Its easy to get lost in Tassie.....

We had a great day today! A beautiful day dawned and after breakfast and showers etc we hit the road, but first coffee at the Grocer near here. And the coffee wasn't bad either.
Our plan was to head inland to the two historical towns of Richmond and Oatlands.
There are so many roads - many main arterials and lots of link roads known as junctions. We made the early mistake of getting onto Highway 1 heading in the opposite direction to where we should be heading - on a busy highway in a new car with traffic travelling at over 110 it was a bit confronting.
But we managed to find a special U Turn spot (just for us??) and got going and with the help of Google got to Richmond.
This was a very busy town with lots of tourists - the cafes were buzzing and tour groups everywhere. The town had lots of restored houses from the mid 1800's - mostly stone. And a manificent stone bridge that was built by convicts. We walked the main street and visited the bridge and walked along the river.
We decided we would lunch at Oatlands so headed in, what we thought was the right direction, but soon realised our mistake, so turned back and found the correct turnoff.
The route to Oatlands was some 60 or 70 kms of rural farmland with very few animals. We have realised that Tassie is suffering from a severe drought. Everywhere is dry yellowy grass.
Oatlands was not what I expected - it was a quiet town, no tourists and few cafes. But the buildings were magificent - probably 100's of Georgian style buildings from 1800's. We had lunch at a simple looking cafe, that was quite busy - I had a crepe - with bacon and mushrooms, salad, tomatoes, coleslaw - the crepe was swimming in a sauce. The whole thing was large, but very tasty. Gran had a hamburger which was quite large with the same salad and coleslaw as me. It was 26/28 degrees in town with no wind. We walked the main street and visited a magnificent windmill used to grind grain - I took some photos and then we decided to see if we could navigate our way home - and we did with the help of Google going cross country as we got near to the outskirts of "our area". We thought we'd get a coffee and check out some of the other beaches.
We went to a cool beach - Clifton Beach, a surfing beach and there were swimmers and a surf school for young people that was getting set up - we watched them all run to the far end of the beach and back. The squad had to be 25 or 30 teens and boy did they get some exercise. We watched them paddle a long board out to a buoy about 500 to 600 metres out and back then up the beach around a marker then swim the same distance and back then repeat the about sequence again.
The evening was just lovely - calm and warm. Then we drove out to Opposum Bay. This too was a lovely bay but it was lined with beach houses right to the shoreline. We walk from one end to the other were the beach ran out to rocks and then turned back. Back to our house as the sun was just setting.
Yeah I think we had a great day - tomorrow we plan the first of two days at Port Arthur.
I will post the beach photos on a separate post.Read more