From mountain retreat to Bay of Fires
Yes! Blue skies. Finally. Which was pleasant for our 350km drive across the top of Tasmania from the Mountain Valley Retreat to St Helens on the east coast. I was again struck by how quickly the landscape changes: from rainforest to fertile but rather yellowing fields and pastures dotted by hundreds of grazing sheep and cows to the west of Launceston.
I've been reading a bit about the rivalry between Tasmania's second town, Launceston, on the north coast and Hobart, the capital, in the south on the eastern coast. I'm going to add my tuppence worth – even if we only spent a few hours in Launceston against three days in Hobart.
Launceston is more immediately picturesque, doubtless helped by the sun whereas poor Hobart was being buffeted by gale force winds during our visit. But Launceston is a two-street town (I refer, of course, only to the city centre) whilst one could get lost in Hobart. Some commentators remark that Launceston has the feel of a small English town: well, they clearly haven't been to one for quite a while for it looks nothing like any English market town I've ever seen. For a start I saw no charity shops, nor manicure salons, nor tatoo parlours on the main streets. That's not to say they don't exist, just that they're not in your face as they tend to be now in many UK high streets. And the architecture is completely different: Far West meets Victoriana.
There are two ways of getting to St Helens from Launceston: one goes south around the Ben Lomond National Park, the other winds across the north. Our instructions were to go south but we missed a turn and ended up on the northern route instead. It turned out to be a happy mistake: just five kilometres longer than the southern route but more time consuming because the road twists and turns through rainforest and lovely green valleys, the greenest we've seen thus far in Tasmania. Jan Smith, our hostess at the French House B&B in St Helens, told us our route is by far the more picturesque of the two.
The French House is so named because the Frenchman who built it in the 1980s modelled it on his parent's house somewhere in France. It stands out because it is one of the rare two-storey houses we've seen in Tasmania where bungalows rule supreme. Jan and John Smith are the third owners. “We didn't originally call it The French House but that's what all the locals kept referring to it as, so we just went with that,” Jan told me. The house is very comfortable and Jan and John provide a very hearty cooked breakfast which kept us going for most of the day.
We were booked to go on the Bay of Fires Eco Tour, a family-run business with dad, David, a former abalone diver, handling the boat, mum dealing with the business end and daughter Alisha hostess and commentator. The Bay of Fires, thus named by British explorer Tobias Furneaux in 1773 because of the large numbers of Aboriginal fires he could spot there from his boat, is a long and shallow bay, fringed by over 50 kilometres of empty white sand beaches. However, about 45 minutes into the cruise where we were hitting uncomfortably choppy seas, David noticed a particular type of sea-bird closer to the shore than usual. “It means the wind's coming up,” he said so turned the boat around and reimbursed every adult A$100 of the A$135 they'd paid for what should have been a three-hour cruise. All was not lost, however, because on the return journey a black browed Albatross settled onto the water just a few metres from the boat, turning this way and that so we could take photos and then spread his huge wings and took off again.
The shortened boat trip gave us time to walk along one of the Bay of Fire beaches, huddled up in our four layers of clothing, and marvel at how alone we were. But walking and admiring the waves crashing onto the red-lichen covered rocks is all there is to do, unless you're into fishing. The sea is never warmer than 17ºC, even now at the height of summer, so this is not a place for lazy swimming. Oh yes, the panels warning that this is a “severe hazard area” because of large waves, shore breaks, uneven water depths, strong currents and rips and nobody on patrol, would also have put me off sticking my toes in the water even if it had been warm enough. It thus annoys me that the local tourism authorities describe it as a “slice of coastal heaven” or that Lonely Planet should name it as “the hottest travel destination in the world”. What makes it pleasant is that there's nobody on it and if everybody and his neighbour shows up it will just be another whitish sand beach with low scrub and farmland behind, a few discreet campsites and some houses. Much over-hyped in my view.
