The renovations and decorating are now well under way, and Paul is doing a marvellous job of being chief decorator, cook, cleaner and bottle washer. I’m still out of action and most likely will be for at least another four weeks, although I’m now managing now to do a few more things for myself – like fastening my own bra, and tying my own shoe laces. Im still having weekly visits for X-rays to check its all healing well, and to change the plaster which gets lose as the swelling reduces.

Pauls painted the entrance and will finish painting the two spare rooms today. We’ll pick up some finishing items for them tomorrow, a mirror for the entrance and curtains for the windows. Then its just waiting for the new carpet to arrive. They look really good.

We try and fit a walk in most days which is usually either along the river, or up town to collect groceries. Whilst the idea of returning to the life of a ‘Grey Nomad’ is still very exciting and strongly beckons, having to spend some time here in Deloraine is by no means a hardship. The town is a lovely place to walk around, and to date I’ve yet to see a nicer, prettier or more interesting town.

The street has lovely metal sculptures every couple of lamp posts apart. There must be at least three dozen in total and include guitar playing minstrels, circus troops, Tai-Chi, wood cutters etc. You name it, its probably represented in the sculptures on Deloraine’s main street.

Then theres the multitude of arts and craft shops, and I’m not talking old ladies crotchet and hand knits, although they’re here also. Walking up and down the street there’s so many window displays that successfully beckon one inside for a closer look. One of my favourites is the Alpaca shop which has some lovely items, some crafted here in Deloraine, and some from as far away as Peru. Be warned though, you need more than small change to make a purchase there, a lot more….

Theres lovely rustic hand made wood craft, like these rocking chairs adorning the footpath outside a craft shop.

My favourite window display at the moment though is these three heads.

I love the green one which I think is titled something like ‘Entrancestress of the Forest’. The blue one has a similar name but for the ocean, and the red one is for volcanoes I think. The green one reminds me so much of my friend Toni, and I just know she’d love it.

The gaps between the shops open up to a stunning vista of the surrounding western Tiers.

Even the guest houses are interesting to look at, like this one with its statues of Laural and Hardy on the balcony, and a garden full of statues and memorabilia. Theres even an old push mower powered by by an attached bicycle in one of the gardens.

The cafes and pubs all serve very nice food, and have something special to recommend each and every one of them. I”ll post some photos of a couple soon that are particularly good – one for its wood fired pizzas and balcony overlooking the Western Tiers, and the other for its 50’s memorabilia. My brother Garry will love that one.

Yes, its no hardship at all having to stay a while here in Deloraine.

We’re now well into Autumn in Tassie. The weather’s cooled considerably and our warmer clothes are becoming ‘well worn’. The trees are a delight to see and the countryside is decked out in the most glorious autumn colours with the golden yellow poplar trees dominating the landscape. I had forgotten how beautiful a true autumn can be.

After leaving Mt Field we spent almost a week in Middleton opposite Bruny Island staying with an old friend from Perth, Peta and her husband Ron. Sharing their hospitality and meeting their friends was a pleasure and gave us lots of laughs.

After leaving Peta’s we took a few days to explore a couple of convict built villages towards the middle of the Island, Oatlands and Ross. We free camped at Oatlands next to an old, heritage listed windmill, and next to a children’s playground. The children’s playground had made use of an old hollow tree trunk to build a cubby complete with intricate carvings of Australian animals. I’m not sure if children could appreciate the work involved, but it’s certainly impressive to any visiting adults I’m sure.

Tasmania definitely feels like a totally different country than the rest of Australia, and especially like a different country to Perth. Perth hardly retains any heritage seeming to prefer to knock down houses and re-build rather than to preserve and maintain any building that’s not ‘the latest style’. It’s refreshing to find places such as Ross and Oatlands where most of the houses in the villages having survived since early settlement. Some still have permanent residents, but many are now leased as heritage holiday accommodation, and are much sort after. Because so many houses are so very old in these places, the whole village gets heritage listed. They’re not the Cotswalds by any stretch of the imagination, but they’re certainly heading in a similar direction (just a few more centuries to get there yet though).

