Launceston, Day 1: Coast to country

Shh, don’t tell Ian, but I was apprehensive about coming to Tasmania in the spring. Indeed, I’m always apprehensive about travelling anywhere in spring; it can be so changeable. So, with much of our Tasmanian trip to be focused on the outdoors, I worried that cold, windy weather would spoil it, because, let’s face it, when it comes to being outdoors in the wind and cold, we are wusses. But, so far, we’ve been blessed. If it goes downhill from now, so be it … We won’t complain as we’ve had our fair share of good spring!

Coast

Today was a driving day, taking us from Freycinet via Bicheno and Falmouth on the coast to St. Mary’s and Longford in the country to end up at Launceston. A beautiful day of only around 250 km driving but that took all day at our leisurely pace. It started with a visit to Cape Tourville Lighthouse in Freycinet National Park, where we did the short 20 mins interpretive boardwalk. Highlights were a view of the coastline, including Wineglass Bay from another angle, and markers on the boardwalk itself showing the lengths of various sea mammals such as dolphins, fur seals, southern right and humpback whales, to the daddy of them all, at 18 metres, the sperm whale. I love this clever use of boardwalks to present information. The first time we saw it was in Richmond, USA, back in 2008, for a Civil War timeline.

Then it was up the coast:

• stopping for a cuppa (and to purchase the latest Dolly magazine in which our oldest great-niece, Hayley, features as a reader-turned-model-for-the-day);
• ducking into the Little Beach Conservation Area where we enjoyed watching some yellow-tailed black cockatoos in the trees; and
• enjoying views of other sections of this pristine (excuse the cliché) looking coast, until we turned inland.

Country

We pointed our nose inland at Falmouth, on our tour advisor Ian’s recommendation, and stopped at the gorgeous Purple Possum whole foods cafe at St Mary’s for lunch. Len wasn’t impressed by the sound of my gluten-free tofu burger but I thought it was delicious. Even better through was the gorgeous little garden courtyard where we ate – and, in Len’s mind, the Valhalla ice creams and sorbets next door.

By now, time was marching on and we did want to visit another part of Tasmania’s section of the World Heritage Convict Site, Woolmers at Longford. We arrived a little before 3pm, booked in for a house tour at 3:30pm, and then wandered around the self-guided areas, including its famous national rose garden (beautiful even though not quite yet in bloom). You can do the convict trail by walking to the brother-property of Brickendon and back, but we didn’t have the time to do that and the house tour, more’s the pity.

We chose Woolmers of the two, on a certain tour advisor’s recommendation.  Woolmers was established around 1817 by Thomas Archer, who had emigrated to Australia, as a free man, in 1814. It was owned and lived in by the family for six generations until Thomas VI, a bachelor, died and bequeathed it to a foundation to run as an historic house. Nothing was to be sold or removed, so the home represents a special history of colonial life from its construction in convict times to the changes made by the last Mrs Archer in 1935. Little was done after that, except for the installation of electricity in the 1970s. It includes furniture ordered from England in the 1830s and 1850s; crockery and cutlery also ordered, with the family crest, in 1859; early Australian-made furniture; plus their pianos, art works, toys and personal items, not to mention the curtains and soft furnishings added in 1935.

Oh, and I should add that it was built in that lovely long-and-low-with-wide-verandahs style that we call Australian colonial, rather than the Georgian style which was more common, particularly in Tasmania, at that time.  Thomas Archer started his property with 800 acres. The family built it up to 13,000 acres, but by the time Thomas VI died it was, after two forced sell-backs to the government, back down to 850 acres. Today, it is 200 acres. Brickendon, up the road, is still run as a farm by the seventh generation of Archers, descendants of Thomas’s brother who had emigrated in the 1820s. Absolutely fascinating history – though we did note that, while the place is part of the World Heritage convict site, we were told almost nothing about the convict part of the history.

After driving into pretty little Longford proper – a must since our first home was located in its Canberra name-sake, Longford Street – we headed to Launceston, arriving a little before 6pm. If there was a rush hour, we didn’t notice it!

We dined at the lovely Brisbane Street Bistro, where we were entertained by our lovely server’s terrified response to a daddy longlegs spider that suddenly appeared on our table, and which Len brushed off rather than kill. For the next few visits to our table she stood anxiously, looking at her feet and taking a wide berth, and no amount of reassurance that they are technically harmless could reassure her. She was, as it turned out, German, and was very impressed by Len’s fluency.

Pics from the day …

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Noisy black (close to invisible) cockatoo…