We allowed ourselves the luxury of a small sleep in, once we hit the road (from Swansea) we were on the trail of an elusive old wreck of a boat shed on Kelvedon Beach, actually it turned out it was not as hard as we had at first thought – we were over thinking things (like that has never happened before). Once we finally located the beach (not overly well signposted), it was just a matter of going for a walk. You could see the main road from the beach, but we had not noticed the shed from the direction we had been travelling. We were alone in the world on this peaceful beach made of shells, thousands and millions and possibly billions of seashells, with the sun rising and the waves gently crashing against the shore – no other footprints on the sand than ours. It was a truly humbling and special way to spend the morning. I wonder who was the owner of this boatshed, did they live here alone, where are they now, or have they long since passed? There are not too many hints about the previous owner, but you could feel distant echoes of pulling their boat ashore using the hand-cranked rig, still sitting there, slowly rusting and corroding away. The different types of shells on this beach was astounding as well, so many still completely intact, had they all washed up here? Or were remnants of long forgotten midden heaps from the islands Aboriginals?
Finally, we said goodbye to this wild secluded beach and headed off further along the coast. Our next stop was Spiky Bridge, a rather interesting historic site, why they made the bridge this way we are not entirely sure, to stop birds, animals…surely it would never have stopped a Convict? There are stories from stopping cows falling off the bridge to lazy, vengeful convicts putting the stones that way so they didn’t have to build the stone bridge higher, plus sticking ‘to the man’ (I think I prefer the latter). We then went across the road to Spiky Beach, honestly not that exciting after Kelvedon beach this morning, just another secluded and pretty beach. That sounds harsh but we were to see so many pretty beaches in the next few days, so many I have forgotten the various names, but they all looked the same, sandy beaches, aquamarine water, not much different from one to another.
We decided to head inland and visit some historic townships in the South Midlands area; Ross, Oatlands, Campbell Town amongst a few. In Oatlands, there was an Old Mill, plus many photographic opportunities with historic bridges and buildings. We stopped for a brief lunch and then drove back to the coast. Oatlands took our fancy initially as our housing estate back home is called Oatlands, sadly ours has no real history.
We were hoping to stay at Coles Bay, but alas everything was booked out (not that there is much there accommodation wise), so we continued onto Bicheno. On the way to Bicheno, we stopped at Devil’s Corner Vineyard where they had a fabulous lookout overlooking the valley, bay and of course, vineyards, no we did not try any of the wines…neither of us can really drink wine due to food allergies.
Everything in Bicheno closes at 6pm (even on a Saturday night) and gluten and dairy free dinner was difficult to find, so we headed to the local supermarket and bought stuff for a picnic dinner and some snacks and settled in for a night of Netflix…which turned out to be a joke, as we could not get the Wi-Fi working 😦
| Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7 part 1 | Day 7 Part 2 |
Julie Powell - Photographer & Graphic Artist 
I have a question . . . say a nameless someone planned a trip to Australia but could only visit one other place . . . would you recommend New Zeland or Tasmania?
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Well Tasmania is part if Australia….so trick question?
New Zealand is totally awesome but requires its own trip I feel to do it any real justice. A few days would not cover much
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Not a trick question and I should have explained a little better . . .
In terms of terrain and sightseeing is it worth flying the extra 1,000 miles to New Zeland as opposed to just going to Tasmania?
When I look at just photos, I find Tasmania at par if not more visually interesting than New Zeland.
The easy answer is “do both” but I was interested in local opinions.
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Tough call, i really enjoyed Tassie, but it made me really want to go back to NZ. I adored NZ😁
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Ps….i may be biased but I think NZ is better…especially the South Island
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Beautiful photos, by the way. Not just here but the rest of the series as well.
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Thank you
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Beautiful images!
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