Left the lovely town of Launceston for our next destination in the North West corner of Tasmania, Stanley. Again, we chose the longer, more picturesque route which involved more windy roads through national parks with lookout points over the mountains. However, the weather started changing, the rain came, the wind came, so this stopped us from getting out the car every 10 minutes along the way for taking pictures of what would have been stunning scenery.

We made a brief stop in the riverside town called Deloraine and had a walk along the historic main street to see all 32 of the small sculptures created by local artists (much to Dan's delight), and its Georgian and Victorian Buildings. Deloraine also has a lovely church, St Mark's Church of England and the bridge over the Meander river.

The area around Stanley is also known as the "edge of the world" and apparently has some of the world's cleanest air. Our view coming in to town should have been "the Nut", a landform which is a solidified lava lake of an extinct volcano. However, the weather was now really dismal, windy, wet and cold, so we couldn't see anything and stayed put in our motel room for the remainder of the afternoon. We ventured out to dinner at the local hotel and had an early night.

The next day was dry, albeit still windy with a chill in the air. After breakfast we did the very steep, almost vertical, walk to the top of The Nut. There was an old-fashioned 2-seater chairlift, but we needed the exercise. Spectacular 360-degree views from the top of the Bass Straits either side of the peninsular and the countryside. There was a 2km circuit walk along the top which we started. Someone alerted us to snakes but we continued - until Dan saw said snake and Heather immediately turned around and headed back.

We explored the wild beaches with the waves crashing in, walked around the town admiring the beautiful, perfectly preserved colonial buildings. In fact, parts of the movie The Light Between Oceans was filmed here. After a fish & chip dinner we drove down to Gordon Beach where there was a boardwalk along the rocks so that we could view the Fairy Penguins - the world's smallest penguin. They spend all day in the ocean feeding and return under the cover of darkness and make a dash up the beach to their burrows. We had to keep completely silent and only use a red light so as not to scare them. Unfortunately, it was not possible to take a photo as too dark, but it was great to see these tiny creatures coming home for the night.