beautiful lady, rosie,answered the phone, was
incredibly helpful andaccommodating and she said yep,
you can come, there's no oneelse here.
I'm on the other side of theriver, turn left, go 2.7km,
whatever, it was Fraser's flat.

(32:35):
Well, that was as easy asanything and we've arrived there
and it's just perfect.
We had the whole place toourselves, about 20 acres.

Speaker 2 (32:46):
It's a humongous paddock but yeah, the bit that
we're allowed, the bit that thecamping area is in, it's still
massive.
Yeah, it's huge.

Speaker 1 (32:55):
They only want to have five.

Speaker 2 (32:56):
They've only allocated five sites in there,
but it is huge, so there'splenty of room between people if
you want to go down there.
But yeah, and it's on theRingeroma River and we just set
up camp, basically, and checkedin with Rosie about using the
fire rings and the firewood thathad been left around and all of
that was all OK to use, noproblem.

(33:17):
Set up wherever you like.
There was a caravan alreadythere that belonged to her
daughter or something and theyweren't going to be there.
But we tend to move away frominfrastructure, so even a
caravan steered us a bit furtheraway.
It is electric fenced aroundthe property to keep the bulls
out, to keep the cows and stuff.
They weren't in that particularpaddock that we were in.

Speaker 1 (33:39):
No, we're not camping with bulls.

Speaker 2 (33:41):
We're not camping with bulls and cows.
But the area was still electricfenced and there was one entry
to the river up near the caravan.
So that was a little bitinconvenient.
We had to walk a little bit toget to that.

Speaker 1 (33:55):
Right, we could hear the river because of the way out
.
Yeah, we could hear the riverwe could hear the river.

Speaker 2 (34:01):
We basically camped a bit further up the river near
the electric fence, but really,you know, it really was a really
nice place, a really calm, veryeasy place to camp Later pushed
in the river kayaks provided byher for your convenience.

Speaker 1 (34:21):
So she had four kayaks down by the river.

Speaker 2 (34:22):
She had these mokrami rope swings and things yeah
there was no camp signage oranything when we arrived.
You know, that seemed a littlebit strange.
But when Rosie came down andmet us, we just got the fire
started and we were just sort ofgetting ourselves organised and
Rosie came down and brings abig tub of blueberries that she
picked off her tree.

Speaker 1 (34:42):
Oh, blueberries on the spine.

Speaker 2 (34:45):
Off her tree up at the house or whatever.
Yeah, and she was lovely andshe wanted to show us how to
cross the river with our bikesand everything, because there
was a river crossing.
Obviously, we're on the otherside of the river.
It's going to be several kaysif we had to drive back around
the road.

Speaker 1 (35:02):
To get back to Derby for the mountain biking.

Speaker 2 (35:05):
So she wanted to show us how to get through.
So, as I say, we just set thefire and we just got ourselves
all organised and Rosie came andasked us to go and have a look
around and see.
She wanted to show us.
She wanted to show us the waythrough, and so off we went,

(35:25):
walking down the path, down thepaddock, to another electric
fence, take that one down andanother electric fence and take
that one down, and then therewas the river crossing.
It was about 200 metres fromcamp, or 250 metres from camp
where the river crossing was.
So she showed us that andshowed us where we could see the
Platypus and all that, and then, as we were making our way back

(35:46):
to the camp, we could see moresmoke than we'd expected.

Speaker 1 (35:50):
And a very loud crackle, and lots of crackling
noises.

Speaker 2 (35:54):
So we kind of had immediately realised that we'd
set fire to the joint.
We all started running the firebarrel that we hadn't been used
before.
It still had some oil remnantsin it and we'd lit the fire in
it.
I was a bit conscious ofsetting that fire and then Rosie
dragging us away.

Speaker 1 (36:13):
We were both a bit conscious of it.
We realised it was against ourbetter judgement.
But we were kind of beingsteered by the property owner to
come and have a look, we didn'tknow how far we were going to
go, and we had no idea how wewere going to go.

Speaker 2 (36:26):
So it was all a series of misfortunate
circumstances to add to thehospital, to add to the heating,
the pedestrian.
We've now set fire to theproperty and we had the fire I
basically heard it as we closedthe last electric fence and I'd
started running at that point toget back, just to survey the
situation and whilst it lookedfairly bad I knew it was fairly

(36:51):
controllable relatively quickly.
The girls jumped into action.

