Set off for Burnie early in the morning, as they had a farmers market on this Saturday. The first thing we noticed was the air was hazy with smoke, and we were told there were fires in the north-west. Apparently they had been started by lightning strikes, and the whole of Tassie was very dry this summer, so they kindled immediately. Took a wrong turn looking for the market (the signage was dreadful), and found ourselves half way up a mountain on a narrow winding...

Well, today is our last day at the resort, so we thought we would take it slowly and relax. We would have to leave early the next morning, so had to have some plans. We had thought of checking out Burnie and Stanley while we were here, but thought they were too far to go and come back in a day, so decided we would head off tomorrow to see Burnie, spend the night, then go on to Stanley the next day. So today we packed our bags and packed the van. We tried to do s...

Today we decided to cover Devonport properly. Of course we had spent a night there at the start, and had a brief look at the town when having dinner with Faye and John, but we hadn't done all the touristy things. So first stop was the Maritime Museum where we found out about the history of Devonport and how it had become the main port for Tasmania. There had been many submerged obstacles in the river inlet, leading to several shipwrecks, until the whole thing wa...

We felt we had covered the towns south of Devonport quite well, so now we decided to head west along the coast. We had seen some of these towns briefly with John, but thought they could do with another more detailed visit. First stop was Penguin again, but there was another town called Ulverstone on the way. So we stopped there, had a quick look, and decided to continue onto Penguin via the scenic coast road. Well, it was certainly scenic, but quite narrow and w...

Today we decided to explore further other little towns in the area. We passed through Latrobe again, and onwards to Railton, the town of topiary. This is a tiny sleepy town of one street, but a wide open street scattered with various creatures carved out of trees. A few years ago the local Rotary club decided to promote topiary in the town, and it took off with a vengeance. On every street corner were trees twisted into interesting shapes. There were elephants, ...