We set off & visit a wild life park to see Tasmanian Devils in the flesh, so to speak. It is a very basic park, chicken wire & duck tape, but the animals seem well cared for. They run a Tasmanian Devil breeding programme & release animals back into the wild. We see wallaby’s, wombats, devils, kangaroos & lots of other animals.
Janet hand feeds some tame forest kangaroos, and falls in love with the wombat.
We then drive south heading through the world heritage Cradle mountain national park, a quite amazing national park. On route we take in the mining town of Queenstown, a weird place, a very strange lunar type landscape, a consequence of the copper mining that goes on here & a shanty town look & feel to the town. Still, it has a fuel station & a tea shop so we can all refuel & get on our way.
A long drive & we have nowhere booked for tonight, so we will have to take pot luck; pot luck turns out to be the Hamilton hotel. The second oldest inn here in Australia. A mildly eccentric place but the bed is comfortable, the place is clean & the hosts are very welcoming. She seems to do all the work while he swans around drinking & chatting with customers & instructing his first wife on the art of waiting. Apparently they all get on swell!! The tropics of Hamilton!!
The landlord chats & within seconds we know far too much about his life & worse about other Hamilton residents that we will never meet, thank god! He reminds me, not in looks, of a Del boy character, he has a bore hole in his back garden & natural spring water that he plans to bottle & sell. Tasmania has no bottled water of its own he tells us so he is on to a winner. I suspect he is fishing for investors & we give him the slip & head off to our haunted room for some sleep!
Love & tired hugs...
Jeff & Janet
Jeff & Janet
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