Have you ever seen Sydney from a 747 at night?

Even from a 737 in the late afternoon it looks pretty good.



Here's the north coast of Tasmania, looking down on Bridport and Tomahawk.

"Sydney shines such a beautiful light.
And I can see Bondi through my window way off to the right."

Paul Kelly said it all really. Sydney's quite a place to come home to.

"Now the red roofs are catching the first rays of the morning sun.
My eyes are full of sand from my midnight run.
And the captain says 'Belt up now, we'll be touching down in ten'.
So I press my seat and I straighten up.
I fold my tray and I stash my cup.
As the red roofs are catching the first rays of the morning sun."

Sydney shines such a beautiful light.

Here's Kelly at the Revesby Workers' Club:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pRthfLnpX8  

Still owner builders

In my long lost north west Tasmanian previous life I rubbed shoulders with lots of enterprising folk who were building their own houses. The owner-builder fraternity (and sorority) were a fine bunch of people in fact, and I was proud to join their ranks.

I'm still in touch with some of them, and on this trip I caught up with one old favourite house, and looked over two new ones.

They're pretty impressive, I'm sure you'll agree.

Below is a picture from 30 years ago of my very own creation in the bush behind Ulverstone.

Tassie birds

This is the Tasmanian Native Hen. An endemic Tasmanian, also known locally as the 'roadrunner', for its habit of running along in front of your car, rather than doing the intelligent thing and dodging to the side!

I saw this one in Richmond, near the old bridge.

An Eastern Rosella, a bit camera-shy, and not confined to Tassie.











I called in briefly at Orielton Lagoon, a designated wetland of international importance near Hobart.





Saw a group of  Pied Oystercatchers doing their extraordinary mating dance.

A rocky and rather beautiful coastal park

I made a foray into North West Tasmania's Rocky Cape national Park. I'd forgotten just how scenic it was.

You can do a full traverse from Sisters Beach in the east, to Rocky Cape in the west, or you can do various circuits, one of which I did.

 I visited Anniversary Bay, and was reminded again that in Tasmania you nearly always get the whole beach to yourself.

The creeks are full of tannin from native vegetation, and make for colourful patterns as they trickle across the white sand beaches.







Doone Falls is another highlight. This picture is the right way up, by the way. It's just like that.

The pool at the bottom was exquisitely patterned by the natural foams and tannin-brown water. Some years ago I took a similar picture of a similar pool, and the photo-processing  lady in the local K-Mart was so impressed that she asked me if she could use the image as her standard advertising image for her services. I happily agreed, and for several years I experienced a proud glow whenever I visited that emporium.

Top, middle, and bottom

Pubs, that is. Lots of country towns have a top and a bottom pub, and often a middle one too. Here are Ulverstone's.

Top pub is these days called The Lighthouse, and they've put a (plastic?) lighthouse tower thing on the roof. I had a nice meal here, and asked the barmaid to remind me what the place used to be known as. "Stones", she said. That's right! How could I forget my Ulverstone pubs?

Just down the road is the grand old Furners pub. It looks pretty well unchanged, on the outside at least. I had an even better meal there.

The disappointment is the bottom pub, the River Arms. In the late 70s  and early 80s this one was looking very smart and cosy, and hired some very good cooks to became the gastro pub of choice for hip young Ulverstonians like me. And shortly after then, its bottom bar gained national fame for its 'Bottoms Bar', with its display of (sometimes tasteful) photography featuring the relevant anatomical part.

None of this now though. It's been renovated again recently, and most of it seems to have become a reception centre. Meals were being served in the upper section, but I found the ambience less than inviting.


Ulverstone's main drag is still dominated by the Shrine of Remembrance clock tower, at the very top end of town. It's a bit hard to love this thing, but here's an interesting account of it from the Burnie Advocate on the occasion of its 60th anniversary, in 2014:
http://www.theadvocate.com.au/story/2179023/clocks-life-and-chimes/

Once were papermakers

While in Tasmania's north west, I paid a sentimental visit to one of my former workplaces there.

The Wesley Vale paper mill was a bright, shiny, state-of-the-art plant when I first worked there 40 years ago. It was somewhat inefficient, in that the original plan had always been to expand it with more paper machines and/or a gigantic new pulp mill, but in those days, what the hell, inefficient was OK, and I was paid quite well to make it slightly less inefficient each year.

The company in those days was Associated Pulp and Paper Mills. Later it became part of Australian Paper, and something called PaperlinX was involved too for a while. I was based most of the time at the Burnie site - the older, smokier and smellier 'Pulp', as it was known.

Tasmanian paper mills in those days were highly polluting, and tended to devour large swathes of pristine native forest for their raw materials. The Pulp was about as bad as they got. Both it and the Wesley Vale site closed finally in 2010. The local marine environment is much better off for it. Unfortunately native forests continue to be cut and woodchipped - supplying overseas paper mills instead these days. Few local jobs are involved, and it brings in not that much cash. So it goes in third world economies like Australia's.


