Tasmania - East Coast

For our tour of Tasmania’s east coast we headed out “vacation early” from our Launceston base. It was a few hours drive to the coast not including the stops and detours we are prone to succumb to so frequently. We made it to Scottsdale and decided it would be a good idea to stop at an iStore to prevent another 20 km “Walls of Jerusalem” boo boo.

The lady was helpful and annoying at the same time. She insisted on tracing the whole dang route with her pen on the free map as though I was incapable of understanding how to stay on the Tasman Highway from Scottsdale to St. Helens and then another road up to Binalong Bay. Hmmph! To her credit, she did point out that the other possible route had many k’s of gravel roads. Okay, that was good to know and, of course, that was the path the GPS had chosen so we knew we should overrule it.

I’ve begun to notice that we are starting to attribute a “human” personality to the “GPS lady” and we kind of don’t really like her. I guess maybe we are getting tired of being told what to do all the time and don’t appreciate her insistence on getting us back on the “right” track when we get sidetracked, as we often do, from our main objective. I’m sure this is exposing some character defect on our part, but we sometimes take fiendish delight in going any direction other than what she commanded.

A ways out of Scottsdale, while I was most likely still muttering about the pen marks on the map, we decided to take a detour to see the Saint Columba Falls. At 90+ meters (about 295 feet), Saint Columba Falls is one of the tallest waterfalls in Tasmania so we took the turn at Pyengana township and made GPS lady mad (tee hee!).

Out in the middle of nowhere, we encountered a traffic jam. It was a bit unusual to be sure, but they were “mooving” pretty well so it didn’t take long. The falls were terrific and definitely worth the very short (and non-tarrying in spots) hike to see them.

Alert to Mom – we’re being very safe, but it would be good if you’d not look at the next picture, okay?

What can I say, except we didn’t tarry, really.

We had a nice lunch at a small restaurant on the way back to the main drag and on the way to the car, saw the calves chasing the milk trailer in the other direction. It’d be like me and a chocolate cart I’m afraid.

We got to Binalong Bay and then to the road to the Bay of Fires area. It’s a long stretch of beach (miles) where some of the rocks are very red or orange – quite unusual and striking. We explored around that area a while with A.J. making a discovery of a dead sea lion which I decided I didn’t need to see.

We took off from there and headed down the Tasmanian east coast. We enjoyed lots of nice coastal scenery and I began my search for a critter I just added to my list – a Tasmanian native hen. They call them turbo chooks because they can run really, really fast like a roadrunner. They are fairly common, but I was looking for a variety that was photogenic as in one I could capture on the camera as more than just a tiny dot. We got all the way to Hobart to check in for the night and I hadn’t gotten one. Drat! Maybe tomorrow.