Travelling Up the East Coast

 It's a bit of a giveaway when a campground is called Sunset Beach Camp Spot.  I'd traveled to the Tasman Peninsula to explore the historic sights, enjoy the beautiful coastline and walk to a cape or two and had seen this campsite on Wikicamps ... dogs allowed, on a beach, hot showers and all for $10 a night!  And it didn't disappoint.  Maggie and I set up camp and then walked the 10 metres to the beach, which stretched away north and south.  The water was shallow and warm, the sand clean and ... moving!  The beach was covered in little blue and red crabs!  It was really quite funny seeing Maggie roll in the sand, only to stand up and have crabs drop off her.

I was really looking forward to visiting the Port Arthur historical site and a poor weather forecast wasn't going to stop me.  So I found my raincoat, told Maggie to toughen up and we walked around the ruins, reading the stories of the people who had lived, worked and died here.  Sometimes the rain drove us inside and the misty clouds added to the atmosphere.  I found a plaque that seemed to be most appropriate:

"Doubtless upon a sunny morning, when the leaping waves flash into showers of glittering spray, or during some peaceful summer evening, when the sinking sun floods all the tender heavens with crimsoned gold, the rugged wilderness of the rocky settlement may be called beautiful.  To me, brooding over stories of misery and crime, sitting beside the ironed convicts, and shivering at the chill breeze, which whitened the angry waters of the bay, there was no beauty in those desolate cliffs, no cheering picturesqueness in that frowning shore.  I saw Port Arthur for the first time beneath a leaden and sulky sky; and I felt that there was a grim propriety in the melancholy of nature."  

Marcus Andrew Hislop Clarke

I was fascinated by the bricks and stonework throughout the site, especially when I discovered that many of the stones were cut and carved by the young boys who were imprisoned on Point Puer.

Merran had already walked to Cape Raoul and she suggested that Warren and Maggie went fishing the next day while she and I walked to Cape Hauy.  As a test for my dodgy knee, the walk surpassed itself  (I found out later I had climbed and descended more than 4500 steps!) but every twinge was worth the spectacular views of towering cliffs of dolerite columns, sea eagles soaring overhead.  The bush changed in every gully and there were beautiful heaths and banksias in flower, as well as eucalypts that were very similar to snow gums.  

You can see the track in the distance

At the end of Cape Hauy, there is this sea stack called the Totem Pole.  People come and climb it!  Mad!

When we had finished the walk, we met up with Warren who had had a mixed day fishing with Maggie.  He hadn't caught anything using squid and decided to use some chicken ... only to discover that Maggie had eaten his bait!  Hmmm.  I don't know that she'll be invited to go fishing again!

Maggie and her new chicken-supplying bestie!

I left the Tasman Peninsula and headed inland.  About 20 years ago on a visit to Tasmania, I had visited a glass gallery where a lovely girl gave me all sorts of advice about slumping glass.  After a bit of Googling, I discovered the gallery was still open and in a lovely little historic town called Oatlands.  So that's where I headed ... only to discover that the gallery was closed (she had COVID!).  I moved on to Ross, where I admired the gorgeous sandstone buildings and bridges.

I've now come back to the coast.  I spent a delightful evening with Tim Crawford at his place in Beaumaris and am now camped in St Helens.  However, things are not going very well for Miss Maggie May, who has now visited yet another vet.  Her paw has become infected and she is very unhappy, limping around on three legs.  The only bright spot is that she gets to eat liverwurst twice a day with all her drugs.

The spiky bridge (and the ever present blackberries) near Freycinet