Episode 15 of the ExplorOz Podcast: Australian Offroad Adventures and Mapping Podcast.
Join us for an exciting episode of the ExplorOz Podcast, where we delve into our adventures along Tasmania's stunning east coast. This episode picks up from where we left off Ep 14 after leaving Stumpys Bay in Mt William National Park and heading south down the East Coast of Tasmania exploring Deep Creek, Eddystone Point, Ansons Bay, and onto St Helens and the magnificent Bay of Fires area where we describe all the campsites and their various features and highlights, plus walks, places to swim and other activities including mountain biking the St Helens Bay of Fires trail and Flagstaff Hill MTB area including the Loila Tier. We then describe our journey as we headed inland towards Pyengana to Pub in the Paddock and then in search of magnificent rainforest trails to epic waterfalls including St Columba, Halls Falls, Methinna Falls and sensational free camps and forestry tracks including Evercreech, Tower Hill, and then back to the coast via St Marys to Lagoons Beach.
Tune in as we share a comprehensive summary of our experiences, focusing on uncovering the best natural wonders accessible to travellers by vehicle.
Discover our insights into free and low-cost camping spots, alongside recommendations for day hikes, 4WD tracks, rainforests, pubs, wineries and beaches.
Sit back, relax, and embark on a virtual journey through Tasmania with us.
Episode 15 of the ExplorOz Podcast: Australian Offroad Adventures and Mapping Podcast.
Join us for an exciting episode of the ExplorOz Podcast, where we delve into our adventures along Tasmania's stunning east coast. This episode picks up from where we left off Ep 14 after leaving Stumpys Bay in Mt William National Park and heading south down the East Coast of Tasmania exploring Deep Creek, Eddystone Point, Ansons Bay, and onto St Helens and the magnificent Bay of Fires area where we describe all the campsites and their various features and highlights, plus walks, places to swim and other activities including mountain biking the St Helens Bay of Fires trail and Flagstaff Hill MTB area including the Loila Tier. We then describe our journey as we headed inland towards Pyengana to Pub in the Paddock and then in search of magnificent rainforest trails to epic waterfalls including St Columba, Halls Falls, Methinna Falls and sensational free camps and forestry tracks including Evercreech, Tower Hill, and then back to the coast via St Marys to Lagoons Beach.
Tune in as we share a comprehensive summary of our experiences, focusing on uncovering the best natural wonders accessible to travellers by vehicle.
Discover our insights into free and low-cost camping spots, alongside recommendations for day hikes, 4WD tracks, rainforests, pubs, wineries and beaches.
Sit back, relax, and embark on a virtual journey through Tasmania with us.
Okay, hi folks, and welcome to another episode of the Explorers podcast. Today we're being brought to you from the edge of Lake Petta in southwest Tasmania, up in the right next to the World Heritage Listed National Parks in southwest Tasmania. What's it called again? Pure wilderness, pure wilderness.
Speaker 2:This is actually Edgar Dam campground that we're at at the moment Absolutely magic day we're having today. Look at us, we're actually in t-shirts.
Speaker 1:Well, for those that are watching. Obviously these are meant to be podcasts and we're hoping that you'll be listening to these. They're not really designed for video and for visual stimulation because, realistically, those that are watching are really watching us. Now, that could be exciting or it could be boring, I don't particularly know but these are podcasts and so we employ you to just sit back and listen to the insightful words that we're going to bring you about all the locations and trials and tribulations of our next five weeks that we've done in Tasmania. It's been a while since we did the last one. Actually, it's been five weeks since we recorded one of these, so we're a bit behind, but they've only just been released, so you'll be catching up with us on the go, but it has been quite a few weeks and we've done quite a lot of stuff since we last spoke to you. Where did we start, michelle?
Speaker 2:Well, over the last five weeks we have managed to complete the east coast of Tasmania and it took a lot longer than we thought and we have also managed to get down to the south west national park, where we are now, but that's a really large part of Tasmania. If you look at the map, you'll know that. So we have done the most southern point of Tasmania, we've been down to the south Cape and we have made our way all the way across into the central part of the south west. Like Peta. We have quickly summarised we have done a lot of wineries, we have done a lot of rain forests.
Speaker 1:We've done a few wineries We've just read about to run out of wine. We've been drinking so much wine from the wineries.
Speaker 2:Well, we'll go back and talk about the really good wineries that we have seen in a minute, because we have actually been to quite a number. Rain forests down through the east coast are absolutely magnificent. We've done some supping on a few rivers. We've done a huge amount of hiking, because that was one of the big ticket things for us that we wanted to achieve on our Tasmania trip. Although we aren't set up to do multi-day hikes, what we have concentrated on is some really epic day hikes. There's 60 great short walks Is that what they call them? 60 great short walks of Tasmania? So you can look this up it's a fantastic concept that they've got here and there's signs everywhere for them and they range from fairly short hikes of only a couple of kilometres to a waterfall or whatever and back, which is easily accessible for most people, to some pretty serious longer hikes.
Speaker 1:But only in the one day range. They're not a multi-day thing. They're all designed to be what they call 60 great. I think it's short walks or 60 great walks 60 great short walks.
Speaker 2:So guys look that up, because if you just planned your trip around Tasmania based on those walks, you would absolutely see the best of Tasmania, in our opinion, if you're a nature lover.
Speaker 1:And a walker and a walker, yep.
Speaker 2:We have also.
Speaker 1:Mind you, a lot of those walks actually also have disabled access and some disabled facilities at certain locations. Not all of them. Some of them certainly do, and some of them probably have a few more facilities for less able people. So elderly or hand rails and there's some things over some of the more complicated bit, but don't get me wrong, some of them they're fairly well graded here. One of the things that's interesting about the walk series there's not many that discuss how many kilometres it is, they're more about how many hours it is yeah.
Speaker 1:And it's quite interesting because they're almost dead on for our walking speed and that's somewhere between four and five kilometres an hour hiking through these sorts of areas. So it's a bit variable but we have done a lot of them, a lot shorter Hearts Mountain, for instance. I think it was gazetted or posted as five hours.
Speaker 2:We did it in two and a bit Nearly three Heart Mountain.
Speaker 1:So some of them are a bit hit and miss, but some of them are pretty dead on and they're all rated in that way. But they're also all graded. So if you're not sure how the grading system works, have a look it up. Grade one is nothing. Grade two is pretty straightforward. Then you go to three, which has got some a little bit more complexity. Grade four is where you actually got a climb. You know gravel and climb and stuff. And grade five is when it gets a bit more extreme.
