Decorative Ropework, Pyrography & Carving
Thought I’d better let those interested know that I’ve finally added some more photos to our Webshots albums. I still have a lot to go through. I did a count the other day and I’ve actually got over 8000 photos in nearly 90 folders. I’ve just finished working on folder No 40 – Denham in WA!!!! So you can see what I’m up against.
6 MARCH
Finally managed to get to Sue’s place today. The weather has been cooler and although there are still fires burning in Victoria they are out in this area. As we approached Upwey, we passed an area right on the road that had been burnt, surprisingly nearby houses were OK – thank goodness.
We were welcomed by Sue and Gayle – it was great to see them again – the last time (actually the first time we met) was in 2002 or 2004 (brainfade agin!!). We were also welcomed by two of their three dogs. Lil, a beagle/Cavalier cross who looks more like a chestnut coloured Beagle – very little outward sign of the Cavalier though, apart from her sweet nature; and Max, a Jack Russell hooligan. Their third dog, Brin, has taken a real dislike to Lil, so the two of them have to take turns with being with the family. Brin is also a Jack Russell (I think – possibly crossed with sommat else) – she’s quite a sweetie, but also a little hooligan.
Having safely parked Betty G on their drive we settled down to a few days with our friends.
7 MARCH
Sue and Gayle took us to the Healesville Wildlife Centre in the Dandenongs today. A lovely drive through some spectacular scenery plus we saw some of the burnt out areas. The Centre itself was great, lots of animals and birds to see. They have a hospital there where they’re treating lots of animals that were injured in the bushfires – we could actually look into the treatment rooms. Back home for a meal and a relaxing evening chatting about all sorts of things including of course pyrography. I managed to pick up quite a few pointers even if there wasn’t really time for an proper pyro lesson. Even had a few possums come to call – there’s a sort of feeding station for them on the balcony.
8 MARCH
We were taken on a cache hunt today. Geocaching is something I heard about from Jane back in Hobart and I’d registered on the site, but not done anything about it. Sue found the co-ordinates of 4 locations in the area, and off we went. Unfortunately we didn’t find a thing, which was rather disappointing for all of us. Sue has been doing it for a while and found all sorts of little trinkets. I’ll look into it a bit later when I have enough spare time online. In the meantime, if anyone’s interested, here’s a link www.geocaching.com
Went out for a meal that evening and another encounter with the possums when we got home.
9 MARCH
Sue had a lot of work on, so we decided to take our leave and head on down to Phillip Island. It was really great to see the girls again – Sue certainly hasn’t lost her touch and her business is doing pretty good. She’s even started to do some painting – considering she’s completely self-taught they are excellent.
A fairly uneventful drive to Cowes, Phillip Island, although we stopped off for lunch just before San Remo. We placed our order and then proceeded to wait for 55 minutes before our food arrived – it was nothing fancy either. Jeff had an all-day brekkie and I had an omelete. People who arrived after us were being served before us, and we were about to get up and leave when the food arrived, thankfully with profuse apologies otherwise we might have suggested that they could do sommat else with their grub. I though they might have given us a discount considering, but they didn’t. Anyway we drove on across the bridge onto the Island and headed for Cowes. Found a nice campsite just behind the beach, and settled in. I had a swim in the pool and a paddle in the sea – luverly it was too.
10 MARCH
Had a stroll along the beach to the town centre and a wander around – quite a nice place, typically small-town Australia. Then back along the beach. Wot a life.
11 MARCH
Left Cowes this morning. We decided to fill up with diesel – that’s when the panic set in. Jeff couldn’t find his card wallet. We parked up across the road from the gas station and turned poor Betty inside out. I even phoned Sue to see if we’d somehow left it there – poor Gayle checked under our bed and under all the chairs, to no avail. Eventually found the flamin’ thing in the cupboard under the sink – of all places!!! Have no idea how it got there, but mebbe now we’ll try to make sure that we put things back in their proper places – hah! like that’s ever gonna happen.
Before we actually left the island we went to the Phillip Island Wildlife Park – lovely place. A bit basic but lots of animals around to feed and photograph. Very cheap too. They claimed to have the cheapest souvenirs around too. Not cheap and nasty – just inexpensive and a lot acually made in Oz not flippin’ China!
