Trains, boats, museums and rain 09 Feb 2017

What I omitted to say yesterday was that the wind was strong, very strong. The west coast gets the full blast of the 'roaring forties' a wind named for the strength of wind at a latitude of 40degrees south. Out on the coast at Ocean beach last night, it was quite difficult to stand still in it. We'd driven down a gravel road to the 40km long beach in the hope of seeing Short-tailed Shearwaters returning to their burrows at dusk. It's also a good place to see the sunset over the ocean. Looking out to sea, its difficult to imagine the next coast you'd reach going west would be somewhere in South America.

The sunset wasn't so good due to the heavy cloud advancing toward the coast, but we did see hundreds of Shearwaters over the beach. It wasn't dark enough for them to land whilst we were there.

Earlier, we had eaten at a take-away fish restaurant but had opted to use their dining room. This proved to be a great idea. For the princely sum of A$1 or about 60 pence, we had the use of a table and chairs and had our food served on a plate. We had to lay the table with the supplied cutlery, napkins, glasses and condiments, but paid the take-away price for food. It was also 'Bring-Your-Own' for drinks, so I went to the bottle store next door and bought a few cold beers! Another excellent fish dinner.

We heard the rain lashing down overnight and awoke to grey, overcast, rainy skies, but after breakfast at the lodge, it eased off a bit and we went to visit a wood workshop in town. They make some wonderful things there, some of it turned and others furniture pieces or wall ornaments. The smell of the timber was wonderful.

Seeing as the rain had eased, we decided to go back to Zeehan potentially to look at a heritage museum that was recommended to us. The town, formerly the third largest town in Tasmania, is a shadow of its former self. It was booming whilst mining was king around here. Nowadays, half of the centre of town has became a large, catch-all museum. We considered visiting, but decided that at A$25 a head, it was more than we wanted to spend!

Perhaps we are getting stingy in our old age, or more likely, the fact that the Australian Dollar is rather strong against sterling, but we find 'attractions' here rather expensive. The top trip here in Strahan is a Gordon River cruise into the wilderness. It looks quite good and a buffet lunch is served during the 5 hour trip, but at a minimum of £75 per head, it seems steep to us. Similarly, the vintage steam journey between Strahan and Queenstown at similar if not even more expensive prices puts us off.

After leaving Zeehan, we headed down the Murchison Highway to Queenstown, another mining settlement. We got the feeling that the town was very much a locals town with a small area around the steam train terminus the abode of tourists. To be honest, we were in search of free internet and struck lucky by parking outside the Commonwealth Bank and got got connected whilst sitting in the car! Lynn wanted to found out how Lesley's funeral had gone yesterday. As well as these things go apparently.

We had a cup of coffee and then headed out of town to see if we could get our own taste of the beautiful wilderness that surrounds Queenstown. We could see there was a minor road to a Lake Burberry out in the Engineer Range of hills. After a very pot-holed start, the road turned into a beautiful drive through rainforest up onto Mount Juke. The road made it up to 925metres before plunging back down to the lake. We suffered with varying g cloud and mist, but saw gorgeous views from one lookout just beyond the summit looking north over the lake.

Lunch today, anticipating another fish extravaganza this evening, was just a banana and a cereal bar. As I said earlier, last of the big spenders, that's us!