Speaker 2:So and we've been picking most of the grade four hikes because that suits us and there's some epic destinations. So included in those great short hikes are places like Cape Royal and Cape Howe. And Cape Howe is just one of the capes on the popular three capes multi-day overnight hike and you can do Cape Howe from a base camp in a national park as just an out and back day hike of about four hours and I'm going to tell you in a minute some of our favorite hikes. But that's way up there and that one's really good.
Speaker 1:So last we spoke to you, we were at Stumpy's Bay, at Stumpy's Toucanck ground, and we had a great time up there. That was you know what were we two weeks into our Tassie Ventures then and realistically, we'd only covered the top corner. We'd hardly traveled very far at all. Now we've added a few more thousand kilometers into the trip and a lot more walks and a lot more destinations. So some of the highlights that we had, you know, after we've left Stumpy's, you know Deep Creek, edison Point, anson Bay, policeman's Point these are just a few locations around that area. For those people that are looking things up, deep Creek had a good camping area and things like that.
Speaker 1:One of the things that we've been doing, obviously, while we're going to all these places, is we're updating the data on the places information within the Exploros Traveler app. So you'll find all of these areas that are right down the east coast and down the southwest and all that now are really well covered in all the POS have all been updated. Everything's been updated as we've been going through. So I'm mentioning some of those names. If you're interested in thinking about coming to Tasmania and want to go to any of these places, then I employ you to look them up on the Exploros Traveler app and you'll see more information and more photos that we've taken while we've been here.
Speaker 2:While we're on that point, we should probably just mention that whilst we're doing all these updates, we're also seeing a lot of other public updates coming through from other app users, which is really awesome to see. We really want to encourage people to use those facilities a lot more. Adding a photo is really easy. You can do it off your phone while you're offline. You just click the button in the place that shows you add a photo and whether the photo is something you're going to take through the camera or whether you're actually going to pick one from the gallery of pictures you've already taken. It's as simple as that and that can be done offline, and then that just auto syncs through to every other app user. So public contributions like that are a huge, big part of the ongoing update philosophy of the Traveler app.
Speaker 1:And while we do talk about that, one of the things that's been interesting is that we've noticed, or in the last few weeks or months or since we last podcasted, we've done quite a number of updates to the app, most recently in the last few days, and that was all about trying to put these update activities closer to the forefront. So putting the ratings and review system right on the information page when you first open the place and making the add photo button and all those things stand out a little bit more. We hope you find that easier and and you know we do welcome all that public content that comes in it's all validated in the background after you put it in, but feel free to put it all in and you know if it's not right it'll get changed.
Speaker 2:Don't be afraid, don't be afraid, don't be afraid of being using it.
Speaker 1:If you completely stuff it up, someone will come along and fix it up behind you.
Speaker 2:There's a few little elves in the background.
Speaker 1:So you know that's all big part of it and that's all part of the work, and we might do another podcast about working on the road and what it's been like since we've left it.
Speaker 1:But for now you know, back into, back into travelling down the East Coast of Taz, you know, and one of the few things we also run into, you know we get to. We went out to the Bay of Fires. You know and everyone would know. Or, if you don't know, bay of Fires is one of the big tourism areas on the East Coast.
Speaker 2:Well, both the tourists but also the locals. Yeah, I know what you're coming to.
Speaker 1:The Hobartians the Hobartians, if that's what we call them, or the Taswegians, or whatever you like to call them, or whatever you like to call yourselves if you are a Tasmanian person they all love to go to the Bay of Fires on the East Coast.
Speaker 2:And who wouldn't?
Speaker 1:Any time the weather's good or and any time there's a public holiday. So we just happen to hit a few public holidays right at the times when we pulled into these places and, oh my goodness, I've never seen so many people in some of these campsites they were wall to wall, jammed in like sardines. Totally not for us.
Speaker 2:But yeah, one lock away or out, okay.
Speaker 1:Okay, if you're used to that kind of thing and you can, you can, you can sidle up to the next caravan and put your awning out and just touch the caravan next to you and just jam yourselves in there. That's all well and good.
Speaker 2:Camping with friends.
Speaker 1:Camping with friends. That all works out quite well. It was exceptionally busy and that dictated some of the places we stayed and how we moved around a little bit. Certainly over a few days there seems to have been a lot of public holidays at this time of year, yeah, with different things all over the country, but we seem to have picked up a few as we pulled into the most busy places in the area.
Speaker 2:So look, that is a real warning to travellers. And look where. Obviously we're not from Tasmania and it happens for everyone you travel into. You really got to stay on top of these public holidays because I know what the public holiday dates are in WA and they're different to what they are over East. And then there's a special one in Tasmania we didn't know of and we were actually in Bay of Fires when there was a special public holiday only for Hobart.
Speaker 2:And I didn't think about it affecting. I did look at where it was. I didn't think about it affecting where we were because, although it wasn't a public holiday up there, obviously the people from Hobart on the public holiday were travelling to this perfect area.
Speaker 2:So you know part of your travel plan is obviously these Bay of Fires. Why it's so popular? Because obviously it's gorgeous coast. But there's got another big feature going for, which is what attracts people. It's a massive area all the way down the coast with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of free campsites where you can stay up to 28 days.
Speaker 1:There would be sites. There's hundreds of sites spread out across about 10 different camps and locations, but spread also across about 20 kilometres.
Speaker 2:So we did have to actually document every single one of them, look at every single one of them, and we went in while it was all busy and then we went back a few days later when it was all quiet.
Speaker 1:And it was still busy.
Speaker 2:And I think it will still be busy basically the whole year round.
Speaker 1:I will certainly be busy all summer. It's one of those locations where everyone's kind of goes for the summer is all that Bay of Fires area and the camps and the locations in that area are things like Seaton's Cove, Loop Reef, Sloup Lagoon.
Speaker 2:Swim Cart Lagoon. Well, swim Cart Beach, I mean Generate Beach. There's where we stayed, cosy.
Speaker 1:Corner. And where did we stay? We stayed at Dora Point. Funny story Dora.
Speaker 2:Point. So look, we ended up only being able to camp at either Humberg Nature.
Speaker 1:Reserve. Well, humberg Nature Reserve is where Dora Point is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, the Malting. Bay Lagoon Perfect camping there, but I really did want that beach scene for our base camp, so we pushed on and went to Dora Point where you've got gorgeous, clear, calm swimming water, crystal clear, beautiful rocks, the orange lichen, all of that and the sand.
