Westward bound
Feb. 4th, 2005 06:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xenithWe left Launceston about 9 am, heading west. Destination -- the rugged west coast.
(There is a map here that might be useful although it doesn't give much of an indication of how remote the west coast towns are)
We left the highway just north of Deloraine, and a couple of winding country roads later, came to our first stop, Sheffield
which is known for it murals.
Here, I got some breakfast and we commented often on how cold it was. On leaving Sheffield, we headed south along another narrow, winding country road. We went through Claude Road (which is more of a grouping of houses closer together than a town) and Gowrie Park (which I think used to be a Hydro Village. The west & central bits of the state, having lots of mountains & rivers and few people, are good for bulding dams and power stations, which then require workers, so the HEC built towns for them; now GP is probably best known as one of those camps school kids get sent to once a year) and Moina. I seem to recall some houses at Moina and a tavern, with petrol pumps outside. The petrol pumps are important, because after this, it's a long drive to the next petrol pump. The other significant thing about Moina is you stop measuring distances in terms of X kms to the next town and start doing X kms to the next turn off.
After Moina, the road heads up into the mountains and gets a bit windy. The sort of windy where you expect to meet yourself coming the other way.
However, it does make for lovely views, when you can see through the trees.
For our next stop we turned off to Cradle Mountain. Being a national park, you have to pay $10 a person to get in. So we drove in to see if we could see anything worth seeing before we reached the $10 point. We couldn't. We did realise that bringing thick coats with us was a Good Idea.
Back on the road, the landscape was changing again. Still a lot of trees but also large areas of oddly yellowish-green grass covered hills, with cows. And no fences. So there were lots of "cow crossing" warning signs and grids in the road.
After more hours of driving through forested hills, we joined the highway that runs down the west coast. This was a significant event because, well, it was the highway. After more days of driving and the occasional break up of tree covered hills by lakes,
we reached Tullah.
Tullah was a mining town & (I think) a hydro town. Its main claim to be fame is being the first town you come to after driving for years through tree covered hills.
We had lunch here. Then back into the car. The next stop was Rosebery.
Rosebery is a mining town - zinc, copper & lead; and tin further south.
It's also one of the cheapest towns, real estatewise. Although, like the rest of the state, the prices have risen quite a bit. When the first home buyers grants came in ($6000 payment to any first time home buyer), there were houses in Rosebery selling for less than $6000.
This was pretty much a toilet & photo stop, and then onto Zeehan.
Again, a mining town, once silver, now tin. Notice the large, fancy buildings in the main street. Zeehan was once a much larger (about 10,000 people), thriving mining town. The interesting thing about those large, fancy buildings is when you walk around the corner at the end of the street
they just end. Incidently, Zeehan, at least the nearby Mt Zeehan, was named after one of Abel Tasman's ships.
Back in the car and we're driving again, and this time the next stop will be Strahan, our destination.
We drive past the ocean,
which is oddly enough on our left. We keep driving and eventually come to a intersection, where there shouldn't be one, and a sign pointing to Tullah. Which is rather odd. Quick backup and checking of road numbers on the map, and yep, we're heading north rather than south. So, turn around and half an hour later (including the time while we wait for a wombat to waddle across the road) and we're back in Zeehan and on the right road and the ocean is in the right place now.
The Southern Ocean, except it's not. Still, by now we know we're almost at Strahan.
After only 8 hours of travelling.
To be continued...
(There is a map here that might be useful although it doesn't give much of an indication of how remote the west coast towns are)
We left the highway just north of Deloraine, and a couple of winding country roads later, came to our first stop, Sheffield
which is known for it murals.
Here, I got some breakfast and we commented often on how cold it was. On leaving Sheffield, we headed south along another narrow, winding country road. We went through Claude Road (which is more of a grouping of houses closer together than a town) and Gowrie Park (which I think used to be a Hydro Village. The west & central bits of the state, having lots of mountains & rivers and few people, are good for bulding dams and power stations, which then require workers, so the HEC built towns for them; now GP is probably best known as one of those camps school kids get sent to once a year) and Moina. I seem to recall some houses at Moina and a tavern, with petrol pumps outside. The petrol pumps are important, because after this, it's a long drive to the next petrol pump. The other significant thing about Moina is you stop measuring distances in terms of X kms to the next town and start doing X kms to the next turn off.
After Moina, the road heads up into the mountains and gets a bit windy. The sort of windy where you expect to meet yourself coming the other way.
However, it does make for lovely views, when you can see through the trees.
For our next stop we turned off to Cradle Mountain. Being a national park, you have to pay $10 a person to get in. So we drove in to see if we could see anything worth seeing before we reached the $10 point. We couldn't. We did realise that bringing thick coats with us was a Good Idea.
Back on the road, the landscape was changing again. Still a lot of trees but also large areas of oddly yellowish-green grass covered hills, with cows. And no fences. So there were lots of "cow crossing" warning signs and grids in the road.
After more hours of driving through forested hills, we joined the highway that runs down the west coast. This was a significant event because, well, it was the highway. After more days of driving and the occasional break up of tree covered hills by lakes,
we reached Tullah.
Tullah was a mining town & (I think) a hydro town. Its main claim to be fame is being the first town you come to after driving for years through tree covered hills.
We had lunch here. Then back into the car. The next stop was Rosebery.
Rosebery is a mining town - zinc, copper & lead; and tin further south.
It's also one of the cheapest towns, real estatewise. Although, like the rest of the state, the prices have risen quite a bit. When the first home buyers grants came in ($6000 payment to any first time home buyer), there were houses in Rosebery selling for less than $6000.
This was pretty much a toilet & photo stop, and then onto Zeehan.
Again, a mining town, once silver, now tin. Notice the large, fancy buildings in the main street. Zeehan was once a much larger (about 10,000 people), thriving mining town. The interesting thing about those large, fancy buildings is when you walk around the corner at the end of the street
they just end. Incidently, Zeehan, at least the nearby Mt Zeehan, was named after one of Abel Tasman's ships.
Back in the car and we're driving again, and this time the next stop will be Strahan, our destination.
We drive past the ocean,
which is oddly enough on our left. We keep driving and eventually come to a intersection, where there shouldn't be one, and a sign pointing to Tullah. Which is rather odd. Quick backup and checking of road numbers on the map, and yep, we're heading north rather than south. So, turn around and half an hour later (including the time while we wait for a wombat to waddle across the road) and we're back in Zeehan and on the right road and the ocean is in the right place now.
The Southern Ocean, except it's not. Still, by now we know we're almost at Strahan.
After only 8 hours of travelling.
To be continued...
