We got our first taste of Tassie's wild, wild weather when we visited Cradle Mountain a couple of days back, but it seemed our brush with the unpredictable forces that control the Holiday Isle's climactic happenings was far from over...
Are we being tested? I mean, we're already sleeping on a piece of foam as thick as Sunday's newspaper and living in a space the size of a laundry (minus the appliances, of which we must hoard all our dollar coins so we can pay for clean clothes), but hey, throw some wind, rain, hail and what the hell, a night's worth of snow into the mix too please, just to put this two year Tonkin marriage really to the test.
But heading to Stanley, a quaint, coastal town on the state's north-west tip, the skies were blue and the sun was shining, so a mini cyclone was the last thing on our minds. More on that in a moment.
Stanley is a beautiful little place, and it's almost as far as you can go on the north-west tip of Tassie, without hitting the smaller, dirt roads that branch off onto another coastal point where the winds of the roaring 40's rock the beaches. It's no wonder there's a private wind farm out there but maybe the government should chip in and buy a few more turbines - I reckon they could supply half the country's energy from this venture alone. Most tourists head to Stanley to climb the famous 'Nut' - a huge, flat topped fossil that's millions of years old and a hell of a work out on the ol' calf muscles too.
We were tempted to take the chairlift to the top, especially after seeing how steep the walkways to the summit were, but with two full fat latte's and a scrumptious homemade brownie under our belts, we decided the walk was the sensible option. And the view from the top was spectacular. (Can you spot Jefro, way down the bottom in the caravan park?)
But the relaxing, calm day came to an abrupt end, at about 1am that night, when Luke and I woke to gale force winds that made us feel like we were in an empty Coke can, being tossed along a windy beach (What an analogy!). The winds were so strong that we had to pull our pop top roof down and chase our camping chairs half way across the park. We didn't sleep much after our rude awakening and the windy nightmare continued the next day. As we were driving along the freeway, inland, in an attempt to escape the 60km an hour winds, the straps holding the kombi pop top down ripped off. Yikes! Cruising along the freeway with our roof up was not a good thing! A quick road side fix it job (Luke, is there nothing you can't do?) and we are on our way. Let's just say that arriving to our next wind-free campsite was a breath of fresh air. Literally.
Yours in the great outdoors,
Odette
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