Speaker 1 (36:55):
I was not happy to see red flames under the camper
trailer and red flames under therear of the four-wheel drive,
so the back of the car.
I was disill.
They're not going to goanywhere.

Speaker 2 (37:11):
But so there was a bit of fire under the car and a
bit of fire under the campertrailer.
It had gone basically through.
It was around the wheels andthe tyres and all that sort of
stuff.
So we padded that out and putthose bits and pieces out.
Luckily even the back of thestairs.
The wrap on the back didn't getsinged or anything, but the
fire had gone past it.

(37:32):
Michelle grabbed the fireextinguisher out from the camper
trailer because behind theelectric fence was very tall
grass.
It was like a wheat crop orsomething.
It was very tall and that waswhere the crackling was coming
from.
It was as tall as me and it wasvery dry.
And that was the bit that wasburning.
It was behind the electricfence.

(37:52):
So we jumped through theelectric fence and basically I
squirted it with a one kilo dryfire extinguisher and that put
90% of it out.
I was able just to stamp outthe last few bits and so we were
able to get the fire out andunder control.
But wow, it didn't take long,it was a couple of minutes, and

(38:13):
luckily we hadn't crossed theriver or spent more time with
Rosie down the creek like wewere going to.
It was seconds away from thatlong tall grass going up into
the trees and that just wouldhave gone yeah once it got
further into the long it wasfairly wet so it wasn't racing
away at a really fast rate, butyeah, the potential was there.
We were just really lucky tocatch it in time.

(38:34):
You know, we had a lot of badluck.
We just about done our dash ofluck because pedestrian fire,
you know, it just hadn't, andthen Michelle happened to go to
Sydney, it just hadn't been sucha very bad run.

Speaker 1 (38:51):
It wasn't a really good start, so we just sat down
after that and realized we hadto move camp.
It's stank.
Oh yeah, we had to pick.

Speaker 2 (39:00):
We'd all set up and we'd had everything and we were
in exactly the spot we wantedand we had to move because we
just couldn't stay there.
So yeah, it was like seveno'clock at night, it was getting
dark, we had to move out and wehad a big day.

Speaker 1 (39:11):
We've done all that.
Then loam, and we've done allthat, driving trying to find a
camp, found the perfect camp andthen this happened.

Speaker 2 (39:16):
Yeah, we set fire to it and had to move.

Speaker 1 (39:18):
It was exhausting.

Speaker 2 (39:19):
So we only moved about 20 metres up the road, up
the paddock, but we set campagain and that was it.
We ended up staying.
We ended up staying there forthree, four nights, four nights.
We ended up staying there forfour nights, Obviously going
into Derby with the mountainbikes the next day spectacular

(39:40):
All you can say about themountain biking in Derby is
spectacular.
It is not easy.
By any stretch of theimagination.
We're not as young as we usedto be we might think we are so
we think we can have a go at allthese great tracks and all this
great stuff and go smashingdown these great runs and all
that sort of stuff.
But we are getting older andyou know.

Speaker 1 (40:01):
We're from Perth.
We're not set up for all thisdownhill plava.

Speaker 2 (40:06):
No, no, we get uphill and downhill and the downhill
is usually pea gravel and soft,it's not formed and nice and
fast and with certain obstacles.
These are probably built trackswith obstacles of certain grades
and stuff, and on the first daywe just basically potted around
and did a few green climbs anda few green downhills just to

(40:26):
get back into it.
We've been here a long timesince we've done much, and that
was a great day.
We went and had a beer at thelocal tavern in town and then we
rode our way back and crossedthe river to get back to camp
and had a great camp.
The next day we went and did abit of driving around.
We went to Mount Parris Dam.

(40:47):
Oh yeah, mount Parris Dam,lovely place, really nice spot.

Speaker 1 (40:49):
It's actually not a dam.

Speaker 2 (40:51):
It was a dam.
It was a dam.

Speaker 1 (40:53):
It was a ruin of the dam wall and what's left is a
trickling river coming throughit and a little waterfall and
ferns.
It's just really beautiful spotto go and spend a bit of time.

Speaker 2 (41:07):
And yeah around there .

Speaker 1 (41:08):
we were then able to take a backtrack.
We did a big loop around theback of Derby.
So from Parris Dam road youthen drive through up to one of
the trail heads.
That is a high point on themountain biking.
The mountain biking trailcalled Atlas, so we had a look
at that and then eventually cometo a town called Wilbur, and

(41:31):
that also is a point on one ofthe mountain biking tours.
If you want to do the blue tier, it comes down from blue tier
to Wilbur.
So we had a look at Wilbur.
There's a lovely camping outthere and it's got a historic
hotel as well.