Speaker 1:Well, actually interesting, before we even got to Humberg and Dora, we couldn't get into any of those. We went and did some supplies and we stayed at Dioners Beach, which was further south of the whole Bay of Fires area. So we did that the first day to get over the public holiday, to then come back to even going to Dora Point.
Speaker 2:But my point was. So we end up at Dora Point, where it's almost the only place that we could get to, and all of a sudden David looks at the place update that he was about to do and there was a photo in there that he recognised.
Speaker 1:It was me.
Speaker 2:And it was him 20 years ago and he was with One of our children, one of our children, who, at the time, was four years old.
Speaker 1:Swimming in the exact spot at Dora Point.
Speaker 2:Here we were wanting to fill in the gaps of our trip 20 years ago, and I think the same thing had happened to us last time is that that was the only place that we could get a?
Speaker 1:decent spot.
Speaker 2:And look, since we've been in this area, I've since heard that this is the thing when it is really crowded and busy at all those really super popular Bay of Fires camps, for some reason the Dora Point one tends to have a bit more availability, and there is a reason for it. It's not just straight off the road, you don't just pull in and pull out, you've actually got about six k's, at least Six or seven k's of gravel, of gravelly hard steep.
Speaker 1:There's a steep in and a steep hill. There's potholes but it's all nothing, really all easy and big vans and things do go in there. It's a decent hill to pull up to get in there and a decent hill when you get over the top. But driving over hills, tasmania, you've got to get used to it. Especially if you want to go into the forests and stuff. It's healing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So look, dora Point. Yeah, we ended up there again, so that was a bit of deja vu, but honestly, this time we did it quite differently, but it was absolutely beautiful. There is a hike there which we spent the whole day walking 16 kms, no, 12 km and you can walk all the way around the coastline To Skeleton Bay yeah, to Skeleton Bay, and the whole way. You've got the water on one side and you've got beautiful forest on the other side and it's just sort of gentle incline up and down. It's an easy path, spectacular views the entire way and ever changing terrain. There are little car parks, so if you're not into the 12 km return hike, you can still drive out of the Dora Point campground.
Speaker 2:And go into each of those and just do small little hikes of a few hundred metres, but you miss all the good bits. So we had a look at all those options and so, if you're up for a bit of a walk, it's a really beautiful walk and we got to have a sneaky little, perfect, isolated swim in the water in a rock pool on our own. Yes, the water is cold, but again, that's one of the things you have to get used to in the Bay of Five the water is clear and it is so inviting, so you just have to suck it up and do it. We actually spent six days based in the Bay of Fives area, so that's just a bit of a guide on how long you might need if you want to be in that area.
Speaker 1:It's really easy. The only difference about the biking there was that in that area, yeah, so that's what I'm about to talk about yeah, right.
Speaker 2:So it's really easy to base camp at one of these camps and drive into St Helens, and in St Helens you do have one of the only IGAs and decent camps. There's two IGAs, so it stops shots that you'll find. So far we haven't seen any better shopping.
Speaker 1:So long the system.
Speaker 2:Oh, of course Lonseston had shops Since we left Lonseston and that was quite a while ago.
Speaker 1:All the way to St Helens. There wasn't really much, yeah, and lots of little stuff. You know little side shops, you know your little groceries connected to things there was some grocery shops connected to coffee shops and things like that, but really to find solid supplies, chemists and a whole range of food stuff and fresh food and all that sort of stuff is quite complicated.
Speaker 2:And lots of really good set up for campers. They know that people need water. Out on the main road between there's a water filling station dump points and all that at St Helens.
Speaker 1:It's all very well set up. Yeah, so you can pull into St Helens with your water tanks dry and there's a drive up set of water taps. There's actually two sets there's ones at the dump point and there's ones at the special designated one at the north end of town. So they're all marked on the map, all on the travel system as well, yep.
Speaker 2:And there's a couple of things to do even around St Helens and just a little bit south of St Helens.
Speaker 1:We found a nice walk, we did the mountain biking. So a couple of days of mountain biking at Flagstaff, we did.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Well, if we're going to talk mountain biking, yeah, mountain biking, yeah. So Flagstaff Hill Mountain Bike Area is a park where they do have a shuttle service and you can self ride on the easy green trails and if you're able to do a little bit of uphill you can also get up onto some of the blue trails. So we did that just to sort of get our eye in and then we got onto the shuttle and we actually got a private shuttle because it wasn't very busy We'd already missed all the busy time of year and the driver that works for Vertigo Vertigo he was. He just hangs out there and we were able to chat to him. He was a great guy. He had a bit of fun. We did a private uplift, a couple of runs for him. So we went right up to Lowell La Tea and we did a downhill black rated ride called Send Helens, which if you've ridden at Derby we wouldn't rate it black, you'd still rate it blue.
Speaker 1:You'd rate it black if you do all the jumps that are on it. But it has bailouts all the way down, which made it quite nice. So from a black, from a black diamond perspective, it was, there was two choices. There was, it was almost green. But it was probably more blue and and obviously the black if you do all the jumps.
Speaker 2:And I managed to actually have a crash that day pretty bad and I nearly went down the mountain and I grabbed a tree and hugged it instead and I've actually torn all the inside of my arm. It was pretty nasty, but I kept riding. And why did I fall? I was having a bit of mechanicals that day and I was in a rush and I sort of ignored it. Anyway, we fixed it and I went up the hill and we did another run, which was an old salty dog, I think. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So if you're in those names won't mean much to you unless you're going to do some mountain biking, but they were probably the two standout runs that we did from there and also at the same time. We then, while we were, while we were dealing with the shuttle we organised, we thought, oh well, let's go and do the the Bay of Fires Blue Blue Tier, bay of Fires first 13 ride the following day, which was going to shuttle us out out a fair bit further out of St Helens and up to Lola Tier no, not Lola Tier.
Speaker 2:Blue Tier Blue.
Speaker 1:Tier. Wow, there's so many tiers. There was almost tiers Blue Tier and the Bay of Fires, first 13,. It's 13 kilometres from the top. You go from the top for the first 13 k's, which is supposedly the most spectacular. The most spectacular is meant to be from kilometre 7 to kilometre 13, I think, or 6 to 13, one of those, and we did that. We did a thing called first 13 plus, which was the first 13,. So from the top to the 13 kilometre marker and then we got a shuttle from there back up to the 6 or 7 kilometre marker, I can't remember exactly which one 7.
Speaker 2:And we did the last 5 to 6 kilometres again, because that's the section, because that's the best bit. Yeah, that was the best. And honestly, oh my God, the rain forest.
