Strahan on Tassie's west coast

We fired up the Beast and headed towards Strahan on Tassie’s west coast. Once again we were lucky with the weather as there was a bit of cloud around but no rain.

Of course Cradle Mountain is quite high so we had to go down some pretty steep hills complete with logging trucks but the Beast handled it with no problems.

First stop was the very small town of Tullah for a bite and a coffee. Lucky the weather was good as the coffee shop was the smallest I had ever seen. It was at the front of someone’s house and had enough room for a coffee machine, fridge, a small bench, and 2 people. We sat outside with the alpaca watching us.

Next was the town of Rosebury which was a bit bigger followed by the town of Zeehan - named after one of Abel Tasman’s ships. All of these towns are mainly mining towns with zinc, lead, and silver the main things mined. We went past some big tailing heaps and some mine sites.

Finally we reached our destination, the town of Strahan on the west coast.

This is a really neat little town with a strong convict past. This used to be the place they sent all the really bad convicts from places like Port Arthur. Having driven through the forests around here there was no way of escape overland, this would be a perfect natural prison as Strahan is very isolated.

We spent the day looking around Strahan. There is a nice walk up to Hogarth Falls not far from the middle of town and we drove out to the entrance to Macquarie Harbour, which is the second largest Harbour in the Southern Hemisphere after Port Phillip.

We are booked in for a heritage railway trip tomorrow and a cruise on Macquarie Harbour down to the Gordon River.

To celebrate our 25 year anniversary we had a sensational dinner at one of the better restaurants in town.Read more