After Oatlands we headed for Tarraleah, an old hydro town now converted to an ‘art deco’ resort town. The resort has adopted a Highland theme inclusive of Highland cattle.

Whilst there we visited Lake St Clair, the deepest lake in the southern hemisphere. Beautiful – with so many walking tracks that we feel at least a week is needed there to do justice to them. One day was just a taster.

We took a picnic with us, which a possum insisted on sharing. Advice is to never feed the wild life, but this possum obviously hadn’t read that anywhere, and quite literally wouldn’t be deterred. Not only did he pose for us whilst munching through several of our tomatoes and an apple, but I’m sure his portrait will grace many of Japanese tourists albums on their return home. He created quite a stir sitting quietly on our table and helping himself from our picnic basket. Perhaps his name was Yogi…..smarter than your average possum.

We’re now in Magra again with Marina and Terry and will fly from here to Sydney on Saturday, where we’ll begin our trip to Europe on Monday. So, this will be the last post for some time for ‘the Life of Riley on Wheels’.

We expect to return to take up the story of our caravan travels again sometime in June, so watch this space.

We’ve spent the past few days in the campground at Mt Field National Park before we head to our friends, Peta and Ron in Middleton.

We’ve stayed in many national parks, but this one is undoubtedly better than any we’ve seen by a country mile. We have power and water, there’s a clean amenity block with hot showers, flush toilets and a laundry. There’s tall trees at our rear and a beautiful babbling brook with platypus at our front (about 30 metres away). That’s the camp area. It gets a bit muddy in the rain, but with all that’s on offer here, a little bit of mud is a minor inconvenience.

The day area – wow, wow and more wow!! Theres more barbecues and shelters than I could count. Some of the barbecues are gas, and some are wood. Some are in the open and some are in stone shelters. All have several picnic tables and bench seats near by. But that’s not all, there’s more (and believe me, the ‘more’ is better than ‘steak knives’), inside several of the shelters there’s also built in stone fireplaces with chimneys and there’s loads of chopped wood supplied.

There’s several gorgeous walks in the park. The first day we took a 2 1/2 hour walk which travelled alongside a babbling brook through a rain forest. It was raining for most of the 2 1/2 hours so the ferns looked amazing drooping under the weight of the gentle, consistent rain. We walked past two stunning water falls. There’s so many water falls in Tassie that I fear I’m going to sound like a broken record – they’re all gorgeous and are worthy of mention.

Yesterday, our friends Marina and Terry joined us and we took a drive to Tassie’s famous Lake Pedder and the Gordon Dam. There’s very little there except stunning scenery reminiscent of the Scottish Highlands. We had lunch in the only place there, but I must say they haven’t taken advantage of having no competition. The lunch was delicious and reasonably priced, and we sat overlooking Lake Pedder with it’s stark, granite mountain surrounds.

Many years ago in New Zealand we came across one of those fairy tale red mushrooms which have fairies under them in the stories. (We looked for the fairies at the time, but they either weren’t there, or had hidden themselves well). We’d heard there are the same mushrooms here, so we’ve been searching high and low in the rain forests for them, but we hadn’t found any. Then, eating our lunch yesterday we couldn’t believe our eyes. Out in the open just outside the lodge was a big group of them. Again though, no fairies.

Today, we’re leaving for Peta and Ron’s, but we have put Mt Field National Park at the top of our list for a return visit.Perhaps next time Peta and Ron will join us as I’m sure, like us, they’ll enjoy taking cheese and bread, red wine and candles to one of the huts with the fire places for an evening feast.

We’re getting ready to move to the south of the Island, but before we go, thought we’d better take a look at Stanley which is on the west side of the north coast.

