36. Launceston and Railton

This morning was a moment we said our official goodbyes to the Hawkins Family (including Jayne). We headed back towards Launceston via the eastern side of the Tamar River. It wasn’t quite as scenic as the western side, but still a nice drive and decent road.

We got to Launceston and decided that the free Tiger Bus was the way to go, to see everything. So we parked the van at Coles/Kmart and walked the block to the bus stop. The bus stop just happened to be at a nice big park which allowed the boys to have a play on the playground

After the time came when the bus was meant to come I decided to call the information centre to see if it ran on a weekend – you guessed it – no it didn’t.

So we gave up that idea and walked to the National Car Museum. Rod found a shirt he liked, but it was white and he didn’t want a white shirt, so he didn’t buy it. We didn’t go inside either as we figured we had seen enough of cars by now.

We wondered onto the next tourist attraction, Boag’s Brewery, to discover it doesn’t open on weekends. Man this town is backward. So we returned to the Car Museum, didn’t buy anything and didn’t go in but had one more quick look around.

We left and walked back to our car at Kmart and went and bought a couple of things – groceries mainly.

We left Launceston a little disappointed by the whole tourist attraction thing, but liked the town more than Hobart. A lot prettier, nicer old buildings and more appeal.

We headed off towards Deloraine, called in to the free camp and left a sign on the Hawkins van – but we continued on.

Upon stopping at the Deloraine Information, for the toilet, we worked out there was a cross country road to Cradle Mountain, so we decided on that.

We passed through Railton and saw all the topiary, hedges cut into animal shapes. It was very impressive.

We continued on to Sheffield where we just made it before the free showers closed. We all had nice hot showers and went and set up camp. It was quite a cool night.

Photos: Launceston and Railton