Speaker 2 (41:45):
Just a quaint little town, everything here is just
quaint little towns, no shops,and it's also to old school.
You know, the buildings andeverything are so, you know,
historically aged.

Speaker 1 (41:56):
Yeah, very quiet, there's not that much new stuff.

Speaker 2 (41:59):
Very scenic.
It's easy to travel in.
Wilbur was a great little thing.

Speaker 1 (42:01):
And then from Wilbur it's just farming country
following the main road backaround the loop, coming back
into Derby and back to our campat Fraser's Plats Rosie's
property, her hip camp and Ithink that night we then had the
first visitors arrive.
No, we didn't.
That was when she set up, okay.

Speaker 2 (42:23):
No, we came back that day and her husband was there
with the bobcat and Rosie andher husband they came back with
the low load of bobcat and andtrade with it and big scoops
full of sand and clay and stuffand they were there to pig out
the sights and to set up thefire pits there was this
decision in a proper way, ratherthan just having the firing

(42:46):
sitting on the grass.

Speaker 1 (42:47):
Why did we set fire to the grass?
Why would we put a fire ring onthe grass?
It wasn't really grass, it's itwas.
It had all been freshly mowingand it was quite dry and very
short.
There was like no long grass.
There was no grass.

Speaker 2 (42:59):
It had been slashed and it was basically just dirt,
but it had enough enough, enoughdead grass on it to to make
that fire just move away.
And you know, rosie basicallyhad decided after that that
they'd better get their campsiteset up in order, and it was
then that we found out thatshe'd only actually put had the

(43:21):
idea to do the campsite twoweeks ago and we were like very
early on very first customers,and so she came down the next
day and handed over fivecampsite signs to me and said
can you go and lay out mycampsites for me and, and which
we we helped.
We, we walked around with herand tried to lay it out.
She pretty much knew where shewanted to go anyway, because

(43:43):
she'd seen how previous groupshad camped in the place, which
again is different, probably howwe camp.
Well, we go the furthest oneout.
If you go to, if you go to, ifyou go to the Fraser's flats and
your camping campsite five,that's where we were and you'll
see that we're a little bitfurther away than the one, two,
three and four sites.
That's just how we roll.

(44:04):
But we help Rosie work outwhere the fire rings and the
fire pitch should go, and thehusband's there with the low
load of bobcat making trips backup to the dirt pile to bring
back more dirt, to create littlemounds for the fire rings to go
on, and so basically, thatnight they pegged out the
campsites in the locations andin it, and that was because the
next day they had another set oftravelers coming to stay that

(44:27):
had a booking on the hip campsystem.

Speaker 1 (44:29):
So that was great little bit of fun setting up,
helping helping them set uptheir campsite what was
interesting about that is likewhen we're talking about the
layout of the camp, we had sortof knowing she was going to ask
us for some advice about whereto set up the camps, and so
David had been walking aroundthe property and he had a bit of
a thinker that move this fencehere and pull that back there

(44:50):
and create a dedicated area forcamping.
So when she came down and askedour help, the first questions
we asked her was you know whatis this place like at different
times of year?
And that's when we were hitwith the reality of the whole
place camp area camping is aboutit was about six or seven

(45:13):
meters underwater.

Speaker 2 (45:15):
One one in one flood event.

Speaker 1 (45:17):
That happens once a year yeah, once to twice a year
they have a flood event.

Speaker 2 (45:23):
They know when it's coming because it's when so many
inches of rain falls at acertain spot.
They know that the river isgoing to be full and it gets
eight or so meters over thecampground.
So, in terms of moving thefences or slashing the grass to
let people, so that grass thatwe set fire to instead of
slashing that to give you accessto the river, they want that

(45:44):
grass to stay and find as muchas possible to hold the banks
together when the floods comeyeah so they aren't really keen
to chop all that down and solearning, learning how that
works you know how the floodcomes and how that's going to
impact on things made me realizethat you know my grand plans
and my great thoughts about howyou could make a world-class

(46:06):
camping area here.

Speaker 1 (46:08):
We're all squashed because it wasn't going to work
all year no, they knew what theywere doing.
She yeah, I mean they've beenliving there for 35 years.
There it's a dairy cattle farm,so she knew all that and she
knew her land.
She just hadn't really thoughtabout all the logistics of the
camping and hadn't got thatfully set up.

