6:30am wake-up in a cabin this morning thanks to an early riser asking me if I were awake.

Everyone else was up shortly after that.

After vacating one of the cabins at a Big 4 Caravan Park five minutes from where we arrived in Devenport, we were on the road by 7:50am on our way to Launceston. En-route, it is uncanny how much it seems like we’ve not left Victoria by the landscape surrounding us.

We stopped to get breakfast at an Xpress IGA in Hadspen – a little town that looks a lot like suburban Ballarat,while similarly Launceston reminded my of Geelong; although I don’t think there are any signs in Geelong that say “Don’t want to talk to someone in Melbourne? No Worries, call RACT insurance”. Also here, all the pubs have Boags or Cascade Draught as their mastheads where as in Victoria you’s see VB or Carlton’s draught as theirs.

From Launceston we went on to Cataract Gorge and took a few of the short walks and took in some of the views. The boys probably found the peacocks the most fascinating thing of this trip as they chased them down to grab some pretty amazing photos. We decided against catching the chair lift, opting to walk around the area ourselves.

From Cataract Gorge we decided to continue on east to St Helens, which took us along some seriously windy roads. At St Helends we found a Big 4, but a local came up to our car and told us about some free camping a few kilometers up the road, so here we are, Cosy Corner South in Mt Pearson’s state reserve, with a pit toilet and no showers – but beautiful white sand and clear blue water, a pristine private beach, ten steps from our tent.

I should probably tell you at this point that we have not pre-booked any accommodation (in the way of tent sites, we are traveling with a car and trailer packed with camping gear) for our two weeks here in Tasmania, with the exception of our first night in which we stayed in a cabin because we didn’t know what time we’d arrive in Tasmania and didn’t want the hassle of putting up a tent at night only to pack it up 12 hours later.

DAY TWO REACTIONS;

– Tasmania so far appears to be a big long series of country towns.

– Poor road signage – Dad received a speeding caution for driving 63 in what the officer stated was a 50 zone; take note not even 10 meters up the road was an 80 sign and we had not seen any signs early signifying that the road which appeared to be a highway was in fact 50. Perhaps we missed a single secluded sign?