My lucky stars
8 Apr
So I went to see an astrologist. Once. In December, when I was hoping she could tell me for sure when winter would end in Montana. Seriously, I went to her to make sure my psychic was accurate. Does that make me a flake? Probably, but she was right about my trip to Australia. She accurately predicted the exact dates of the trip and said that it would be perfect and it was.
And, if I didn’t know better, I would say that we were under some very lucky stars because all of our good timing (ferry departures, activity bookings, etc.). It couldn’t have been easier or turned out better. On our final night in Tasmania the stars twinkled and we lucked into the best accomodations of the whole trip for cheap. Tarraleah.
After a day spent exploring Strahan and Tasmania’s Western Coast Wilderness we did some laundry and hit the curvy road back over the mountains before the wildlife lit out. I had booked two nights in Strahan, but the Harbour Views B&B had a bed about as hard and comfortable to sleep on as a round granite rock and we couldn’t stand the thought of another night in pain.
Ocean Beach
Even the vegetation is wild in western Tasmania
So, we headed into central Tasmania without accomodation booked and hoped that we wouldn’t have to sleep in the car. We arrived back at Lake St. Clair National Park at dusk and checked with the park first for a cabin. No luck, except we saw a wild wombat (which was lucky). Then, we went to the one hotel in town. All they had were backpacker accomodations, which were rows of storage-unit looking rooms with no windows and smelly beds. We passed.
But the manager was really kind and called ahead for us to Tarraleah. Lo and behold, they had a cabin for a reasonable price. We’ll take it. Once again managing to miss all of the noctural wildlife (Doug’s good driving) we arrived at Tarraleah after dark and checked into our “cabin” which turned out to be much bigger than our house at home. Tarraleah is a resort community built from historic houses used by workers who were building a hydroelectrical development in the 1920′s and 1930′s.
Tarraleah - the front sitting room of our "cabin"
It was by far the nicest place we stayed while in Tasmania and one of the cheapest. Lucky indeed.
I thought you were back – we are wanting to go out to dinner – Leah and crowd
Actually it is perfectly fine sleeping in the car in Tasmania. It is very safe and sometimes it is even fun.
Yes, the next time we go I think we’ll rent a campervan. It seemed very safe to me. I just didn’t want to wake up with a backache because we had a tiny car for the trip. As you can tell, I’m already scheming about how to get back there.
I hope there’s a next time!
Me, too! Me, too! I wanna go back to Tasmania, too. How about a group trip? But no sleeping in cars for me! I’m too creaky!