Australia 2007

Monday, October 29 – Hobart to Queenstown

We woke up during the night for a nature call, and we could hear snoring from the next room. We looked at each other and started laughing, and we both said, at the same time: “this is like holidaying with Thiel.” We dropped back to sleep and slept in until just after 7 this morning. It felt good after last night! It was quite cool when we first woke up, so we turned on the heater. Ina pointed out that the gap under the door was probably just big enough to offset the heater unit. We weren’t near anyplace for breakfast, so I had a coffee and Ina had a hot chocolate. I went to the office to give them our pre-paid coupon for the room. As I was leaving the room, I was looking all over for the key. When I opened the door, there was the key, still in the lock – we had a good laugh about that. I took the coupon to reception and got a map of the town and some directions to the downtown Hertz office. The weather was clear and quite windy, so I wore my golf jacket. I started walking out to Argyle and then along Harrington to Hertz. Although it was windy out, I was quite warm after the 30 minute walk. They had a Nissan Tiida hatchback for us, with a 6 speed standard transmission. I got it all signed out and headed back to the motel. It is the Hobart Tower Motel and has a large tower to it, so figured it would be easy to spot if I had trouble getting back – I haven’t perfected reading a small map and driving a standard at the same time yet! I did see a bit more of the area than I had planned, but was back at the motel around 10. We loaded up and headed out on the road around 10:30. We stopped at a Woolworth’s for some groceries and then at a McDonald’s for some brunch. We finally hit the highway toward Strahan (pronounced Strawn) at just after noon.

We hit highway 1 at Glenorchy, just on the outskirts of Hobart, and headed North/West toward Strahan. At Granton, highway 1 crossed over the Derwent River and headed north toward Launceston, and we stayed to the west on highway A10 toward Hamilton and Tarraleah. We crossed a narrow gauge railway several times along this route, and none of them had lights or guards, just signs saying to watch for trains. When we went through New Norfolk, there was a small lumber mill on the other side of the river and a few miles further on, a very large paper mill, also on the other side of the river. Further on, while going through Hamilton we passed one building that had a date of 1830 – 1850 on it. Between Hobart and Hamilton, the terrain was mostly lush green rolling hills with lots of sheep and cattle. Once we got past Hamilton, the scenery became heavily forested, and we passed several logging trucks with huge logs on them. There was lots of road kill along this forested area, mostly small rodents, but a few wallabies as well.
After being on the road for 145km, we came to a place called Tarraleah, where they advertised a hotel, café, and lookout. We turned in and drove about 2 km into the site. There was a large tour bus in front of the café, so we parked and walked down to the lookout. It was looking over a huge valley, and there were penstocks everywhere, that led down to a large powerhouse. The signs indicated this project was started just after WWII and continued until there were 8 different powerhouses using the same water that originated in the large, high altitude lakes in the area. Most of the lakes drain into Lake King William and the water is diverted into the penstocks that drop down into the generating station. Obviously I found this quite interesting. The tour bus left and we stopped at the café for a coffee to go.

"Penstocks and Power House at Terraleah"

We headed back out onto A10 and continued NW and it started to rain. It actually rained on and off until we reached Queenstown. Along the way, we passed several large lakes and “lagoons” which are large man-made water collection areas to supply water to the generating stations (2) at Tarraleah and Tungatinah. In this area, where we are a bit higher in the mountains, the forests are interspersed with large meadows of yellow, orange, pink and purple grasses and flowers. It gave an unusual hue to the land. There were also Roses and Rody’s in the local gardens and lots of flowering hedges with white blooms on them. As we got closer to Queenstown, we could see there is or has been a lot of open pit mining going on. The road was very windy here, and the speed limit was between 25 and 35 kmh. It was around 4:00 when we got to Queenstown, and decided to stay here for the night. We went to one motel that was booked up except for 1 room with twin beds, and no cooking facilities. They did send us down the street to another place, called the Pioneers Retreat. We checked it out and they had 2 bedroom suites, with full kitchen facilities for $95 per night, so we took it. They also gave me a cable for the internet, which is dial up, and said they would only charge the cost of the call.

We unpacked and I set up the laptop to catch up on the diaries. Around 7:00 I looked up and realized the time, and we decided to go into town for dinner. We drove in, because it had been raining on and off all afternoon. One time you look out and its blue sky and sunshine, the next time it is pouring rain. There were not many restaurants open, so we stopped at a Pizza shop and ordered a Family size, with ½ Hawaiian and ½ seafood. It took about 20 minutes and we ate it in. It was very good, but Ina couldn’t finish up her half of the dinner. Oh well, we certainly didn’t go away hungry.

After dinner we drove back to the room in the pouring rain, and watched TV and played on the computer. We never did get the dial-up to work.