Speaker 1:And the view.
Speaker 2:The burns were just perfect. In comparison to what we're riding like at Derby. I think we're a little bit more nervy there, but at this place you could just let go and fang around the burns and we just had a lot more fun. Well, we'd also bought.
Speaker 1:Oh, we're just going to say that too, because of Michelle's pre-hugging and me having a snack and we were getting a bit cut up and we were getting a bit grumpy about that. Then we went to the shop to book the Bay of Fires ride. We spent a bucketload of money buying more mountain biking knee, elbow guards and various bits and pieces to make sure that we didn't bump ourselves.
Speaker 2:So when we did do the Bay of Fires 13, we had all this extra confidence and all this extra coverings on and we didn't fall.
Speaker 1:And we didn't fall actually.
Speaker 2:Well, that's good. Buy the protective gear and you don't hurt yourself. It's that same Murphy's law, isn't it?
Speaker 1:And it's not there yet, but it'll be there soon On our YouTube channel. You'll be able to see our exploits are coming down those hills, once we get a chance to get it off. We've been fighting for weeks and weeks, but we haven't had a chance yet to get that footage off the GoPro.
Speaker 2:We're not the world's best at all of this footage in GoPro-ing and mountain biking with the GoPro and all this footage capturing. Look, you get more footage than you can possibly edit and deal with while you're trying to have a holiday and work as well. So it's taken a little bit of time, guys. Sorry, but it will come.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I'm sure there's better footage out there, if you just look at it on YouTube or whatever.
Speaker 1:If you want to see it done properly, watch somebody else's. Yeah, if you want to see it done by everyone who's you'd buy Joe Averick? Then watch our video.
Speaker 2:You can have a laugh at me. We've already shared my little tree hugging. I think it's available on our socials. So yeah, as David said at the beginning of this podcast, a podcast is filmed for audio, so that's why, if you're watching this on YouTube, it's only on YouTube, because you're meant to just be doing the housework while you're listening to the audio rather than sitting here and looking at us and that's why we haven't got all these like clips coming in of all the things we're talking about.
Speaker 2:I know in the comments a few people have sort of been expecting that. That's not what a podcast is about. It's not designed for the visual. So if you're after the visual, have a look at the other playlists on our YouTube, where you'll find tons of other content. It's just that the podcast playlist is the talking bit.
Speaker 1:And our Instagram and Facebook followings as well, you can obviously find a lot more content of the activities and actions happening in there.
Speaker 2:That's where we predominantly post our highlights of our trip as we go through Instagram and Facebook. So when we find really good free camps, we want to share with you all great hikes or just some funny behind the scenes stuff that's going on, or breakages, and we'll get to all that, because we've had a little bit of all of that In the podcast.
Speaker 1:we really just want to summarize what's going on and for those that are listening, we hope you pick up some tips about places to go and things that might have interested you as we talked about them. So the Bay of Fires we did a few mountain bikes and then we said about doing all the hikes that were in the area and there was a few lovely little short hikes around the area there.
Speaker 2:St Helens Point yeah, beautiful beaches there on the other side.
Speaker 2:I had no idea More than just the Bay of Fires. Make sure you don't miss doing that, because that's really spectacular Beautiful, long beaches white, long, sandy beaches, and you can look out to the islands that go all the way out. You can see all the way down to the hazards area of Frasianay, and that was our next destination and this has been bugging me so 20 years ago we only got to see a tiny slice of Frasianay, again with a baby in a four-year-old, and we never got to do the hikes and we were just so concerned about being able to get there because it's just been really, really busy and we don't want to plan ahead and we don't want to book. I had been trying and trying to ring the national parks, so you have to ring or email to get a booking. I actually that was one of the only places the Frasianay National Park, the campground at Richardson's Beach, which is where you need to book if you want to go with a trailer, whether it's a camper, van or a caravan.
Speaker 1:Oh look, so if you've got a tent, right there, Remember, oh my God it's a lot easier.
Speaker 2:If you're just a rooftop tent or a little tent, you can get sites there quite easily. In fact there's a gorgeous camp at Honeymoon Bay at Frasianay which people just jag quite quickly. It's not as hard to book, but if you're someone towing a caravan or a camper trailer, like us, it's impossible. I've been trying to book since early December when we booked our passage over on the Spirit of Tasmania and I still wasn't able to get one. So one of the things that has become apparent and a lot of people may not be aware the Frasianay National Park section called Friendly's Beaches had a devastating fire in September last year and they have had to shut that whole side of the National Park or close off.
Speaker 2:You can't go driving there and all those good free camps in the National Park are inaccessible. So that's just put a lot of visitation load on the Coles Bay Frasianay National Park campground area that's left. So the alternative and they're posting it everywhere is the River and Rocks, which is a few kilometres further back out of town, but it's close enough that it's convenient to use as a base camp. We managed to get in there quite early one day, around about midday, and jagged a spot. If you look at various reviews all over the internet, some people complain about it. We got a great camp and we loved the aspect of just being able to walk down at sunset a really beautiful spot for sunset.
Speaker 1:On the right river or bay or whatever it was in there.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, the river, obviously, because it was river and rocks, and it was exactly River and Rocks.
Speaker 2:If you look on our socials, there's a gorgeous picture I got at sunset on River and Rocks, which is what's on the campground.
Speaker 1:So that was pretty good and it gave us access to Wineglass Bay and all those great walks that are available at Fratinae and all of the beaches, obviously, that are along the foreshore there. What was the town called there? Coles Bay.
Speaker 2:Oh God, has it changed? It always was a bit touristy To me. It reminded me back in the day of places like Byron Bay. And it's done exactly like that. It just sort of booms and all of a sudden all the yuppie shops and all the fancy food. I mean it's still a lot smaller scale, don't get me wrong.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, it's a pretty small scale, but there's three or four coffee shops. There's a couple of shops.
Speaker 2:The Fish and Chirp and the Fancy Pizza and the Ice Cream Parlor, and the Ice Cream Shop and things like Air Peter Shop. But again not very much in the way of groceries, so you do need to have come with a few supplies. There were some groceries, but limited. Oh yeah, that's right, we did get a fair bit of fresh. There was a supermarket there. We were able to get a fair bit of stuff at the supermarket. Oh, I got a phone call from Seattle coming.
Speaker 1:But it wasn't there. It wasn't.
Speaker 2:You know cold or worse words, but we used to do commercial large business in the East yeah yeah, yeah, love them all, hate them.
