Day 20 – Stanley to Launceston

A warm morning, and the sun is out.  While we’ve got about 3hrs of driving, we don’t need to arrive in Launceston till late, so while we don’t want to waste time, we’re not in an all fire hurry to leave.  It’s a beautiful clear warm morning.

In our site, we’re hard up against the bushes on our left hand side, and we need to leave that way.  So it’s a careful exit not to take out some shrubbery.

Back to the main east west highway and we drive back passing Wynyard and Sumerset.  We drive the outskirts of Burnie.  While I have this idea of it being this dirty industrial town, I guess a bit like Newcastle or Wollongong, it’s long cleaned up its act.  Sure, it’s still an industrial town at heart but maybe not the cess pool we recall.

This northern road is probably one of the best we’ve been on, after Burnie, we bypass Penguin and then Ulverstone.   Here we head inland to go through Sheffield.  After 15min or so, I’m not sure this is the smartest route as the road is horrible, narrow, windy and hilly, is there anything after a trifecta?

Through this farmland and all these right angle turns, after I can’t think it will get any worse, it does.

After about an hour and half we arrive in Sheffield, while not huge, it certainly is showing more life than most towns we’ve been through.  We park on the street at the far end of town and do a walk up and down the main street.  We visit a few gift shops, but it’s all a bit “cheap”.  We end up in the local Bakery Café, and while it claims to be local, it’s business model seem not that much different than a Muffin Break.

We continue on the 30 odd mins to Deloraine.  A much bigger town than we expected, and in hindsight, it would have been a better lunch option.   We’re here as platypus apparently line the creeks (insert some sarcastic wisdom).  It’s on the river near the caravan park, a park that looks so good, I would like to stay here some time.  We finally find the path to the viewing area, but any platypus’ have got the memo to stay well clear of the Speer’s.  It’s really just the wrong time of the day.  So, after maybe 30mins or so we call it a day. 

Onto Launceston, into the van park.  As we pull in the kids see the jumping pillow. I don’t think we’ve been in a park with one in Tas, so they’re over before we’ve even checked in.  There are some other kids there, so we don’t seem them again for about an hour and a half.   This van park is right by the highway, so there is a fair bit of road noice.

We start to pack up.  The last day of any trip is always odd, a little bittersweet.  Today is just double odd.  We’ve been kinda driving home, but not home.   Tomorrow is the end of the trip, but not the end of the journey.  That and it might be 3 or 4 days before I eventually get home and see them all again.