Part 3

The wedding didn’t happen in the park as expected, so we missed seeing the bride, the groom and their families, all who flew in to Tassie for mid week wedding!.

We spent a couple of nights in St Helens – at night staying away from the wind and rain, by day having a look around the Bay of Fires, called that because of the red colours of the rocks. Very spectacular with a heap of free camping along the bay – we stuck with the powered caravan site!

The oysters came direct from a farmer on the Bay and were the biggest we have had anywhere, the tray is double the size of ours and the oysters themselves – huge, $23 opened…. We followed that with a seafood pizza on a gluten free base from the caravan park restaurant, the topping met expectations, unfortunately the base also met the usual expectations…

Leaving St Helens we continued south through the seaside towns. Looking for more history we went inland (and up the hills) through St Marys, Campbell Town and ended up at Ross looking at the Female Factory site. Like much of our early history a sad confrontation of how it was back in the day.

The Female Factory – one of 4 female ones in Tas was intended to help get young women (typically mid 20’s) back on the straight and narrow. The process included giving a new intern 6 months of punishment with limited rations, hardish work and very limited time with their children. If they got through that then they were on probation, more food, lighter work and more time with the kids, if they made it through that, then they were “hired” out to local farmers as helpers and kitchen hands. If a woman fell pregnant while on a farm they were returned, have the baby and the punishment starts again including limited time with the kids. Occasionally a farmer would want a wife, so the management would work out what (who) might work and more often than not they would go off to get to get married – now days its a TV show…

After Ross we looked for a campsite, but up in the “high” country the early arvo temp was 7 degrees and windy – back to the coast we went looking for some ….warmth… We stayed Bicheno for the night and following morning walked up to the whalers lookout. The next stops were Freycinet National Park at Coles Bay admiring the 3 large lumps of rock named the Hazards. From there it was another oyster farm stop which ended up as an ice cream stop as well!

We stopped at Swansea for a couple of nights, partly to have a “rest” day, and partly to check out the history of a town which traces its origins back to 1820. The info centre supplied a mud map of the historic sites around town. and unfortunately thats all – no info on what each site was about, either on each site or their mud map. One interesting point is the Morris General Store in a very old building. The General store started in 1829, but since the 1850’s has been owned by the Morris family to now. A walk around the store (still going with bits and pieces) I found the spot where you could buy water containers right next to women’s underwear – it made for an interesting display. A visit to Kate’s Berry farm rounded the attractions – they had gluten free scones!

Til next time!