Speaker 1:So you know we had a great time. We did spend six days in that bay I would say Dumbo Files, in the Franchiner area it was about. We spent three nights at River and Rocks Camp doing those epic hikes One of the best, obviously the Wineglass Bay lookout and we went down to Wineglass Bay Beach.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a lot of people struggle with the hike up to the Wineglass Bay lookout and yes, it's a lot of steps, but really after a kilometre you're at the first lookout, which they don't even document very well until you get there and it's gorgeous.
Speaker 1:And that's the Coals Bay lookout.
Speaker 2:So for someone that's bitten off more than they can chew, take the first one kilometre and you get to the lookout over Coals Bay. So the idea is, you go on a little bit further and you get over the hump, over the saddle, and you look at the other side and you can look down at Wineglass Bay on the other side from the lookout of Wineglass Bay. Then you'll read the sign telling you there's a thousand steps down, which of which you've got to do a thousand steps back up to actually go down on the beach at the bottom of Wineglass Bay.
Speaker 1:And let's you do the eight hour return, or around the edge of it, and so, look, that's up to the individual whether you want to do that or not.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, we were going down and it wasn't hard at all. The steps were actually really nicely graded, yeah a bit better than some others.
Speaker 1:Some of them are hard, some steps where they're offset, funny distances and funny heights. They're built in the middle of nowhere some of these things, so who cares? It's pretty good just to have a step.
Speaker 2:But let me just say here the next hike that we did, had 4,223 steps, and that's Cape House. So think carefully, use the 1,000 steps as your test whether you can do it.
Speaker 1:But so yeah, fratinae was. Oh, it was spectacular.
Speaker 2:Beautiful mountains of the hazards and your beautiful water. It was a lot warmer in the water than I had expected and I think conditions this summer in Tasmania have been very favourable, and they've still, over the last few weeks since we've left there, have been posting heat wave in that area. So climate change is a real thing.
Speaker 1:I think we missed a whole section, didn't we, when we did the St Columbia and Ralph Falls and all of that part of the journey.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, so look between the Bay of Fires and Fratinae. I mean, there you two draw cards. We did do a bit of an inland excursion. We went inland to get away from the beach. We should talk about it.
Speaker 1:We went inland to get away from the beach for a few days because one of the things we had heard was that there was no one camping out when you get away from the beaches, certainly on the long weekend. So we made a bit of a left turn, right turn situation and we had it inland for a couple of days to see what we could see. And we went in through an area called Pye and Ganna and down that way we found some lovely walks, halls Falls Halls Falls was particularly good.
Speaker 2:Oh, it is absolutely remarkable, it was really short.
Speaker 1:It was only like a 3 or 4K complete in and out the whole thing. It wasn't very complicated. There was a few steps and stairs and stuff.
Speaker 2:It's the type of place you go to spend half the day and just immersing yourself in waterfalls there were absolute cascades coming down and you could put your body right up against the rock and let the cascade fall off you. These aren't massive falls.
Speaker 1:They're just smaller falls, about the person height and they fall down and it goes down to some more rocks and falls down.
Speaker 2:That one's actually dog friendly too.
Speaker 1:There was a man made dam wall across a bit, and that was quite nice as well. So yeah, halls Falls and the Grom River. We hacked a bit of a track. Now we followed a bit of pink tape.
Speaker 1:As you do the magic pink tape when you're hiking in Tasmania seems to uncover a lot of things that you may not see if you don't follow the pink tape. We followed the pink tape a bit further along up the Grom River and found some more magical spots along the way that you could stop and have a great time all that day.
Speaker 2:We had expected to do a day of driving and just pop in and tick that scene there, just tick that waterfall and tick that waterfall. Halls Falls you really could spend your entire day at if you're into water, it was pretty cool.
Speaker 1:So we did that particular Halls Falls and then we went and stayed at a place called Pub in the Paddock.
Speaker 2:That had been recommended to us by our friend and literally it is a pub in the paddock, in the middle of a farm in the middle of almost nowhere except that there was a rec centre on the other side.
Speaker 1:It also had free camping, but the pub also had free camping right outside if you wanted to stay.
Speaker 2:We thought I will just stay there there was an RV park across the road which has facilities and Pub in the Paddock. Once the pub's shut overnight, you can't get into the toilets. There's no facilities, so it's a toss up where you want to go.
Speaker 1:So if you want the facilities, you can walk. A lot of people did walk in from the rec centre to the pub and had their fill and then walk back over to the rec centre. There was showers, paid showers and toilets.
Speaker 1:There was only two, two showers and, I think, only a couple of toilets. There wasn't big. There was quite a lot of people staying there. We decided to stay at the pub at the Paddock and we had a few good drinks there and had chats with a lot of motorbikers and we learnt a lot more about what it is to use motorbikes.
Speaker 2:Motorbike touring and adventure bike touring.
Speaker 1:So that was important for us, One from a personal interest point of view, but we all know that we already know that we've got a reasonable following of adventure bike riders that use our app and stuff. So getting more feedback from them while we were drinking and I'm sure we got, as they got longer and the pub shut and we were still drinking with them out in the balcony.
Speaker 1:We were learning, all sorts of extra stories about things about adventure, bike riding that we may or may not need to ever know again, but it was a wonderful place.
Speaker 2:One of the things that I took away from the conversation with the guys was that for them, it's all about the road.
Speaker 1:They want to go.
Speaker 2:Oh my God, they go so fast. Most of them, I don't know. Don't listen, policemen. I'm not naming any names, but some of these guys are riding these bikes for 230Ks an hour, not in Tasmania.
Speaker 1:No, they were telling us that from somewhere on the mainland.
Speaker 2:That's my takeaway.
Speaker 1:They do like the roads and they were on a specific tour and they just finished this specific tour and it's been six or seven days and there are tours and tour groups and they come down and they do all these spectacular roads because, as I was saying before, they're steep and they're windy and you get used to thinking, oh, 60km, you can do that in half an hour, 40 minutes over on the mainland, it can take you an hour and a half to do that here, because it's so damn steep going up and so damn steep going down and everywhere you go there's a 90 degree corner that you can't see. That's unsigned. So driving around in some of the areas around here is pretty interesting. So the bike riders they come down and they love it and we found out a lot more about bike riding from those guys at the pubs in the paddock.
Speaker 2:Also the fact that these particular guys on this tour they weren't into camping. They don't do anything when they.
Speaker 1:No, they stay at pubs.
Speaker 2:They stay at pubs. They ride all day. Quite a lot of them may have had past injuries, whatever, so hiking's not their thing. They're purely here to ride.
