Day 8

Woken by freezing toes this morning; my feet can get uncovered in the night, in my too short bed. I pulled back the curtain to see a beautiful clear sky, it was about 7, I knew the sun would rise over George Bay in about 15 minutes. I'm camped about 3 Km from the bay, but to get there meant packing up everything and stowing it away. I had to disconnect the power, water and drainage, and get down to the bay in time for the sunrise. It was never going to happen.

That's the disadvantage of a camper van. If I had a car, I could be gone quickly. If I had my time again, I'd hire a car and rent a cabin each night. There are very few motels in Tasmania, and not so many caravan parks, but there's enough and they all seem to have vacancies.

The same goes for service stations, there are no service centres between towns, and precious few in the towns. I've not seen a Coles or Woolworths since I left Hobart, and there are no fast junk food outlets that we see on the mainland. If you aren't with Telstra, you don't have a mobile phone service either. In many respects Tasmania is like the Outback, only with narrow sealed roads.

I haven't seen a dual carriageways since leaving Hobart, and there are no overtaking lanes, mainly because there is almost no traffic. If it weren't for camper vans and cars towing caravans, the roads would be virtually empty. I've seen one Police car every day since I arrived, but somebody told me they only have one, and they trot it out to fool the tourists.

This morning the lady in Reception suggested I visit St Helen's Point, and in the afternoon take a drive to Eddystone Lighthouse. After checking on Google, I discovered the lighthouse is at the end of a 35 Km dirt road through a forest. My van really doesn't like dirt roads, it shakes and rattles, and everything comes loose. Seventy Kilometres round trip on a dirt road put it out of range. Another disadvantage of a camper van, where a car would have handled it with ease.

So I went to St Helens Point, parked at Burns Bay and took a 40 minute walk along the coast to Beerbarrell Beach (great name for a beach!).

    

At Burns Bay A fisherman's son shows off two of his fathers catches for the morning,
a Tuna and a Gummy Shark.  There were many other fish in his fish box,
but these were the biggest.  Not a bad catch for a morning.

Two shots of Beerbarrel Beach
as with most places in Tasmania, there was nobody there.

Rather than retrace my steps along the coast from Beerbarrel Beach to Burns Bay, I figured a walk along the road would be a shorter option. Blind faith led me back to the car park where I left my van in about 20 minutes.   By then I was exhausted, and it was well past midday. Rather than eat lunch in the Burns Bay car park, I came back to my overnight space in the camping ground.

Once I stopped moving, I decided to stay put. After a week of travelling, I'm tired and it's catching up with me. With well over 200 emails in my Inbox, I made a start on the backlog. I wrote some overdue emails and and about an hour before dusk I returned to the waterfront in the hope of another round of afternoon photos. Even though every sunset is different, I wasn't disappointed.

Another day, another dusk at St Helens.  Is this a regular thing,
or did I fluke two perfect afternoons in a photographer's paradise?

Tomorrow I'll head for the north coast. At this rate I'll never get around Tasmania in a fortnight.