This morning we woke to the sound of wind and rain. All night the rain came down. With the wind the air was very chilled but we were warm in the van so all was ok….until we got up. I guess we can not have perfect weather for the entire trip.
Breakfast was chilly as we used the camp kitchen but as I mentioned before, it is roofed over but open sided so we stayed dry but not warm. No complaints actually since the alternative would be to prepare breakfast outside since the van is not set up for cooking inside.
After breakfast we headed over to Cataract Gorge which is an gorge that was created (so it says) by an earthquake 10000 years ago (like who would remember the exact date?). With erosion and time the crack has been opened up into a substantial gorge today. There is a water path that flows down the gorge and during stormy weather it is very violent – as shown in the picture of a flood several years ago.
At other times it can be a small amount of water (comparatively) flowing. Today there is a hydro dam at the top of the gorge which regulates water flow to a degree and provided electricity.
As we parked we decided to prepare for wet weather even though it had stopped raining and since it was only about 5km we did not take our backpack – just coats, hats and umbrella. The low clouds and misty weather made picture taking very difficult and the quality is poor. Each time I took the camera out I had to clean the lens. We walked along the cliff face that was about 300 feet to the bottom on a good path. Then we dropped down to the road level and crossed the King’s Bridge to walk back along the other side of the gorge.
The flowers in the park are really pretty and I decided it was time to get some of the rotos. We completed the circuit by crossing over on the suspension footbridge and having a coffee in the shop overlooking the lawns. An attraction is the chair lift that went from one side of the gorge to the other but we felt the views on foot were equal to the ride and a lot less costly.
From here we travelled back to Hobert along the highway – wide and smooth and not too curvy. (Wide only means it had a foot wide shoulder and lots of ‘overtaking lanes’. We found it very interesting to have a truck in front of us driving with a load of sheep in the back.
At one town we were driving through we noticed a series of wood carvings in a park beside the road. We had to turn around and go back so I could take the pictures. These are entire trees used to carve a series of images. Very impressive.
We had decided that since it was raining again that we definitely needed to find a campsite with an enclosed camp kitchen so we started to look at options. The first one we went to did not have a camp kitchen at all. The receptionist was really nice and phoned another one in the area to see if they had a closed camp kitchen and room for us. We left there and headed on to this place, or so we thought, but found when we arrived it was the wrong campsite and they also could not accommodate us. But with a re-checking of the map we learned we needed to travel a bit further to find the right one and here we are. Very cozy indeed.
Now, we had purchased a phone credit card to use with the pay phones and since it was so cheap I wanted to phone our house and talk to Lewis and the kids while they were visiting our house. It took about an hour to get the system to work properly and I learned a bit about phone cards in Australia. Avoid them if you can. You get the card good for anywhere in Australia but you have to phone the service desk to get the access number for the community you are in so you can use the card. This means that you need to pay 50 cents on the pay phone just to find out what the number is for you to use so you can call using the credit you have on your phone card – which also requires a 50 cent charge on the pay phone. We are looking into SKYPE as an option but will use up the credit we have on the card if we can.
Today is drawing to a close as we relax and enjoy a bit of down time. Tomorrow we sort things out and travel back to Melbourne.
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