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| Hello sunshine!! |
The crew was all smiles after a trouble free 24 hour passage from Deal Island to the sunshine of the town of Lady Barron on Flinders Island. With Manutai fuelled and the crew coffeed up at Alex's store (one of life's characters who confided in us as we pulled up in the rental car for fuelling at his $2.00 litre ..."I'm makin' a bit of a killing on this fuel...I usually make about 10 cents a litre but now am making about 20 cents a litre"). Anyway, we headed off for the day to explore Flinders Island. With a population of about 600 people and located in the middle of Bass Strait, I wasn't sure what to expect from Flinders Island. However, we had our priorities right....at the top of our list was to find a pub we could kick back in and have a leisurely lunch...
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First stop was at Trousers Pt. on the east coast. This is a beautiful bay with fine white sands ringing the clearest smooth aquamarine water. The setting could be anywhere in the tropics - except for the water temperature at 15C. Anyway, driving into Trousers we were speculating on how a bay might be called Trousers!! Well, it didn't take long to find out. As we pulled into the car park of Trousers, before us was a mature rather rotund chap with a shock of long unkempt white hair, pulling his trousers on. Yep..at Trousers Point! He had just come in from a swim in the buff. Averting our eyes, we chatted to him. His name was Stanley Johnson, a Brit travel journalist who was writing a piece for London's The Evening Standard on out-of-the-way-places in Australia you must visit. Stanley has also been an EU representative, author and a range of other personas in his 73 year life time. He is also father to London Mayor Boris Johnson...Boris is a dead ringer for his old man!! We then moved on about 10 kms up the road to the largest settlement on Flinders Island - Whitemark.
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| View of Strzlecki Peak from Whitemark, Flinders Island |
The residents of the rival village of Lady Barron refer unkindly to the residents of Whitemark as "Skidmarks". It's the sort of jocular rivalry that you hear between Sydney and Melbourne residents. Anyway, we headed into Whitemark and had a great lunch at the Interstate Hotel followed by scones, jam and cream at a nearby cafe.
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| Jeremy and Shane scoffing scones, jam and cream |
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| Eh mon..whaddup mofo? |
A lesser known factoid is that Tasmania is the world's largest producer of opium and our drive that afternoon took us past hectares and hectares of ripening poppies. Beeeeeutiful..and none of us are quite sure of what happened to the rest of that afternoon, or the next day or even the day after that????
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| wtf???? |
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| Jeremy rowing out to Manutai at Wineglass Bay Freycinet Peninsula..."eh...come back here..what about us Jeremy?" |
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| Looking out over Wineglass Bay...before some wine!! |
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| Anyone for 500?? |
Cards became a staple source of entertainment for the crew. Specifically 500. Not because any of us were particularly good at 500, rather we had to play something that gave Jeremy and Shane some chance of beating Claudia. For those not aware, in spite of Claudia's non-english immigrant background, she is a complete terror when it comes to the Scrabble board. "Spaz"(triple word score), "wite"(apparently the present past participle of the verb "to wite"???)...and there were others!!! Anyway...the odds with cards were more even with Claudia, than freakin scrabble.
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| Our fishing neighbours in Wineglass Bay |
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| A rather longer Sunday lunch at Coles Bay...500 cards at the forefront!! |
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| Unbelievable hiking. Very strenuous...note Jeremy's Paul Frank backpack in the foreground!! |
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