Speaker 1:They do a couple hundred a day on the bike A couple hundred a day on the bike through all these roads and hills and stuff.
Speaker 2:It would be quite a big difference in time.
Speaker 1:And so the next day, which was probably one of our better days well, one of the many awesome days- it's a standout. It's a standout day, the day we did St Columbia, st.
Speaker 2:Columba.
Speaker 1:St Columba.
Speaker 2:So we were the first people there, because if you do stay at Poinganna at the RV or Pub in the Paddock.
Speaker 1:You're close.
Speaker 2:You're really close, and I think we got there at 9.30, so it wasn't as if we we're not early birds, we're not early birds. It's so cold here in the morning it takes a while for the sun to warm everything up and look most people do the same thing.
Speaker 1:So, anyway.
Speaker 2:So we cruise on and we were the first hikers there and it was magic.
Speaker 1:It was.
Speaker 2:It was the fairy tale rainforest walk, the falls yourself. Yeah, they're okay, but for me the standout was actually the walk, the little trickling brooks and moss covered rocks, and it was just spectacular environment to walk through. So that was a real standout. And if you only see one, do one waterfall hike in Tasmania. I mean I have done all the west coasts and we've done all those ones before as well and I haven't done every waterfall, but I, at the moment I'm calling it oh really.
Speaker 2:St Colombo is my favorite hiking waterfall hike in Tasmania so far.
Speaker 1:And it's only short.
Speaker 2:Again, it was like a kilometer and a bit easier to get out. So it was easy and and access was reasonable.
Speaker 1:It is steep in and that, like you, go down a reasonable hill.
Speaker 2:But it's a bit of a ramp.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you could almost you disable or you could almost wheelchair in, but it'd be a bit of a push to get you out again. But it was, it was kind of a nice and easy walk down and and it was well worth it.
Speaker 2:The views, as Michelle said, were very spectacular, but it seems to be a bit of a typical circuit for people to go from Halls Falls through to Pinegana, on to St Colombo and then on to the next one which we went to, which was Ralph Falls.
Speaker 1:Well, I don't know if it's that popular to go to Ralph Falls because you've got to do that. We came down from St Colombo and there's a little hairpin turn it's alright, if you're coming, if you're coming towards St Colombo Falls, but if you're coming from St Colombo Falls back to Pinegana and you've got to make this little hairpin corner.
Speaker 2:There's no way you do it in the caravan. The way we turned it we nearly rolled the trailer.
Speaker 1:I wouldn't suggest that, if you've got a decent caravan, that you even do it. The hill on the other side it was pretty freaking steep. It wasn't the most simple drive coming through there. There is a sign we did the. We did this left hand turn. It took me to do a back and forth to get around it. It was a hairpin and you know within about you get. You get on the thing and you start driving down the road and it says ah, road dot suitable for touring trailers and campers and caravans and blah blah blah and we thought, oh my goodness, we're already here.
Speaker 1:We're kind of committed.
Speaker 2:We thought that was a historic road, wasn't it? It wasn't something, yeah. And we looked on the map and it was a Ralph Falls road and it Ralph Falls road.
Speaker 1:It wasn't called that.
Speaker 2:No, it was just a road, but it had a sign that said Ralph.
Speaker 1:Falls and it and it and it was and it was a bit steep and it was pretty loose. It was okay, we got through. We got to the top of that and sort of had to use our maps a bit because it wasn't very well signed postage. You could sort of follow the main tire tracks that were moving around to get you. There was a few four-way intersections and three-way intersections where it was not completely obvious which way to go. Glad we had the maps. Anyway, we hit Ralph Falls and Caches Gorge Ralph Falls.
Speaker 2:They're quite underwhelming themselves. It's a very that the the appeal. Obviously, at different times of year you see a full a water.
Speaker 1:More water.
Speaker 2:It needed more water to be spectacular. It's a long vertical drop and where the lookout is is it's a long distance view, so you're not up close to the water like with the other ones.
Speaker 1:You can stand over the top and you can't see anything, but it's basically a pencil of water. It's apparently one of the longest falls.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Longest single falls in Tasmania, but you can't see the bottom, it just kind of disappears and all we could see was like a pencil with stream of water.
Speaker 2:So most people just go into the car park and see the sign and go in the direction of Ralph Falls. But what we had done, we did a circuit, we went out the other way, first to Caches Gorge, and then walked all the way around, and it was a really lovely walk.
Speaker 1:It was nice.
Speaker 2:So that was sort of the type of place you go more for the walk than enjoying the waterfall, whereas St Colombo, oh, I suppose they're both the same.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, don't get confusing there, oh, okay. But it was better waterfalls, so you know, we were still fairly early, early ish in the day. I don't even think we'd hit lunch time.
Speaker 2:No, we hadn't because we had lunch at the next place.
Speaker 1:Well, we went out and we drove through the forest and, as I say, when I drive through the forest it's like up and down and over dal and around and around and over and up and down, and it's quite challenging and it's a very enjoyable driving. That's the sort of thing I like to do Tasmania.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a driver's paradise, it is a driver's and rider's paradise.
Speaker 1:I can see why the bikies like it as well. We go on roads that they might not like so much, but you, some of them, go flat out, even on the rough stuff as well. So we went to Ringo Roma or Ringo, rumour, is the next town that we went through and got some local berries and produce out of the fridges on the roadside. You know, people have these little grocery markets and they sell their wares and you pull up in this little tin shed and you open the tin shed inside like a couple of fridges, and you open the fridges and there's little, put your two bucks in the thing and grab some local stuff.
Speaker 2:The garlic we got from there is fabulous. It's that little small, tight purple head garlic.
Speaker 1:And again another thing that we also do is almost everywhere there's lots of blackberries on the side of the road and we pick those and eat them there. I mean, blackberries are everywhere here at this time of year and you can just drive anywhere almost and get a feel of blackberries even not so much here in the wilderness areas, because it hasn't been, so the cars aren't driving past and carrying the berries and bits and pieces around, but certainly all over the roads almost everywhere else.
Speaker 2:There are noxious weed for the locals, but anyway, the berries are perfect and they're good eating.
Speaker 1:Then we went up to a little town called Ledgerwood and Ledgerwood has some famous, are they famous? Infamous? They're a listed historic site. It's a World War 3, world War 1 Memorial Carve trees. Now, apparently the story goes that in this town of Ledgerwood, was it 16 people. It went to World War 1, or some number of people went to World War 1. They were all killed in all the various battles, and so what was done in the town was they planted these number of trees, one for each person that had fallen in this park in the town.