(46:28):
But a great place to go andcamp, a great and rosy, lovely
person.

Speaker 2 (46:35):
Thank you, rosie, for putting up with us, if you do
happen to listen to this.
We had a great time at yoursite and we'll recommend it to
others for sure.
We also went so that same nightwhen the people were going to
come.
The night after we'd set up thecamps, we went and did another
day of mountain biking and wewent and did the shuttle
services, where you take thelittle shuttle, buses and

(46:58):
buggies and things from thebottom of the hill, they drive
you up to the top of the hilland then you can basically do
downhill, downhill mountainbiking courses based on your
level of skill and you can dodifferent sorts of tours and
trips around from the top tovarious different locations.

Speaker 1 (47:18):
Oh yeah, there's gotta be about 30 miles.
It's all mapped, it's allavailable and they're so nice.

Speaker 2 (47:26):
You know the paths.
While some of them are reallytechnical, some of them are not
so technical.
There's some really nicesections.
You can go through excellentviews.

Speaker 1 (47:34):
It's all through the forest rain forest with big man
ferns and just and it all and itall links and it all works, you
know.

Speaker 2 (47:42):
So they've done an unbelievably good job.
We had a good day a few morespills, bit of GoPro fail
footage and you know I say failbecause we didn't have it
mounted exactly right.
So we've got a whole day ofhandlebars and bikes and not
much of the view.
But you know what a spectacularplace if you're into mountain
biking and you don't know aboutDerby, you should.

(48:05):
There's a million YouTube videosyou can look up and see all the
pros doing the now you all thepros doing the triple, double
black, diamond, bloody thingsand things like that.
You know that we wouldn't evenattempt check it out.
It's, it's very much.

Speaker 1 (48:19):
I should mention about the difference between the
e-mountain bikes on that thosetrails, and our bikes, which are
not e and we use cleats and thewhole lot.
The place is set up for anytype of bike you want.
There's not a lot of uphill butthere's about 30% uphill
elevation in every downhilltrail that they build.

(48:40):
That sort of part of what themass trail building masses about
.
When you talk to, the guys areexplaining all that, yeah, but a
lot of people just ride it withflat pedals.
Yep, you can hire an unlimitednumber of bikes in the town.
There's about ten differentbike shops in the main street
and that's your pick and inDerby, that's all there is.

Speaker 2 (49:02):
There's two pubs, there's a, there's a.
There's a pub bottle shop, ahotel cafe, a pit stop cafe,
distillery it sounds likethere's a lot, but you can't
actually buy any groceries andYou've got very limited access
to medical supplies or medical.
There's none of that there's alot of bike shops and Two fuel

(49:26):
stops and that's kind of it.
So don't go to Derby expectingto buy your groceries because
you won't, you can't, really youcan't buy almost anything there
.
So the post office seems to bethe one that has some stuff.

Speaker 1 (49:40):
We didn't actually end up going in there because it
was a weekend and yeah, becauseit was the weekend, so it's not
the place to go shopping, it'sthe place to go mountain biking
but it's only about an hour anda bit out of lawn system, so it
is very busy on weekends and allthe locals come, so really
friendly people Honestly have anawesome time there.
But yeah, if you're traveling,try and avoid the weekend, yep.

Speaker 2 (50:03):
So we did our next day of mountain biking there and
had a terrific time, and Afterthat we went back to the camp
that night and the people thatwere actually in the campsite
that had come into the hip campwere Explorers, travel app users
, and they loved the app andthey were really, they were
really happy and pleased to seeus and David and Ruth, yeah, and

(50:24):
decided that they'd make a fireand invited us over to their
fire and we had a.

Speaker 1 (50:28):
We definitely went to their fire, and didn't we?

Speaker 2 (50:30):
went to their fire, so we didn't burn the place down
with our fire.
And they had a huge fire had ahuge fire because they had it in
the biggest, the biggest trucktruck tire rim, the two other
truck or tractor rim that therewas on the property and and so
that was great and then afterthat we we basically left there
and Thought I will just duckback into Branks home to pick up

(50:52):
a few supplies because wecouldn't get anything in Derby,
not knowing what we were goingto go through for the next day.
And then we decided that we'dhead up through Gladstone and up
towards where we currently areat Stump his bay in Mount
William National Park and theweather has been mint.
The weather has been mint.

(51:13):
So we spent four nights atRosie's, we spent two nights at
narrow, one to poo, and we spenttwo or three nights at old max.

