Tamar Valley Tourists

Low Head Lighthouse

While we were in Tasmania last month we spent a lot of time being, dare I say it, t-t-t-tourists.  We have a slight bias against tourists in this house, because we live in an area where tourists like to visit.  I'm more than happy to share this beautiful corner of the world with visitors, but just please drive at the speed limit and we'll all be happy.  Our roads do not cater for things like overtaking people who don't know where they are going and who are driving at 50kph in an 80kph zone.  I'm sorry...we want to be hospitable, but we need to get on with our day in a timely manner.

While we stayed in Launceston our time was mostly to do with my graduation.  But after that we had a few days of doing some things we had on our list.  One day we travelled up the east side of the Tamar River to the north coast, and then came back down the other side, in a bit of a loop.

We picked strawberries

We visited a dairy

The fruits of these two stops became our lunch

We visited the lighthouse and museum village at Low Head (first picture) and then we crossed the Tamar River and visited some platypuses and echidnas.

This cute little guy and his mates wandered around licking our ankles and snuffling about to see who all the strange visitors were.  We were able to stroke their backs as they waddled past - making sure you stroke in the right direction, of course.  Tasmanian echidnas, we discovered, have more fur than the mainland version.  It seemed to me they were a little bigger as well.  We often have to stop and let an echidna cross the road around here and ours just seem quite a bit smaller.

If you ever find yourself in the beautiful state of Tasmania, make sure you get out and take a leisurely wander about the place.  Your efforts will more than be rewarded.  And as you drive along you'll see plenty of poppy fields.  Apparently the poppy industry is pretty big in Tasmania - something I didn't know til we started seeing so many fields of beautiful white/blue poppies bobbing their heads at us.