Speaker 1:Now, obviously, you know, 100 years later those or 80 or 90 years later, those trees became massive and they became a bit of a problem with limbs falling and other bits and pieces. So they employed an artist, a tree sculpting artist. Which is how do you do that? But you should see what they've created. They basically cut those trees down and made them into perpetual statues, or basically last forever. They keep painting them and they think they do look after it quite well, wonderful statues, always carved trees, quite. You know good stories around them. Well worth a look.
Speaker 2:The carving that's been done, apparently with a chainsaw. You must have had some smaller bits as well, but the carving, so you've kept the base and the trunk of the tree intact and taken the limbs off, but kept just enough of the limbs where he's done very fine detail work and you can see making seats and people sitting on the seats. Yeah, forms of human beings dressed in their soldier outfits, holding rifles lying down along the limb, or local, or the wives back at home that type of thing, so it was quite telling.
Speaker 2:There is also a little shed there, open by the volunteers, with a few souvenirs and tourist information, and it's all set up at a free camp with a rest area in the heritage railway that remains there, in a beautiful park land, and there's some other little memorials around town, so it's a lovely little spot to explore, and so, if you can combine that on a bit of a loop, like we did with your waterfall day, Well, the silly thing that we had done is that we've been about two weeks, two or three weeks before that before we'd even got into Derby for the mountain biking.
Speaker 1:if you'd listened to the previous podcast, you would know when we did that Ledgerwood was around about eight kilometers down the road from where we were about three and a half weeks ago, but we came about in a totally different way so you could see how fast we were traveling.
Speaker 2:we almost touched the line that we'd done three or four weeks ago on the way to do that, but we knew we were going to get back in that area again and we almost went back to Derby once we got here to Ledgerwood to do more mountain biking because we were almost recovered from all our injuries, we thought we might as well give you a go at that.
Speaker 2:But we keep feeling like we're rushing against time, and so it was around about this time that we realized hey, I don't think we're going to make it to the spirit of Tasmania ferry on the six-week booking that we've got, so guess what we did? We extended our trip by another three weeks and so we're still here. So that's why we're still here and going at a snail's pace. So now we're up to nine weeks in Tasmania and actually talking to this podcast.
Speaker 1:We are going at a snail's pace in the podcast too, because it's probably we've probably been going for a while, even though what time we started.
Speaker 2:Well, some of these things we're talking about are highlights. So get your pens out, write down some of these highlights for your trip plan, or if you've got a good memory remember. No, the idea is you're meant to pull out the Explorers Traveler app.
Speaker 1:Look the place up and put them into a folder and you put it in a folder.
Speaker 2:Like you tag your favorites and then you can write little notes. The new system that we've got.
Speaker 1:So follow along with your Explorers, traveler, follow along. After leaving Ledgerwood, we were obviously looking for our next camp and we'd heard a reference or been given a referral to go to a place called Evercreech, evercreech Forest, and we thought, okay, well, we found that on the map and it was a reasonable way from where we had to go and we went to past Mount Victoria and Mount Albert on the way and they were two treks that you could do hikes. They look pretty steep, they look pretty hard, they were a bit beyond our cave nearly for the time of day in the afternoon that we were there.
Speaker 1:No, no, they had a. There was a little board at one. I think Mount Victoria looked a bit more official than Mount Albert. It had a little walkway and an entranceway thing and a boot washer thing I think it had there.
Speaker 2:Severe hazard area yeah, but it was always saying severe hazards and you know it looked.
Speaker 1:It looked pretty hard. We decided we weren't going to do that, we were going to target the Evercreech Forest and glad we did because, wow, we got down there and we did that walk out in the afternoon we did the full Evercreech.
Speaker 2:Forest. Evercreech Forest Reserve is the most beautiful place to stay.
Speaker 1:So now we've just ruled it for everybody, because everyone's going to go.
Speaker 2:There was no one there. They have two hikes so there's a nice circuit hike that you go over the bridge, go through the rainforest. It's magic the first five steps. You stop in wonder and awe and just look up at these enormous beautiful canopy of rainforests that you're in and just go wow. And then, if you keep going along, you come to a really gorgeous waterfall where you can actually get your hands and your feet in the waterfall. So that's lovely, it's a trickle. And then you climb all the way up the bloody mox in that one up to the top of that waterfall yeah you were having a good time.
Speaker 1:Always trying to find the top of the waterfall.
Speaker 2:You actually promise you were going to sit there and do a podcast.
Speaker 1:And that was too many weeks ago.
Speaker 2:We did stay the night there and there was, oh my God, the amount of wildlife that comes out at night time. We got out the headlights and went spotlighting because there was noises in the dark. Animals everywhere and they screech and they growl and they carry on. So, yep, we've heard Tasmanian devils. We see their eyes at night and tons of wallabies at night time growling as they run through your camp at you. So I had one actually rushing at me. That was scary and I squealed. You remember that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I do.
Speaker 2:And it actually is a really beautiful day use area and if you had a, if you feel camping intense, the area set aside for the tent camping is magic, so stone built fireplaces right by the river.
Speaker 1:Except that, you can't use fires in any of these places anymore. There seems to be some new fire roaring through certainly this area and certainly in summer it's certainly the whole East Coast all national parks and a lot of places are signed as no fire. We're in one tonight, we're in one here where we can have fire, but just on the other side of the lake.
Speaker 1:Here we weren't able to have fire, so you can pick your spots you know, but every every this national park or world heritage listed, other than some spots within World Heritage listed, like this one, you could seem to have fire.
Speaker 2:There's no rule. There is a rule of national park.
Speaker 1:There's a rule that's a national park and you can't have fire and we don't know whether that restriction is going to come out in winter or not. I suspect it's going to come out in winter. They are signed to the screwed on, but they're pretty permanently looking science.
Speaker 2:But this camps not run by national parks. It's actually run by hydro test, so the rules are a bit different rules are a bit different. Yeah, you really got to look at the info and look at the sign and just do what you're told. Do what you're told.
Speaker 1:So that's the Evercreech we also did the next day. We did the night's walk, the four nights, or four white nights, the white nights walk at Evercreech, the white gum trees, and it's a it's the four tallest gum trees in the Southern Hemisphere or is in the world or something that are in there. Was it the world, or the Southern Hemisphere, or Tasmania? One of the two? I can't really recall, but they were bloody tall.
Speaker 2:There was a claim to some fame.