Speaker 1 (51:23):
Yeah, we've done five camps in two weeks.
Yeah, well, we're here, andwe've traveled 160 kilometers,
according to a navigator, frompoint to point.

Speaker 2 (51:31):
Yeah, but 700 Weeks to do the whole of Tassie yeah,
it doesn't it doesn't look likewe're gonna be leaving when we
might have this first thoughtprovider that we can get out of
the place.
But so anyway, we're goingthrough Gladstone On our way up
here.
We we were a bit supply short.
You know we'd run out of breadand stuff, so we were trying to
work out what we're going to dowith.

(51:52):
We'd run out of grog as well,and you know you can't run out
of wine.
That's disaster, the thing.
That's a real disaster If we'veactually run out of coffee and
we're on decaf and we've goteight coffee pods left.
We've got two coffee machines,we've got all the coffee
machines in the world, but we'veonly got eight pods of decaf
until we get somewhere.

Speaker 1 (52:10):
So because none of these places sell pods.

Speaker 2 (52:12):
They don't we may have to.
We may have to move soon.

Speaker 1 (52:15):
They only have an Ska .

Speaker 2 (52:17):
So we went to Gladstone on our way through and
picked up a few supplies.
They've got a good bottle shopthere.
It's small but it's good.
It's got a good supply They've.
They had a Small grocery shopat the service station where you
could buy a few things.

Speaker 1 (52:31):
It added up to $35 somehow $5 for a head of lettuce
, yeah whatever.

Speaker 2 (52:36):
Whatever it costs, you know you just pay because
you're there and it was great.
So we got all of that, and thenwe came over to Mount William
National Park and into thecampsite that we're actually in
shooting these videos.
This is Stumpy's Bay, campsite2.
We're at the southern end of it, probably in the most
tree-sheltered spot, and allthese Tasmanian people that come

(52:57):
here often seem to stay up theother end there, where there
seems to be a little bit moresunshine One that's good for
your solar charging and twothat's probably good because
it's a bit warmer.
But we've had a really nicetime here.
It's been really relaxing.
This is our Fifth day.

Speaker 1 (53:13):
We've done four nights already, I think so you
can pay $13 a night in theNational Parks, but on your
fourth night it's better to paythe weekly fee, because it's
only $50.
We have $50 for a week and itwas my birthday yesterday, so we
didn't want to drive offyesterday, so that would have
been the fourth night.

Speaker 2 (53:31):
So that's why we thought I will just pay the
weekly fee and we'll stay hereagain and we'll talk to our
lovely audience, and so that'swhy we've decided to do these
podcasts from here.
But Stumpy's Bay and MountWilliam National Park We've been
here for four days now.
We had a really lovely walkdown past what are the rocks

(53:54):
called?

Speaker 1 (53:55):
It's called Cobbler Rocks, so it's a sign walk.

Speaker 2 (53:57):
There's a sign walk.
You can head down to whereStumpy's Bay campsite 4 is, and
there's a sign walk to CobblerRocks.
It says something like atwo-hour return or something we
walked down.
It's basically walking down anold fire trail, which wasn't
very exciting really until youget to the end.
It was a boring walk and thenyou get to the beach and then
it's lovely and there's Rocksand pools and there's a river, a

(54:20):
creek, coming in, a Reallylovely spot.
We made the call to actuallywalk back along the beach, I
think you kind of probably meantto do that.
We walked back along the beachFrom there, traversed a few
rocky headland parts and oversome of the rocks and stuff that
are around the area.
Beautiful place, weather wasperfect, the wildlife, the birds

(54:42):
, everything's been fantasticand that was a that was a great
walk.
So we walked back, basically tothe car, and that was the other
day.
Yesterday, after Michelle'sbirthday Happy birthday,
michelle we decided to do a bitof a road trip and so we went up
to Mussel.
Road Bay and and had a look inthere and pedal point and pedal

(55:04):
point.
There was some.
There was a couple of camps upthere, some free camps around
the wind farm up there Anothergreat spot.
I still think we probablypicked the nicest.

Speaker 1 (55:15):
We've looked at all the campsites top camp, mussel
Road Bay and pedal point.
They're all good, but Stumpy'soffers a lot more Beach access,
bit better camping areas, theswimming area.
It's absolutely gorgeous.
At Mussel Road Bay,unfortunately, there's a.

