Bicheno to Launceston 04 Feb 2017

After our last night on the east coast of Tasmania, it was time to move on today. We packed our bags into the car and went to say farewell to our hosts, Sandy and Steve, and found Sandy somewhat puzzled. She asked if we'd heard any trouble in the room next door us the night before last as the occupants had just disappeared leaving fishing rods, phone chargers, clothes and a cooler box. They'd paid the bill but abandoned a lot of stuff in their room! We leave her with a mystery!

We refuelled the car and headed north up the Tasman Highway to St Helens. This is a really busy fishing port, apparently the largest in Tasmania. We drove through and headed out towards Binalong Bay, but before we got there saw a sign for Humbug Point reserve. We took the turning and before long it turned into a dirt track! We drove around on dirt roads looking for Grant Point, but when we eventually found it a fallen tree prevented us from going further. Time to navigate through the Eucalyptus forest back to Binalong Bay! 

We continued on the road to the Gardens where the road ran out and went for a walk to a viewpoint looking over the Bay of Fires. The view was fantastic and the colour if the sea was startlingly blue, but the flies were horrendous.  I am aware that we imagine all Australians wear a wide brimmed hat with corks handing down all around, but I surely could have done with one today. The flies get everywhere, especially around your face. In your ears, eyes, nose and mouth, they are persistent too. You can brush them away, but they return immediately. Luckily, they don't bite.

Back in St Helens, we found another quirky cafe, the Quail Street Emporium and Lifebuoy Cafe. This was an antiques shop with a deli/cafe in it. The place was full of 'junk' but the food was excellent. Clearly, it was full of locals too, always a good sign.

From St Helens, the Tasman Highway turns inland and starts to cross ranges of hills that are almost mountainous. After crossing the first range we dropped down into Pyengana which is surrounded by forested hills. The main industry is dairy farming and we found a delightful dairy serving unusual ice cream. I had Leatherwood Honey and Wattle-berry. Both delicious. We also had a cheese tasting of their products presented by a very enthusiastic Argentinian.

Shortly after this, we stopped at St Columba's Falls. I walked down the path through a rather impressive Dicksonia Fern Tree forest. The falls are 90 metres high, reputedly the highest in Tasmania. There were few people around which is amazing as the falls were both spectacular and beautiful.

By now, we realised we still had a couple of hours driving to get to Launceston, so decided to stop sight-seeing and get a move on. The road certainly wasn't boring! It established a pattern of wriggling up a mountain, a brief moment to take a breath, then down the other side to a flatfish plain. It did this several times before we got to Launceston. The road was quite narrow with big drops going over the mountain, then the flat bits were huge fast roads.

Launceston is the second largest City in Tasmania, after Hobart and the third oldest. Important to note, it is not pronounced the same way as our Cornish town, but 'lawn-cess-ton'. Oh well!

We found our hotel, the Commodore Regent easily, it's opposite the City Park. We checked in and established that they had a guest laundry and quickly got that chore out of the way.  By now, it was definitely dinner time and we wandered a couple of hundred metres down to the town centre and went in almost the first place we looked at, Alchemy. It was a pub with pub grub, but both the fish and chips and the salt and pepper squid were excellent as were the two pint of draft Boags.