Several people had told us that the best place to see platypus in the wild was by the creek flowing under Union Bridge. Not only did we miss Union Bridge, we were not even aware that we had crossed a stream until we had reached the next big river. So much for our eagle eyes. Platypus will have to wait!

We passed through countryside dotted with names of localities like Paradise and arrived in Sheffield, a small town which back in the 80s painted a mural to attract tourists. Now the town is full of them, some pretty good and some rather, ahem, interesting. But still, not a bad place to stop, pat an alpaca being led through the main street and have some scones, jam and cream for morning tea, the likes of which were so large that we ate nothing more till dinner.

The narrow winding roads soon had us losing any sense of direction and we were soon heading in completely the wrong direction - was it the locality called Nowhere Else that had us confused? Lake Barrington was a short diversion but more diverting were the letterboxes that lined the road: there was every imaginable strange construction made from motors, car engines, corrugated iron, mosaics and all sorts of bits and pieces and junk. For some reason the map called this the Letterbox Way.

We hit the coast west of Devonport at Ulverstone, an ordinary little town but useful to us with its grocery stores to stock up. Penguin was a must-stop, not only because it has … yes … a Big Penguin. Well, biggish anyway, taller than both of us - a Moderately Big Penguin.

We stopped for the night on a small headland west of the town called Sulphur Point. This was a Council sanctioned RV campsite - no facilities, but available and free. About 6 other motorhomes or caravans camped for the night as well. The little rocky point next to the site was criss-crossed with penguin trails leading from the beach to their nests under thick scrub. I thought I could hear the faint noises of chicks coming from the bushes so we determined to watch the parade as they came ashore after dark. We rugged up and joined just one other couple sitting on a log on the sand watching the sea for dark, bobbing heads. The others gave up and we stayed on another hour or so. With the full moon and the low tide we reasoned we were out of luck, despite this being the season for the adults to come ashore to feed chicks. We spied a single penguin then a pair in the rocks, but we thought that they had to be nearly grown chicks and not returning from the sea for the night. With a cold wind blowing we also eventually gave up.