Speaker 1:And whilst whilst whilst you're doing the walk in there and you're getting this great inspiration of how tall these things are they don't actually like have a market to tell you which to four are the path does tend to go, walks past and has sort of surroundings around two of them, and you look up and you go, oh yeah, that's pretty tall. But you can't really get a gauge of how tall it is until you do the full circuit, walk and go up the hill and you see from the halfway up the mountain that these things are so massive. They are really tall trees. So that whole Evercreech wonderful spot.
Speaker 1:After we left that we went to Athena Falls, which is kind of there's kind of a loop that we could do. That Athena Falls was very interesting. Nice walk in to the first fall and you're not 100% sure what's going on. You kind of get there and you see this lovely fall and then you see that infamous pink tape going up the side of something. I saw the pink tape and I couldn't resist always wanting to ascend a waterfall, so I dragged Michelle up to the first plateau. So you get to the first waterfall, first plateau, and that was quite lovely and then I managed to convince Michelle to come up to the next plateau and the next set of waterfalls, which was even more spectacular and lovely because you're kind of halfway up and you can see below and you can see at the top.
Speaker 1:And I could still see the pink tape drawing my attention up the hill further and further and further, and I actually went up through three or four different full platforms. It was way beyond me.
Speaker 2:The amount of scree. It was loose rubble at an incline. That was just insane. I was not trusting myself to be able to do that. So Michelle stayed down and I went up and I took photos and added all these different markers.
Speaker 1:So in the theme of falls there's like an upper and middle and a lower section of falls and photos and stuff in there. Look, I had a good time. It's lovely to go up and see, go, sort of go not beyond as such. There was pink tape somewhere. I've been there before.
Speaker 2:I had the app and the app shows you where the waterfall was.
Speaker 1:And there was even some wire strung between two parts where you had to sort of skirt around a fairly dubious rocky section. So it was easier, nicer to grab a hold of a piece of wire as you walked around that. So someone had set that up and it was lovely. And going up to the top of that and seeing four levels of waterfall coming down, I quite enjoyed that.
Speaker 2:It was quite, quite, quite nice, so we spent a long time there.
Speaker 1:We spent a fair bit of time there, but it was lovely, yeah, it was nice.
Speaker 2:You know you can just again. All these waterfall areas in this part of the world of Tasmania was all warm. You could sit your feet in the water, have a swim, spend hours there. It was all very pleasant.
Speaker 1:Look, I think we were going to cover the whole trip that we've done since Stumpy's Bay to where we are today, but I think we've probably come to where we might want to end our first review, because we've just done Mathena Falls. Oh, we'll finish that day. So at the end of that day we went into this little town called Mathena and it doesn't say very much, and we'd read reviews that the RV camp had closed, but there was no signs that it closed and there was someone already camping and there was people camping in the RV campsite.
Speaker 1:Magnificent facilities, yeah, like coin-operated showers, coin-operated showers and the whole works, but something on one of the websites had said it was closed and it had been boarded and you'd get arrested, sort of think, if you went there. We couldn't see any sign. That was only the day before we got there. And we got there and it looked lovely and that sounded like a whole load of hogwash. Maybe they just didn't want that particular person to stay there.
Speaker 1:So Mathena is a little town and I'd noticed this thing called Tower Hill and we'd read some reviews about people staying in Mathena to do the Tower Hill Drive. So we thought, oh well, let's go and have a look at Tower Hill Drive. It was getting a bit late in the afternoon, it wasn't early morning by this stage, it was kind of after lunch, but we thought we'd go and have a look up at Tower Hill and we drove up the side of this hill we had the camper in Tower, of course, because we were moving between towns and we saw the Tower Hill Road turn off and it said you know, steep, steep, steep ascent, be sure, be sure.
Speaker 1:We were already on a steep steep and we were already on a almost steep enough and the turnoff said steep, steep. We headed up there a little bit and I could just see how steep it was going to get and I thought I'm going to need to drop the, the trailer off, the camper off, if we want to continue to do this.
Speaker 1:So we aborted the. We aborted Tower Hill for a want of running out of time. We still had steep steep because the rest of that Tower Hill Road all the way over to Fingal was pretty damn steep. It was up and down and over Dale, but still a lovely drive. If you're into forest driving, like I am, it was great. We then went. We then, you know, popped out of all of that at a little town called Fingal and we were kind of at a crossroads as to where we were going to camp.
Speaker 1:It was almost sunset, we thought we'd camp at Fingal but we thought, oh you know T'Navi camp and there was a few people there and it was tiny.
Speaker 2:It was a lovely town with lots of beautiful historic people being there. You could have looked. So we just did a lap of the main, took some photos.
Speaker 1:We did a lap of the main took some pictures up there to the places, did all that and found the dump points and did all that work that we have to do each day. And then we drove onto St Mary's and St Mary's is a reasonably big town, just down the road from St Helen's, you know, and it had a decent IGA.
Speaker 2:And it had an IGA and a server and a few things you know and a massive RV park and a massive RV park and infrastructure.
Speaker 1:Which we drove into, and it had showers, coin showers, and it had everything.
Speaker 2:But it's not our sort of plan.
Speaker 1:It's just so, not us. It was almost dark then and this storm was coming and it was starting to rain as we were at St Mary's and Michelle said look, let's go back out to the coast to Big Lagoon Camp. It's only 15 K's or something from St Mary's or something. But what she didn't realise, or what we didn't realise, it was 15 K's of turny worny, narrow, tight, hard.
Speaker 2:It was extremely steep, it was bitumen still.
Speaker 1:Bitumen. This was bitumen. It was hard driving. It was tough driving because it was getting dark and it was raining, and so we made that drive as tough as it was from St Mary's and we got down to.
Speaker 2:Lagoon Beach and full of people, so I was in trouble. We drove round and round and round and all the perfect spots were gone, but we found ourselves a pretty good little spot. We found a decent spot and in the morning a lot of people left and we stayed a couple of days and we stayed in the same spot that we found because we couldn't be bothered moving, because it was good enough.
Speaker 1:It was as good as most of the others. So, look, I think, based on timing, it's probably a good time to end this particular podcast. We've done how many days it has taken us to do all that? We've just talked because we talked about five weeks since we did the last one. We did that was six days at there, three days of operation. We haven't even hit Tasman Peninsula and South West Cape yet. Yep.
Speaker 2:So tune in for the next podcast, for part two of this part of Tasmania.
Speaker 1:Part two of the Eastern, south, south and East coasts from Lagoon Beach. We'll catch up with you next time.
Speaker 2:Okay, tuning guys.