A Seat Through The Seasons

We woke up to a freezing cold morning, our breaths fogging the air as we packed up our camp. We had no particular destination in mind as we set off east this morning with only a final goal of reaching the east coast by nightfall. Our chosen route took us through the city of Launceston, Tasmania's second biggest city. We had read in our guidebook that there was a nice park on the edge of the city so we headed there to check it out.

We were pleasantly surprised by how great the park was, it was a lovely mix of tamed park and natural wilderness. The park was built by the Victorians and contains some of their typical period features like a bandstand, imported English oaks trees and sloping lawns but was built around a natural gorge which still takes up a vast area of the park. There was also a large variety of wildlife quite at odds with the English looking park such as peacocks, wallabies and kookaburras. The park also had a number of unique treasures such as hosting a fairy dell and the worlds longest single span chairlift.

As it was the world longest single span chairlift and we didn't fancy climbing the hill after our walk yesterday we decided to take the chairlift. The chairlift gave fantastic views across the park, up the gorge and it even took you right through tunnels of autumn leaves. We were sad when the lift ended but we're delighted to get off and be faced with a group of grazing wallabies. The wallabies were shy so we didn't pester them, instead we headed up to a viewpoint which gave great views of the gorge. On our way back down we stopped at a cafe for some lunch which had a group of peacocks all sitting in a tree in the middle of the outdoor cafe. It was a very bizarre sight. After lunch we crossed back through the park, crossing over the gorge on the white suspension bridge which swayed and bounced as you walked and headed back to the car. We continued east and found a room for the night at a hotel which had heating, hot showers and hot food which we were grateful of.