Day 10. Hobart to Devonport

Monday, March 23, 2015
Devonport, Tasmania, Australia
The nice weather we had over the weekend has gone and we have a wet day ahead of us. We are on the road by 9.00 heading north up the centre of the Island towards Launceston. As this is the most direct route between North and South there are many historic towns along the way. The first town we turned off the highway to visit was Oatlands. I must say I had never heard of it before and was surprised to see a town so completely original that you could have filmed an historical drama here with little alteration. The flour mill had been restored to its former glory and most of the cottages were now B and B's. A very nice place to stumble across. Evidently it has the largest collection of sandstone buildings in a village settling in Australia, most of which were built by convicts. We then stopped at Ross, a town we had visited before, famous for its convict built bridge and the site of a female factory. I had to wonder whether my convict ancestor passed through these places in their heyday.
We were in Launceston by lunch time but there was little to see in the city centre so we back tracked a couple of kilometres and joined the highway to Devonport. Another 100 kms to go. We detoured to a little town of Carrick as Edie wanted to visit this brass & metal gallery she had read about. Not quite what she expected so we moved on. But we couldn't rejoin the highway for another 50 kms even though we drove beside it at times. It was about 4.00 when we arrived in Devonport. We wandered around the main street and decided to have something to eat there instead of eating on the ship. We arrived at the dock just after 5.00. We had to go through another inspection before we were allowed onto the dock. They looked in the engine and in the boot. We had to assure them we did not have any LPG bottles or firearms, which had to be surrendered and picked up again when the owners reached Melbourne.
We waited about an hour in the queue but were the third line to proceed on board. We were on the upper most deck (no.6) this time and it was a straight forward drove on drive off. We were parked right next to the exit door so made a quick exit up two flights of stairs to the accommodation deck, where we left the backpack in our cabin and proceeded to the lounge bar, where we had a drink before departure.
Edie said we drove about 800 kms but it seemed more because of the narrow windy roads we had to travel along the west coast. I was really pleased we had visited this area and as we have now seen most of Tasmania I doubt whether we will have another trip to the Apple Isle. The captain assures us it will be a relatively calm trip to Melbourne. Let's hope so.

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2025-02-17

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