Stayed for a couple of nights in the San Remo Caravan Park just over the bridge on the mainland.
I’ve been having a problem with sending emails – I thought that Sky had finally kicked us out and as my SMTP is set for Sky and I ain’t sure about how to change it I thought I was in trouble. I was receiving emails addressed to my ukonline addy but couldn’t reply. Sooo – my apologies for any delay in replying – I had 7 or 8 in me Outbox, but they’ve all been sent successfully now.
This month has been soo busy and we’ve done a heckova lot of travelling so our Blog has been a bit sparse – sorry folks.
I’m hoping to add a fair bit more, but for now will just do this summary.
The Barilla Caravan Resort was great – one or two shortcomings but on the whole it suited us.
We went into Hobart a couple of times on the local bus – and finally bought ourselves a TV complete with digibox and aerial. Then another day we drove Betty G into the Eastlands Shopping Centre and finally bought ME a bike, from K-Mart. It was priced at $99 but when we came to pay for it, it was only $80!!!!
Another member of the IGKT, Colin with Jane, joined us at the Resort.
We took both vehicles into town every day of the Wooden Boat Festival and found places to park fairly easily. The Festival was most enjoyable. Jeff and Colin spent their Festival on the “May Queen”, an 1867 two-masted sailing ship which was being refurbished by voluntary members of the Maritime Museum of Hobart including our mate Frank. The first day was pretty wet, but didn’t seem to stop the visitors. After that the weather was much kinder and Jane and I wandered about looking at all the lovely boats and visiting many of the stands.
Once the festival was over we went south of Hobart to Franklin to visit the Wooden Boat Centre, where enrolled students are learning the art of wooden boat building – fascinating place. We then headed back north to a northern suburb of Hobart called Austins Ferry (quite near the Cadburys factory – and NO I didn’t visit, wasn’t I good!!!) We had arranged to spend a couple of days there with an old school friend of Jeff’s who had been in touch via the Internet. We were made most welcome by Roger and his wife Laurie, and their two dogs. The day after our arrival Roger took us to visit the Salmon Ponds near the tiny town of Plenty. These ponds are used for breeding freshwater fish and re-stocking Tasmanian lakes. Then we went up to Arthurs Lake where Roger has a small but very well fitted out cabin – his fishing retreat. Beautiful location. Great little cabin, a real home from home.
After dinner, back at Austins Ferry, we played cribbage with Roger and Laurie – a great evening following a lovely day.
The next day we decided to go back through Hobart to visit the countryside to the south. Unfortunately Betty G had other ideas. Before we even got through the town Jeff noticed the engine temp gauge start to go up (it has been very stable since Denham!!) He pulled over and cut the engine. Loads of steam from sump breather pipe – Jeff said “that’s a core plug again” (welsh plug). He phoned a towing service and within half an hour poor old Betty G was once again being hauled up on the back of a towing truck. As it happens the repair shop we were taken to was at Cambridge, quite near to the Barilla Caravan Resort. So, after hanging around for a while, the repair shop boss took us round the corner to the camp site and we booked in a cabin overnight. The next day Jeff walked round to pick up Betty G and we elected to stay one more night on the site. We decided to give up on the countryside south of Hobart as we had been invited again to Roger and Laurie’s place.
Once again Roger took us out and about – this time to the little town of Richmond a few miles north of Hobart. It has the oldest bridge is Tasmania (possibly in Australia) and all in all is quite attractive. When we arrived we saw that a Highland Gathering was about to take place – a lot of Scotties in Tazzie. So we hung around for a while, visited a few stalls and watched several bagpipe bands taking part in a competition – jolly good they were too. Back into Hobart and a coffee in the Casino before calling in at the school where Laurie’s the principal. We were hoping to go up Mount Wellington, but as the top was covered by clouds we decided that it would be a waste of time.
