My road trip around Tasmania continued today with a 300-some kilometer trek from Burnie (northwestern corner of the island) to St. Helens (northeastern corner of the island). Today was another day of perfect temperature, though the sky was the color of aluminum for most of the day. Tasmania is being awfully nice to me!
- I started my day in Burnie by nabbing a spinach breakfast pie and a couple beverages at a place called Banjo’s, all of one block away from my hotel. (I think everywhere in Burnie is either one or two blocks away and easily reachable on foot.) I was quite impressed with Banjo’s: large cafe area, good pastries, lots of options, bustling with locals. I learned later today that Banjo’s Bakery Cafe is a chain throughout Australia, which is good to know.
- Speaking of restaurant chains, I’ve been noticing that there are occasional global restaurant chains, but mostly businesses in Tasmania seem to be local joints, which is nice. I’ve only seen one McDonald’s so far. I’ve also spied a Domino’s Pizza and a couple KFCs.
- Also, while visiting Banjo’s, I spilled coffee on myself. Ugh.
- With a belly sated with spinach pie, I started the drive to Burnie in the mid-morning. About 50 km eastward down the coast, I saw place called House of Anvers Chocolate Factory. I decided I wanted to have time in the afternoon to tour around Bay of Fires, so I did not stop.
- Approximately 2 minutes later, I started regretting not stopping at a literal chocolate factory.
- 20 minutes later, I was still regreting not stopping at a literal chocolate factory.
- Another 15 minutes later, I saw a sign for Van Dieman’s Land Creamery, advertising delicious ice cream. I passed it.
- …and then I said, “WHAT AM I DOING?” I made a U-turn and went back to Van Dieman’s Land Creamery. I already had one regret of the day; I wasn’t going to have another.
- Van Dieman’s Land Creamery is a mighty operation! Armed with a spacious, meticulously-designed cafe, they serve up coffee and various foods as well as their signature ice creams, gelatos, and sorbets. Today’s slate of frozen delights included flavors like lavender, whiskey, lemon curd, licorice… so many odd things I wanted to try! The one that especially struck my curiosity was the peppercorn and leatherwood honey ice cream. What could that possibly taste like?!
- Friends. My dear friends. I cannot accurately describe to you what peppercorn and leatherwood honey ice cream tastes like, except that upon first taste, I considered founding a religion upon it. It has more subtle flavor than I expected. It’s not peppery, but lightly floral with a hint of the flavor of black pepper, and after a spoonful you can distantly smell something like a library. This is the 25-year-old single malt Scotch of ice creams.
- I was so blissed out that that I spilled melted ice cream on myself. Ugh.
- Some time after that, I stopped to get some gasoline (excuse me: petrol). The tank of my car was only half-empty, but I didn’t want to get into a long expanse of rural area again without being topped off. Also, I wanted to shop for Australian candy bars. (More on that later in the trip.)
- While stopped, I called each of my parents to thank them for putting up with me for 50 years.
- I was soon back on the road, driving back into the interior of Tasmania. I was soon in landscapes familiar from yesterday: amber grasses, twisted trees, dark hills covering the horizon. The road was just as twisty and turny as yesterday, sometimes alarmingly so. Again, I was thankful to be driving during the day in nice weather.
- At one point along the drive, the road wiggled its way through a mountainous pass. A wall of rock was to my right, and to the left was a sheer drop, where there was one layer of very tall trees right next to the road, and the next very tall trees behind them were only visible from their top branches. The highway was only two lanes (opposing directions), no shoulders, with lanes only barely wider than the rearview mirrors of the white Toyota Yaris ahead of me. Signs alerted drivers of larger vehicles that they had to tune into a special radio band in order to coordinate with traffic going the other way. This is the sort of absolutely beautiful and terrifying driving where one wrong jerk of the wheel would mean death.
- Did I mention that Tasmania has official roadside markers to show where car accidents resulted in injury or death?
- On the plus side, today was the day that my body suddenly decided that driving on the left was the most natural thing in the world. Even the “turn signal is on the right of the wheel” reflex suddenly worked. Not even once today did I accidentally turn on the windshield wipers while looking for the turn signal. The human brain is FASCINATING.
- Continuing on the road, I drove past a [hotel? B&B?] called Bed in a Shed. It did indeed look like it was a shed. There was even an official state road sign pointing to the place.
- While passing through a tiny town called Fingal, I saw a place called Aladdin’s Cave and I was curious enough to stop. It seemed to be something that was intended to be a thrift shop / antique shop, but in reality it was STUFF piled haphazardly floor-to-ceiling in a garage, with only tiny human-width canyons between the STUFF. It was run by a friendly old man in a blue bucket hat, and god help me his Australian accent was so thick I couldn’t understand a word that he said. (Picture in your mind the David Bradley scenes in Hot Fuzz.) I have a working understanding of fifteen languages along with fluent English, and the phonemes he pronounced matched absolutely nothing in my brain. And he really wanted to chat. The best I could do in return was smile, nod, and say generic polite things and hope that I wasn’t being a jerk.
- Finally, my road trip brought me to the eastern coast, and shortly after, to the sleepy little coast town of St. Helens. Tonight’s accommodations, a place called Bayside Hotel, is indeed on the shore of a glassy-calm ocean bay. It is my luck that my second-floor room has a balcony that overlooks this bay and a small, quaint peer.
- After a few minutes in the room, I considered what I wanted to do for the evening. (It was around 6pm.) My initial idea had been to drive further up the coast to the Bay of Fires and wander until sundown, but I decided instead to find some food. Midweek St. Helens seemed to be one of those places where nearly all businesses close by 6pm, and restaurants are done by 9pm. Luckily, there was a bayside seafood restaurant just down the sidewalk from my hotel, so I opted to visit that.
- (Since I’d spilled so much food on my shirt today, I changed to a shirt I wore on Monday so I didn’t feel so shabby in a nice restaurant.)
- The Wharf restaurant was quite good! They seated me in a corner next to open windows overlooking the water, then served me a plate of oysters that made me want to just spend the rest of my vacation eating them.
- The Wharf also serves up a good Moscow mule and exceptional fish & chips. My one lament is that they didn’t have any malt vinegar for the fish & chips. Given Australia’s relationship with Britain, this surprised me — even Americans, who don’t do the malt vinegar thing, know to have malt vinegar available to the occasional fish & chips enthusiast. In fact, the waitress looked confused when I asked if she had malt vinegar. Interesting!
- During the meal, I looked down at my “cleaner” shirt and realized that I’d spilled something on it on Monday. Ugh.
- After the meal, the sun was starting to set, so I took a walk up the shore of the bay and through the main street of St. Helens. Indeed, every business was closed except for a Japanese restaurant and a couple pubs. The place was so quiet you could set a post-apocalypse movie there.
- There were still people by the shore, though. I met a very sweet, shaggy dog named Wally. I saw a couple joggers. I saw a toddler surrounded by about 40 gulls; I suspected they might carry him away like a discarded french fry.
- Finally, I went back to my room to unwind, enjoy the balcony, start on the bottle of wine I’d been toting around, and do some writing. It’s a lovely night!
