Bye Bye for now, Bertha.

After the tow truck took Bertha, we headed off towards Hobart. It was 5.30 by the time we left the pullout near Queenstown and we were pushing it to get to the accommodation I had booked at Bronte Park in time for dinner. We drove Baby Bertha along the road that the tow truck driver would be taking Big Bertha and Duncan was INCREDIBLY relieved not to be driving it himself. They have crazy roads here!! The towie had to get a heap of truckie mates to close down the main road into Queenstown so he could drive on both sides of the road up the hill to get out. We weren’t there to see that as we were already on our way up and down the eleventy billion other hills to Bronte Park.

When we got to the chalet, we were offered a house for the same rate as we were quoted for a family hotel room. Dunc and I were a bit concerned when the children literally jumped up and down and chanted “A house! A house! A house!” Perhaps uprooting them and moving into a bus has traumatised them somewhat?? We were reassured when they didn’t really like the house at all and wanted to share the room closest to us. They also took one look at the telly and FINALLY realised that they hadn’t watched anything in about 2 weeks. We had been wondering when they might notice a few days earlier. Took them long enough!

We had made it in time for our meal to be cooked fresh and not reheated in the microwave. The manager took one look at Dunc’s Middy's T-Shirt and asked him if he was an electrician. “No” “You don’t work in IT do you?!” “Ummm…weeeeellllll” was the awkward reply from Dunc. End result was free drinks all round while Dunc sorted some Excel files for him. Then they kept coming up with more work and really, Dunc can keep himself in beer for the rest of our trip this way!

We left Bronte Park in the morning and drove back towards Queenstown 30km to see ‘The Wall’. It’s an amazing artwork – 100m of carvings telling the story of Tasmania from the original inhabitants to the miners, the piners, the hydo-scheme workers and the incredible animals. The artist has self funded the whole thing, including the building which houses it. I assumed he had a Govt grant of some sort, but its all his own money. We spent a good hour there, and the children were enthralled the whole time. If you ever get to Tasmania, you should check this out.

From there we headed to the Salmon Ponds on our way to a caravan park in Hobart. We had a delicious lunch and spent another hour or so wandering the grounds and feeding the incredibly fat fish. We walked out along the river and had an amazingly close encounter with a wild platypus. I had just read the sign which said that no one ever sees them, but you can see their burrows, and there it was! Swimming right at our feet. We were positively mesmerised!!

 We arrived at our Hobart caravan park very excited at having seen a real live platypus so close up. Add to that the excitement of Hilly and Pop arriving the next day, and you can imagine how hard it was to get the children to bed that night…