Stanley is a little holiday hamlet located on a small peninsula joined to the Island by a slim thread of land. Atop the peninsula sits a huge rock mass, an extinct volcano, know as ‘the nut’. No-one knows for sure how it came to be known as ‘the nut’, but the general consensus is that the rock mass was originally known as ‘the head’, and the slang term for head – ‘nut’, was adopted. Anyway, ‘the nut’ it is.

We headed towards Stanley on Sunday, and spent the first night in a free site camped near a town called Penguin. The next morning it was pouring down and luckily we hadn’t unhitched so were saved from a complete drenching.

We’ve stayed the last two nights at Rocky Cape Tavern and Caravan Park. At $16 a night for a large site with power, water and the use of the ablutions, and located only a short drive from Stanley, it’s perfect. There’s always complaints about Grey Nomads supposedly wanting places to stay for nothing. Speaking for ourselves this is not the case. We have no objection to paying for facilities that make our lives easier. It’s the jumping pillows and children’s playgrounds and associated high insurance costs that bump fees up, and make camping sites smaller – this we object to. If it’s a choice between a free site, and a place with a jumping pillow and playground at $40+ dollars a night, you’d have to be a mug not to park in the free spot. A reasonable place for a reasonable price is all we ask for…..

Time to stop band-standing and get on to the subject of Stanley. With a population of less than 500 Stanley is a very small place. It’s oldest houses are on the eastern side and in the shadow of ‘the nut’, with a small additional spread of slightly newer houses south of ‘the nut’.  Most of the very old houses are now being used as bed and breakfast accommodation or some other form of holiday accommodation. I imagine the population would easily swell to several thousand during the holiday season, as well as coach loads of tourists popping in for daytime visits. To cater for these tourists theres some lovely little shops in the town, including an excellent providore who supplies really good fruit, sour dough bread amongst other things. Trust us to find any supplier of excellent bread….

Apart from a small street of interesting little shops we did a visit to Highfield Historic Farm (ok – but not up to the standard of similar places in the UK), and we took the chairlift to the top of the nut and walked the 45minute circuit with views in all directions. All very nice, but for us that was virtually Stanley in a nutshell. Warmer weather could have seen us perhaps attempting to get a foot into the water, and I’m sure during a hot spell here the two beautiful beaches below ‘the nut’ would have beckoned. Coming from WA though, I doubt there will be many spells hot enough to get us dipping more than our big toe into any water that’s not in a warm bath tub.

We ventured past Stanley today to some famous Tassie gardens south of Smithton, Allendale Gardens and rainforest. They are beautiful.

They have tea rooms in which they only sell Devonshire teas (or coffee), so, of course, we couldn’t pass a good Devonshire tea by. And I’m pleased we didn’t. Tables set with pretty table clothes, pan flute music in the background, a lovely china pot of tea with dainty tea cups, and lovely light scones served with home made blackberry jam, and whipped cream. Both the Devonshire tea and the ambience were delightful.

Then the walk through the gardens. I don’t know how many acres were there, but it was all tastefully divided into different types of gardens, winding backwards and forwards over bridges across a meandering stream. Their idea in creating the garden was above all to create tranquility. They achieved their desire admirably. Not only were there rose gardens, fern gardens, pretty flower beds and exotic trees everywhere, but they also had dozens of peacocks and peahens everywhere, including white peacocks. Further on from the pretty flower garden rooms a well worn track wound it’s way through rainforest, and a eucalyptus forest.

In amongst the forest walk they had established a cute little ‘fairy garden’. Fairy ornaments aren’t usually something that appeals to me, but hidden in little nooks amongst towering trees and ferns, and moss covered fallen logs, it was very appealing, and something I may include in my own garden one day.

Tomorrow we’ll head back to Launceston for a final catch up with family before heading to the south of the Island to catch up with friends before our trip to the UK. That’s now less than four weeks away, so we’re getting excited.