Snug at Gordon

As  I write this, looking eastward at South Bruny Island from a gorgeous little camping reserve at a place called Gordon, at the base of the Cygnet peninsula, I’m thinking of you, Judith and Barry, and your many holidays on Bruny.

We’ll go there on Thursday for at least 3 nights, though getting a booking in the caravan park was like winning the lottery.

Our time in Hobart was glorious, topped off with a wonderful cruise south from that city on Sunday, luxury all the way, starting with glasses of bubbly as we left the harbour and continuing with a meal at the Peppermint Bay Hotel at Woodbridge before returning to Hobart.


An art work in the foreshore grounds of Peppermint
Bay Hotel.

 We met some interesting people (Hello to Omar and Diane) and the commentary was excellent, particularly when we stopped just offshore over a marine reserve, a camera was lowered into the water and we saw the marine life swimming among the kelp and algal life forms. We have booked to do a trip with the same company off Bruny on Friday.

So . . . after leaving the Hobart Airport Tourist Park, and its great city shuttle, which we used every day, we headed south on a fish-hook shaped peninsula opposite Hobart (south of the airport) where tourists rarely venture. It is made up of little communities on darling little beaches, some built right onto the beach, and we stayed the night next to the South Arm RSL Club where we received a warm welcome and one of the locals told us of a great beach walk.

We indulged in that this morning before leaving, climbing up onto a headland which is part of a very old army base called Fort Direction (on Cape Direction). Some cadets were obviously in training there but nobody took any notice of us as we took in a Gallipoli memorial there.

From that little peninsula we drove back through Hobart and headed south through wonderful places such as Snug and Flowerpot . . .  but we avoided a destination called Sandfly.

One diversion was at Margate where we found a train. The loco has not moved in many years but it still has a number of carriages behind it. Each one hosts a shop of some kind, from a bookshop to a barber, and two carriages are taken up by a pancake place.



A culinary work of art . . . raspberry pancake, with cream,
 ice-cream in the centre and two kinds of sauces.

 We thoroughly indulged ourselves, following our aim of eating and drinking our way around Tasmania. The raspberry pancake was a work of art, as you’ll see, surrounded by not only berry sauce but also chocolate sauce!

A little further on we found a cherry farm selling fabulous cherries so of course, once again we indulged.

This little recreation reserve at Gordon has several motorhomes and caravans parked under the trees and some campers have arrived late in the afternoon. We’re right on the foreshore, only metres from the water, watching the marine traffic ranging from fishing tinnies to trawlers, yachts and catamarans. There’s a jetty just along from us, where we walked this afternoon. It also features a memorial to the Frenchman, Bruny D’Entrecasteaux, who named the island, the channel beside it, and lots of other places in southern Tasmania when he visited in 1792.

The beach is all large pebbles, or stones really, and when the tide dropped in the late afternoon, we found quite a few oysters growing on the stones. So with John wielding his trusty oyster knife, they were our hors d’oeuvres, fresh from the channel. By the look of much larger oyster shells lying around, all the really good ones have already been found, but we’ll make up with some Bruny Island oysters once we reach there by ferry on Thursday.