Launceston

[Kyle]The next flood tide on the River Tamar was early in the morning, so we left at four o'clock to be sure to make it all of the way into Launceston before it reversed. It had been a clear, cold, calm night until just before we left. Then the air cooled below the dew point and we were suddenly enveloped in fog, with visibility around a tenth of a mile (about 180 meters). For most of the upper Tamar, we saw nothing other than the green, red and white glow of our navigation lights bouncing back to us from the fog. This is when it is so good to have the full suite of equipment on board; radar, chartplotter and foghorn.

{Maryanne: Launceston is pronounced Lon-ses-tin, and affectionately just called "Lonnie". We'd been looking forward to visiting for some time mainly due to a quirk in that my brother and his family live in Launceston in Cornwall, England. Indeed Tasmania's Launceston was named after its Cornwall namesake, it being the birthplace of some influential figure of the time. Back in Cornwall however it is pronounced "Lanson" with emphasis on a long "a". So now you know.}

Our journey up the River Tamar started with fog but cleared by the time we arrived in Launceston.
The birds are White-breasted Sea Eagles

It was an hour or so after sunrise when we finally arrived in Launceston, where the heat of the city prevented the fog from reaching it. The first thing we noticed was that the water was really muddy, like chocolate milk. After we tied up to our dock at the Old Seaport Marina, we noticed signs everywhere that read, FIX THE MUD! Apparently, we weren't the first to notice.

Black swans came begging as we secured Begonia

We had intended to then go for a short, exploratory walk to a chandlery on the other side of the river. We needed a new Australian courtesy flag as our current one has been getting shorter and shorter in all of these big winds. We're down to about half a Union Jack and a bit of blue beneath. The store was huge and had a wide selection of everything except the flag we needed or any of the larger sizes below the giant, in-your-face, WAY bigger than our USA ensign size. Maybe next time.

Surprisingly the store didn't have a flag, but we explored the nearby Tailrace Wetlands as we were most of the way there by then.

Well, since we were already on the other side of the river and kind of next to a park, we decided to have a look at that. Then we decided to go to the far end. Then we decided to see what this gorge everybody is always going on about looks like (Cataract Gorge). At the top, there turns out to be many opportunities to climb to various viewpoints. We couldn't leave without getting the whole set. Then, we decided to make our outing a loop by going back to the city via the hilly Zigzag Trail.

Exploring Cataract Gorge, just a few minutes away from our marina

Friendly Peacocks patrol for scraps, with the chicks!

Wallabies, Pademelon, and even lizards were easy to find

A great walk on a sunny day

A quick explore of the Penny Royal complex on our way by

We were both pretty tired when we arrived back at the waterfront. It was low tide now and the mud was very much in evidence, with mini-landscapes of hills and valleys draining to the water's edge. Most of the boats in our marina were resting on top of it. Begonia was leaning ever so slightly, so our port keel may have been touching. Since salt water tends to precipitate out any particulate matter, more silt is actually carried upstream and deposited than is washed out to sea, which eventually buries the whole waterfront. The only time the cycle is reversed is during big flash-flooding events, where the water actually has a chance to make it all of the way to the Bass Strait before losing its silt.

Low tide in Launceston

I was looking forward to flopping into bed and not even bothering with eating when we got invited to dinner by Russell and Katrina, the owners of the only other catamaran in town (Midnight Blue). They are very nice people and Russell is a former chef and restaurant owner, so the offer was too good to pass up. We had such a good time that I didn't even start feeling my 2am alarm until we were back aboard our own boat just a few hours before the next 2am.

Since we had seen the Cataract Gorge from most directions on foot, we decided to get out the next day and have a look at it from the water, so we set off in the kayak to do so. Once we were home, I gave Begonia the wash-down I had originally intended to do the day before when we got sidetracked. We spent our afternoon in City Park where the main attraction was a group of Japanese Macaque Monkeys

Exploring the Cataract Gorge from the Kayak

City Park Radio Museum and studios

The Japanese Macaques were hard to leave

City Park's more traditional park stuff

When we were done, I was all for calling it a day but someone had heard that the gorge was floodlit at night, so we set off for yet another walk up to the falls so that we could see it. The lighting was much more low-key than the multi-colored spectacle we had imagined. Because of this, it didn't really draw the crowds we had expected. Because of THAT, many of the adorable critters that were either shy or just nocturnal were out and about.

Brush-tailed Possum run rampant after dark

There were lots of wallabies hanging out in the grass just off of the trail. We sat down at one of the tables that overlooks the water to wait for full darkness to arrive, As we did, we heard rustling in the trees. Eventually, an opossum climbed over the rail of the deck and looked very surprised to see us sitting there in the dark.

I must say, Australian opossums are much cuter than their North American counterparts. They look more like big, fluffy raccoons, complete with a bushy tail, like a squirrel. I had to keep reminding myself that it was probably a bad idea to reach out and try to pet them. We saw lots of them on the walk back into the city. Many ran away from us along the footpath's handrails just out of reach until they could escape at the next tree.

Maryanne promised that we would sleep in, at least a little, the next morning. We did okay, but we were soon off to the QV MAG, the nearby museum, to browse through their collections and play with their science exhibits. As a topper, we bought tickets for a show at the planetarium It was really well done and finished with an overview of the highlights of what one could see in that night's sky should it stop being so cloudy.

We returned home via the pub at the James Boag Brewery, which turned out to be good food and beer for the money. We bought a flight of four and were surprised to find that we both liked them all. To walk it off, we crossed the river and had a walk through Riverbend Park in Inveresk.

The park is home to lots of cool playground equipment. Kids today get such cool stuff on which to play. When I was a kid, a rusty slide ending in a sand box full of glass shards was a good time. In my grandfather's day, learning how to sew buttons at the factory for the army uniforms was a fun day out, PLUS you made the family 15¢. Riverbend Park has what is apparently Australia's largest piece of playground equipment. It is four stories tall and looks kind of like a Chinese parade dragon, with rope lattices for getting up and two big slides for getting down.

Well, I had just about had enough of this! I decided that, even if I was a bit over 'playground age', I wasn't going to belatedly miss out on the fun that the kid in me still wanted to have. I emptied my pockets into Maryanne's hands and up I went. She later joined me on some of the more sedate parts of the park, which were all still loads more fun than anything we had as kids.

Kyle couldn't resist the Sky-Walk fun, reported as the largest piece of play equipment in Australia

We were leaving the next day, but not until the tide began to fall again in the afternoon. We used the time to do some provisioning as well as some laundry. We both liked Launceston, but we were eager to get Begonia back into some cleaner water before any permanent stains formed from the mud.