16 – 17 FEBRUARY
We reluctantly dragged ourselves away from this very hospitable couple and pointed Betty G in the direction of Strahan (pronounced Strawn). On our way we came to something called “The Wall”. It’s an ongoing work by a woodcarver, depicting the growth of Australia and comprising of huge slabs of Huon Pine with more than life size figures carved in relief. It’s an amazing sight. Unfortunately they didn’t allow photographs, but I think there’s a website. I’ll try to find a link to it – but if anyone’s interested try Googling “The Wall Tasmania”. We intended to overnight at Lake Sinclair, but there were no powered sites available so we pressed on to Queenstown. We’d been driving along quite happily, minding our own business, when I heard a strange grinding noise. Jeff said that everything seemed to be OK and we carried on. Then on a very windy road, with nowhere for us to pull off to allow faster vehicles to pass us, this car behind started flashing us. We thought he was just being impatient. Finally we thought he might have been trying to signal that sommat was wrong, but we couldn’t think what. Eventually there was an area for us to pull over and we both got out and went to the back of the bus. Well!!!! The bike-rack had finally succumbed to the continual bouncing on the uneven Tazzie road, and had broke. I guess it couldn’t cope with the extra weight of my bike either, although it was designed to take 3 bikes Now, the roads in most of the southern part of Tazzie are pretty steep and winding, but the road down into Queenstown is reeaally hairy!!! I was not a happy bunny as we went round hairpin bend after hairpin bend. Jeff drove vary carefully in consideration of my terror (LOL) – but it still weren’t nice.
We stayed for two nights in Queenstown, hoping to go on the Wilderness Train to Strahan and back, but we decided that it was just too expensive – nearly $400 for the two of us for the return trip of 80Km – waaay too much. So we strolled around town looking at the buildings and visiting the Museum, which was soo good for such a little place that Jeff gave them a bellrope to replace the bit of string they had on the bell in their reception. Queenstown is not particularly attractive and a lot of the houses were pretty scruffy, but it was a copper mining centre and all but one of the big mines have closed and everything looks rather run down.
18 – 19 FEBRUARY
Before we left for Strahan I phoned both campsites there and both were full!! Bugger!!! We went there anyway as there was plenty to see and a Tazzie wood supplier too. We had visited one just outside Queenstown and it was the same company in Strahan. I managed to get a few small pieces of Huon pine from both places for carving and pyroing. It’s lovely stuff, so nice to carve just with the knives I bought with me. The town was nice, but we didn’t stay long and carried on to Zeehan.
Considering Zeehan is even smaller than Queenstown it has a very interesting Museum. Housed in the old Zeehan Mining School, it encompasses the nearby Gaiety Theatre, which is being restored, and the now closed Police Station and Court. There are also several outbuildings consisting of a boatshed, a big workshop and an old hut in which one of the old-time miners lived. There was room after room of artifacts, photographs etc and it took several hours to complete our visit.
20 FEBRUARY
When we left Zeehan we headed north towards Stanley. The road took us across Lake Rosebery and we just had to stop and take photographs, lots of ‘em. The lake was so still and the reflections were wonderful. Eventually I’ll get the pics into Webshots albums. The trouble is, we’ve taken so many pictures and the ones I want to put online have to be cropped or re-sized and this all take time. Getting online is still tricky, but the main thing is that we’re either on the road or busy looking at stuff (and taking more pics) I don’t get that much time to either write this or fix piccies. Maybe now we’re heading up the east coast of Oz we will be staying longer in places and have shorter journeys between each stop. Whichever way things go, I’s gonna be busy. We’ve taken almost 2500 photos in Tasmania alone. Obviously several of those go, but that’s still a lot of piccies to deal with. The scenery in Tasmania is something else – hence the number of photos – rolling hills, mountains, forests, lakes, rivers, dams, bridges. All wonderful.
We arrived in Stanley only to find that the one and only caravan park was full – getting a bit monotonous!!! So we had a look around, a lovely fish and chips lunch, even thought about climbing the big rocky outcrop overlooking the town (called The Nut). But then it clouded over and started raining, so we decided to move on. On our way to Stanley I had spotted a promising-looking caravan park so decided to check it out. Boy, were we glad that we did. One of the nicest we’ve stayed in throughout the whole trip. It was called Crayfish Creek Van & Cabin Park. What a beautiful setting. Almost every site was in its own little grove of trees, and Crayfish Creek was actually more like a river. Lots of tiny fish, including flatheads. We had a stroll along it out to the beach and even had a paddle – bit cold though. There were birds everywhere, not unusual in Tazzie or the rest of Oz, in fact.
