Australia 2007

Wednesday, October 31 – Campbell Town to Port Arthur

We were on the road just after 9am. We stopped in town to take a picture of the old Church there, and to fill up with gas. They had a bridge there that was built in 1835 by convicts and was made of bricks. The usual life span of one of these bridges is about 60-70 years, but this one is still in use and now carries all the modern vehicles including trucks. Also, set into the sidewalk in Campbell Town are a line of bricks with convict’s names, the ship they came over on, their crime, and sentence. It was mindboggling what crimes they were sent to Australia for – everything from petty theft to murder.

The highway was blocked off for about 2 blocks on the edge of town, due to an accident involving a logging truck. They had a well marked detour up and we went onto it, until we had to turn on B34 toward the west coast. We drove along B34 among rolling hills with large fields of cattle and sheep, vineyards, olives, and walnuts. We hit the A3 and drove north and took off on C302 to Coles Bay. The sun was shining and we stopped at a lookout to take a picture of Moulting Bay wetlands. This area is a haven for lots of migratory birds and is the home to over 10,000 black swans.

"Moulting Bay bird Sanctuary"

We drove into Coles Bay and stopped at a boat launch to take a picture of the beach. We drove around town, which took all of 20 minutes, and then headed back out the way we came. The draw here is the Freycinet National Park on the Freycinet Peninsula. There are tours of the area, but we didn’t take one. We backtracked as far as the junction of B34 and A3, and continued south on A3. We passed a young farmer who was mixing old and new technologies – he was herding his sheep, him on a quad with his crash helmet on, and his sheep dog working the other side of the herd.

We got to Swansea and over to the Great Oyster Bay pier, where we went for a walk and stretched our legs and took a few pictures. We got back on the road for a few kilometers and pulled off at a park to have lunch. We drove around the corner and ended up right on the oceanfront, so we pulled over and sat on a bench and watched the ocean while we ate our sandwich. After lunch we got back on the road and headed south. We came to Triabunna and saw a sign for a travel info booth.


"Harbour at tribunna where we stopped at Info Center"

We pulled into the information centre and the woman there was very helpful. With her help, we decided to continue on to Port Arthur today. We laughed at a couple of the location signs on the side of the road – one said it was “Break-me-neck Hill” and a few Kms further was “Bust-me-gall Hill”. At Sorell, we branched off on the A9 highway and continued south across the Forestier Peninsula and onto the Tasman Peninsula, where we ended up in Port Arthur. We couldn’t get a room for 2 nights at the first two places we stopped, due to tour buses coming in tomorrow night, but we did get a place at the Port Arthur Villas. We unpacked and went for a drive along the waterfront. The road is just a loop which hits some small towns and rejoins A9 about 10 kms north of Port Arthur, again. We did the loop and stopped at the Fox and Hound pub/restaurant for dinner. The service was very slow, but the food was excellent. We both had chicken schnitzel with mushroom sauce and fresh vegetables. They didn’t have any non-alcoholic beer so we had a couple of Ginger Beers. We had our dinner, and then drove back to the cabin and I worked on the blog, while Ina read. We still haven’t found a place with an internet, so will actually download this to the blog tomorrow, along with the rest.