The Travelling Buncebury's

Covering 21 November to 23 November 2019   across Lighthouse Bay at the southern end of Bruny Island There’s always a hope that the end of a big trip will be special and not fizzle out a bit damp squibby.   Luckily for us the end of this tour was indeed special because we had chosen to finish on Bruny Island, four or five miles off the south east coast of Tasmania and it really was a special place.   To me islands often have a different feel or atmosphere about them that distinguishes them from the mainland.   Tasmania was too big for that but Bruny Island definitely had a relaxed island feel about it.   Airy-fairy nonsense to my non-feely readers no doubt but the feelers will know what I mean. male Splendid Fairy-Wren We had the adventure of an open topped car ferry with thirty or so vehicles across about four miles of gently choppy water and we were there.   Bruny Island is very nearly two islands but there is a narrow isthmus connecting the two p

covering 16 November to 20 November 2019   heading towards Cradle Mountain Our target now is Cradle mountain which lies at the north end of the massive wilderness area so we loop across the top of the island to get there.   It’s all very green and wooded, very rural with small towns occasionally which didn’t immediately offer anything much to slow us down.   Perhaps a more detailed look would have helped but we had a destination in mind.   Cradle Mountain . It was cold hard rain when we got to the impressive and well heated Visitor Centre which was gently steaming inside due to all the damp visitors passing through.   We had to show our Parks Pass to get the free bus passes which would take us along the valley in the morning to where we wanted to have a walk.   Motorhomes are not allowed in at all and cars have to follow one of the buses if they want to.   Our campsite was almost opposite the visitor centre and was set in woodland with a lot of unde

Covering 10 to 16 November 2019   Richmond - now how British does this look ? 3x Wales is almost the size of Tassy (of course) using the standard international unit of area and it has a population of about 500,000 compared to Wales at just over 3 Million.   Just to add to this fact dense first para. I can also tell you that the population density of the USA is eleven times greater than that of Australia.   This country really is an empty place overall.   Heart shaped Tasmania’s capital Hobart lies in the south east corner of the island and a huge swathe of the south and west of the island is wilderness.   Real wilderness, virtually no roads or population and it’s a World Heritage Area. a hard Rain's a gonna fall We were flying from Sydney to Hobart and then due to some type of brainstorm we decided to stay in an airport hotel because we were to pick up our next motorhome at the airport the following morning.   Once we’d arrived we thought that no taxi is goin

covering 7 to 9 November 2019 The Opera House and the business area from the Harbour Bridge I really do like Australia and Australians but one thing I find particularly irritating is the regular Australian adoption in their speech of what I call infantilisations, although I daresay there is an official word for it.   I mean the sort of oral tic beloved of sport commentators who can’t say Giggs or Brown but feel compelled to say Giggsy or Brownie.   Here in Oz the shortening of words often requires some knowledge or context to understand.   Barbie is easy to decipher as Barbeque but how would you work out that relos mean relatives, freo is the town of Fremantle and so on.   I prefer to call a spade a spade rather than a spo.   We even had to ask what ‘pokies’ were which seem to be available in some places but not others.   It turns out they’re slot machines, short for Poker Machines.   We were caught out in the Blue Mountains to the west of Sydney or perhaps it’s Syddo w