World's end at Boltons Green

We’ve done it! We have driven as far south in Australia as one can, to Recherche Bay which the French explorer Rear-Admiral Bruny D’Entrecasteaux described as ‘a lonely harbour at the world’s end’.



The lifesize sculpture of a 3-month-old southern right
whale, which used to be hunted in Recherche Bay,

 There are several camping areas on the bay and we spent a night at the southernmost, Boltons Green, with just some National Park-serviced pit toilets and one tap supplying rainwater. There were lots of campers, obviously enjoying the fishing in the bay, and even a family of walkers who arrived in the long twilight, great packs on their backs, and we suspect they’d done the 7-day walk along the southern coast.

After that we headed north again and had a wonderful few hours creaking along through the bush on the Ida Bay Railway, just south of Southport. It’s a former tramway that used to take limestone to be loaded on ships for use in making acetylene.

The open carriages can be a bit brisk if the wind is blowing, but the little loco doesn’t get much above walking pace and the driver, a diminutive chap called Tony, was full of information about the people who used to live in that area.


John and Tony, the petrol loco driver for the Ida Bay
 Railway.

 At one stop we saw a little graveyard for the Tyler family.

Mum had died at 55, after having 21 children! The other gravestones are for two of the boys, one had died from TB at 19, and the other, only 10, was cut apart by one of the great saws in the family sawmill in 1885. Legend has it that his mother sewed him together again so he could be buried whole. Tough times, and a strong woman, obviously.

We spent a night in Dover, then drove north again into the Huon Valley, once the home of the Australian apple industry. There are still apple orchards, lots of big old packing sheds right on the road, and an apple museum at Huonville.

This brought back lots of memories for John, who had lived as a boy on an orchard at Amiens, near Stanthorpe.



Some of the apple box labels on show at the Huonville
Apple Museum

 He spotted apple graders like his father had used, and he recalled having to make the timber apple cases after school. As a final reminiscence, he bought a jar of apple jelly, something his mother had often made. She had also dried apples in the sun, and we were interested to learn how Tasmanian growers supplied those in a highly industrial way to the rest of the world, as well as fresh apples.

Because of the bushfires and the closure of the roads on the Tasman Peninsula (leading to Port Arthur) we had almost decided we wouldn’t see it on this trip, but then found we had a couple of days up our sleeve, the roads are now open, and a phone call secured us a place in the Port Arthur caravan park. It’s full of huge trees, has big, private sites, and has been a great place to spend 3 nights.

It’s a 45-minute walk through the bush and along a beach at one stage to the Port Arthur Historic Site, so we did that yesterday . . . dragging our feet a little on the return journey as we’d been walking all day around the old convict settlement.



There's no green grass around the Port Arthur buildings.
As in most of Tasmania, it's dry and brown.

 But it was a glorious sunny day, almost summer we decided, so we thoroughly enjoyed it and I was delighted to see on show in the museum a 1920s guide book that my mother had acquired when she visited there in 1929. I had donated it when we visited in 1995.

Port Arthur had closed as a convict establishment in the 1870s and it was soon afterwards that it became a tourist attraction.

Yesterday it was positively seething with visitors, many of them from overseas.

We’re having a restful day today, ready to move back to Hobart tomorrow for a couple of days, with a highlight being lunch tomorrow with the man who taught John bonsai techniques many years ago. He’s now based at the botanical gardens in Hobart and we hope we can have a good look around there, though rain is forecast.

It’s badly needed, particularly in the burnt-out areas we drove through to reach Port Arthur. It’s a very grim drive indeed, with forests, farmland, and many houses destroyed.

The whole state needs pouring rain for a couple of days so we won’t we concerned if it teems tomorrow.