When I pulled up to survey the sorry scene the other week, I saw three or four cars parked there. That seemed to imply that some minor enterprise may have found a use for the premises, but I suspect attempts to sell the site for anything more grandiose have so far come to nothing.

Driftwood

My cabin at Turners Beach in north west Tasmania was called 'Driftwood', and looking at the beach there, I could see why.

I heard that there's far more of it than usual on the beaches around here, because of the wild weather and floods of recent months.

All agog at Mount Roland

I was rather proud of this heading until I realised that Mt Roland isn't actually part of the Gog Range. That's a few kilometres to the south east of it.

Never mind, it's a meritorious and gog-inspiring mountain, and it's a prominent landmark from most parts of Tasmania's North West Coast.

Life under Mt Roland must be very scenic, but I wonder if it's really paradise?

The nearby town of Sheffield is the usual stopping off place for a Mt Roland visit. It's renowned for its public murals, many of which feature the rocky edifice. There's even a cut-out of it there.


I took the short, sharp route up the mountain, starting at Kings Rd, in the settlement known as Claude Rd. It's a good, well marked track, and takes you up from about 400m altitude to over 1230m. At first it's in forest, and then you're scaling boulders up a steep gully.










The last kilometre or so is on open plateau, and there are views across most of the northern half of the state.



The whole walk took about five hours.

Don River rattler

They run a fine little historic tourist railway line  at Don, near Devonport, in north west Tasmania.

It's all run by a crew of enthusiastic volunteers - I've known a few of them, and a fine bunch they are too.

They run backwards and forwards between Don and Coles Beach. They've got a museum, and a very impressive array of steam engines on show.

But it seems the steam engines only get an outing on special occasions. I was in the vicinity on a weekday, walking the very pleasant walking tracks nearby. And all they could put on for me was this little red-and-yellow rattler - a diesel electric railcar, with all the historical charisma of the No. 587 bus.

Deloraine

Scenic Deloraine and the Meander River.

Deloraine's long been a centre for arts and crafts, and indeed the Tasmanian Craft Fair was being held as I passed through. I studied all the posters around town, but none of them bothered to say where it was being held exactly! They assumed everyone knew these things.

Driving out of town, I saw the big paddock where the fair was, but by then I'd given up on it, so continued on.

Notley Gorge revisited

I had to think twice before revisiting Notley Gorge. It's a small and scenic nature reserve to the north of Launceston. The last time I called in there was in 1999, and I found a dead person there.

I'd turned up quite early in the day, fresh off the car ferry from Melbourne. Ignoring the other car parked there, I'd walked the bush circuit and re-emerged. Something looked rather odd about the other car, so I took a closer look. There was a strange arrangement of vacuum cleaner hose, and it was connecting the exhaust pipe to the window, which was otherwise taped up to stop any fresh air coming in. The doors were locked, the engine still running, and the chap inside was very pale, and very dead. Not a good start to that Tasmanian holiday.


So this was a chance to exorcise that experience, and maybe enjoy the place again. It's a patch of remnant rainforest, with tree ferns and other rainforest species, and a towering eucalypt canopy. One of the trees is a burnt-out one called 'Bradley's Tree', after a bushranger who used to hide there.

So a few dead trees, but most things around me were very much alive this time.

Launceston's new (to me) museum

Launceston's Inveresk museum complex was new to me. I'd had contradictory recommendations, but decided to go and check it out for myself.

There's the old tram sheds and railway workshops, a functioning tram, a college of the arts, a university campus, a cafe or two, and last but not least, there's the Queen Victoria Museum.




It's not a bad little museum at all. It's got a good sprinkling of the usual dinosaurs and wonders of science stuff. But I particularly liked the fine collection of Tasmanian animals.

There was a good display of old railway trains and other memorabilia too, with maps and a history of the Tasmanian railway system. Launceston had been the hub of said system, and in its heyday it had quite a respectable network.

Oldest bridge, newest tourists

Australia's oldest bridge is in Richmond, Tasmania. It opened in 1825. It's very scenic, and well worth a pilgrimage.

I enjoy watching the Chinese tourists at these places. These days they're by far the biggest group, and they all seem to have lots of fun!

My life as a Hobartian

I was a Hobartian from late 1986 to early 1998.

It was quite liberating to escape from the ultra-rural backwaters of north west Tasmania, where I'd been for the previous ten years. And I wasn't yet ready for a big city again, so Hobart fitted the bill perfectly. Just big enough to be interesting, but small enough that you can easily get around, easily get out of, and soon get to know and love. (Sort of - nowhere's perfect.)

The air's good. The scenery's good. The bushwalking's excellent. The water's good. There's art, culture, fine food.

Fine beer too.

More fine scenery.

Life as a Hobartian isn't bad.








As for Errol Flynn's life as a Hobartian? I'll have to defer to this article in The Australian: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/in-like-flynn/story-e6frg6n6-1225737141066