Back home from Tasmania

After a wonderful 10 or so days away in Tasmania with my family, culminating in two days of classes at A Stitch in Time at Hobart, I’m finally back home and catching up with emails, orders and enquiries.

We all enjoyed Tasmania very much. For those of you who are not familiar with Australia, Tasmania is the little triangular shaped island off the bottom of the east coast of Australia. It is a beautiful place.

We arrived in Hobart, picked up our hire car and drove to the other side of the island, through the World Heritage areas in the south west, to the little town of Strahan. We arrived late in the day, headed out for dinner and then on our return were met by a taxi containing my husband’s bag, which hadn’t arrived with the rest of our bags on our flight. Happily, it arrived on the next flight and was sent across to the island to us. One Tasmanian taxi driver had a long shift that day, with an 8 hour fare ($$). The poor fellow didn’t have very good company though, as my husband’s bag is not known for its conversational skills!

In Strahan we went on the Macquarie Harbour cruise, taking us out to the harbour mouth, where the next landfall to the west is South America (it misses the bottom of South Africa by over 1000 km). We visited ocean trout fish farms in the harbour, then went some way up the beautiful, beautiful Gordon River, with its amazing vegetation including Huon Pines. Our last stop was on Sarah Island, the site of one of Australia’s harshest convict prisons – the whole island was a prison. Our tour guide was extremely knowledgeable and interesting, and we all enjoyed the tour.

Mossy trees beside the Gordon river

Next stop west, South America!

The day was pretty horrible though. It was cold, wet and quite miserable. The host where we were staying had suggested that after our cruise, in the afternoon we might be able to hire toboggans and go toboganning on the local sand dunes (sounds terribly environmentally irresponsible to me!) but the weather definitely precluded any possibility of that! Instead we borrowed a couple of videos from their collection and enjoyed the warmth of being inside.

The next day we left early to drive back to Hobart. We had heard it was snowing elsewhere on the island the day before, so wondered if we might encounter some snow beside the road on our way through the mountainous region. We did! And there was snow prettily resting on the branches of trees. We found a safe place to stop and got out to enjoy the snow. Being Sydneysiders, where the climate is quite temperate, we never see snow in Sydney, so for us, snow is a real treat!

A little further on, we decided that the rain didn’t seem to be falling any more – it seemed to be floating. It was snowing! And then as we went further, the snow was heavier, until we were going through areas that were almost completely white with snow. It was quite magical. (Yes, I know this is probably completely normal for a lot of my readers, but we’re not used to it!)

The snow continued on and off for several hours of our journey. We stopped at Lake St Clair at Derwent Bridge for a rest break. It wasn’t snowing when we arrived, but soon after, it really got going again. The girls enjoyed playing outside, rolling up the snow off the tops of the picnic tables. They were quite taken with the fact that it rolls up like carpet! We huddled inside, sensibly enjoying the warmth, and enjoying watching them.

Back in Hobart, we enjoyed visiting friends, a trip to Port Arthur (another convict settlement, not quite a harsh as Sarah Island, but still not nice!), a visit to a boat building school (fascinating!), some of the local museums, the Theatre Royal (Australia’s oldest theatre), and just general sightseeing. In constrast to the snow earlier in the week, we also enjoyed a day of almost summery weather (26 degrees C)!

Port Arthur

It was lovely to take a break away from home and work. It is also nice to be back home again, getting stuck back into work.