21 – 22 FEBRUARY
The following morning we carried on eastwards towards Devonport and our ferry back to the ‘Middle Island’ on 27th. We stopped for a couple of nights at a little place on the north coast called Penguin. Delightful place, with a great Sunday craft (and everything else) market. The campsite was right on the shore and we could hear the waves gently hitting the beach. I spent some time sitting in the sun whittling away at a piece of Huon Pine, making a Celtic lovespoon.
23 – 27 FEBRUARY
We finally arrived back in Devonport and went straight to book in at the Mersey Bluff Caravan Park which was the closest to the Maritime Museum. We had made sure that we had enough time to do as Bob (the Curator of the Museum) had requested when we first arrived in Tasmania, and spent some time showing the visiting public a few knots. He also wanted me to be there with my pyrography and carvings.
Also when we first arrived in Devonport Jeff had spotted a windscreen repair shop, so, once we had booked in we drove there to see what they could do for Betty G’s rather battered windscreen. At first we thought about getting it repaired, but when the guys got as far as 6 spots of damage it was decided that it would be better to have a complete replacement. We had thought that this would be very expensive, but it only turned out to be $350!!!! And we could claim all but $100 back from our insurers – brilliant!! So we booked her in for the Thursday.
Then we called in at the Museum, but Bob was not around so we left a message to say that we were back in town and ready to go to work for a few days.
Jeff went there on his bike the first day while I stayed back at the campsite and did a bit of pyro and carving. Whilst he was there, a photographer from one of the local papers (arranged by Bob) arrived to take some pictures. The following day Jeff and I cycled (!!!!) there and got set up in the main part of the Museum. The Lady Mayor arrived (not particularly to see us) but for a meeting at the Museum – we had a nice little chat with her. There then arrived a journalist from another local paper to do a piece on moi – complete with pictures. Scary or wot!!! Unfortunately both papers wouldn’t be out until the following week so we don’t know how the articles turned out (Jeff was interviewed on Thursday – the journalist was quite happy to go to the windscreen place as that was where he was when she arrived!!). Bob has promised to send a couple of copies of each paper to Jo and Roy’s address for us to collect
Bob invited us both to his house to have dinner with he and his wife, Elaine. They both made us very welcome and it was a really pleasant evening.
There were quite a few visitors over the few days that we were there, most of them very interested in what we were doing. Then to cap it all, I was interviewed by ABC TV!!!! It happened whilst I left the Museum for a while on the afternoon of the 27th to watch a statue called “The Spirit of the Sea” being installed on a rocky promontary by the entrance to the harbour. The Mayor was there, doing her piece to camera, and there were a whole load of journos around. Apparently it was quite an important occasion and there was a bit of controversy about the choosing of a foreign sculptor and not a local. Anyway, there were delays with getting the statue in place so the ABC bloke and cameraman had to find sommat to do so they started interviewing members of the crowd. Next thing I knew both were in front of me asking what I thought. I just said that I thought it was very impressive and definitely better than the usual loads of bricks tied in plastic that usually passes for art these days!!!
As we had packed everything up that final morning in a very smart Betty G with her new face on, we went straight from the Museum to the ferry and after an uneventful crossing we arrived back in Melbourne on Saturday morning and headed straight for the Ashley Gardens Caravan Park where Marion and Terry had kindly booked us a site next to them. We arrived rather early so parked in the nearby shopping centre for an hour or so.
Once we were booked in and set up I went to download and send my emails, only to find that it looks as if Sky have finally kicked us out and although I can received emails, I can’t send any replies. This has happened before and seemed to right itself, so I’m going to try again. Otherwise I’ll have to reply via my Yahoo email account. As I hadn’t been online since Barilla on the 13th there were a lot of messages. And I have been rather too busy to write anything for this Blog, so I am now catching up.
I have been in touch with my friend Sue Walters, the pyrographer, who lives in Upwey and who has had some of these dreadful bushfires very near her home. We were going to stay with her on Tuesday, but in view of the weather forecast of very high winds and high temperatures she asked us to put it off for a few days. It’s been raining in Melbourne for a day or two now and is much, much cooler, so we’ll be seeing her tomorrow and staying for a couple of days before moving on.