(55:36):
It fringes onto some privateproperty and there's a lot of
Signage, very heavy wordedsignage about keep out private
property.
All of this, and the mostspectacular part, you can't even
access.
So you're actually on the river,not on the beach proper, but
you can walk out to the beachexcept that there's a sign at

(55:56):
the moment, so you can't walkout because it's bird nesting
endangered bird nesting and the.
The whole access from thecanberra to the beach would be
closed because you can't walkover the flat you have to drive
and there's one tiny littlelookout gorgeous as it is and
you can go down, so just notquite as convenient as it is.
Here at Stumpy's we areliterally we've got a water view

(56:17):
from our setup here.
Yeah, I can see the beautifulblue water and hear the waves
lapping.
And look to me.
That's what I'm after for acamp.
I'm a protected under the trees.
Here for the evening you can goand sit out in the sun at the
beach and go for a walk and thewater is Swimmable, but it is
frightfully cold.
Yeah, someone reckoned it was18 degrees, but I think it would

(56:40):
be 16.

Speaker 2 (56:40):
I know no, the 18.
So we did the Mussel Road Bayand the Little Mussel Road Bay
and we also did Cape Portland.
That was where Little.
Mussel Road Bay and CapePortland and Petal Point are all
up on that point there.
And then as we came back down,back back down the Cape Portland
Road, we were only two K's outof Gladstone, so we just ducked

(57:03):
back in to retop up on the Grogshop and the food shop.
Still no, still no access tothe coffee pods.
But on our way back againthrough there, we decided to do
the, the Forrester KangarooDrive.
We didn't actually see aForrester Kangaroo During the
Forrester Kangaroo Drive, but wedid go to the Mount William

(57:27):
Walk.
So the summit walk from MountWilliam.
That was about a 50-minute walk,45 50-minute walk from the,
from the car park to the top.
Have a look around and comeback down.
That was great too.
That's also published in thetrack log system now, if you're
wanting to have a look at thatoh, have I published it yet?
I might not have published ityet.
It'll be published by the timethis podcast reaches you and

(57:50):
it'll be under Mount William.
And then, yeah, back to thecampsite and a day of Podcast
this morning and we'll work outwhat we're going to do this
afternoon.

Speaker 1 (58:00):
Yeah, unfortunately it's a little bit cool this
morning.
It's the first day in TasmaniaI've actually won a jumper.

Speaker 2 (58:05):
Yeah, so.

Speaker 1 (58:08):
We don't know where we're going to next, exactly.
We're going that way, we'regoing to go to the Bay of Fies
and Helen's all that area but Idon't know exactly how that's
going to pan out, where we'regoing to camp, what we're going
to do.
We know where all the camps are.
It just is a matter of whatit's like when we get there.
We came through here and we didcamp in the Bay of Fies and

(58:29):
Helen's area, went to BinelongBay 20 years ago, in 2004, and
already I can see how much thispart of Tasmania has changed.
So it's really goodre-exploring and taking it
really slowly and we're reallyloving the pace that we're going
160 kilometers in two weeks.

Speaker 2 (58:49):
Well, no, seven hundred and something kilometers
, but only a hundred fifty yeahwhatever a distance.
So also make sure Remember thatthe tracking system is is a
value.
You can have a look at ourtracking so you can keep up with
Pretty much every movement thatthe car makes is a visible on
our publicly available truckersystem on the Explorer's website

(59:12):
.

Speaker 1 (59:13):
Put links on the Facebook page.
So, that you can easily followthe link and get to that page,
so that page auto updates as newpositions come in.
So as we move, it moves and soyou can see us moving.

Speaker 2 (59:25):
You can see the current speed and exact position
and where we stop each night.
As mark, you can see prettymuch you can see pretty much
everything, and that's part ofthat feature within the traveler
app.

Speaker 1 (59:34):
As a member.

Speaker 2 (59:35):
The other thing we've also done is today I've just
published the last three tracklogs, or three track logs of the
journey so far, which is Perthto Sydney, sydney to Geelong and
Davenport to Stumpy's too.
So if you're interested inhaving a look at that data, you
can have a look at in track logsor, again, you can see the
whole lot in the tracking system.
So thanks for watching,watching us from Stumpy's to

(01:00:00):
here in Tassie, and Next timewhen we catch up with you will
still be in Tassie, we'll justbe a bit further south.
We might have only done another150 Ks in two weeks, and then
our timeline would be in trouble, but that's what it's all about
.
That's why we're here.
Thanks for listening and we'llcatch you on the next podcast.

Speaker 1 (01:00:17):
Yep, thanks Bye.