Our guide Aaron, was very eco-conscious and had obviously had to deal with his fair share of dumb questions and behaviour from visitors. He handed around some chunks of limestone of various types, stalacmites, flowstone, cauliflower formation so that everyone could feel them and thus not be so tempted to touch once inside the cave. The other more amusing way he detered people from touching was to remind them that the cave was very dark and hosted six known species of cave spiders and and an unknown number yet to be identified and named.
We saw cave crickets, a cave spider and of course, what I've been waiting for for seventeen year, the glow worms. When Aaron turned out all the lights, I heard a soft "Wow" leave Mr Smart's lips. They were breathtakingly beautiful, tiny green stars on a black sky, myriad constellations in ever changing patterns. There was no photography of the glow worm chamber allowed. Even without flash, the tiny infrared burst the cameras use to adjust focus is enough to annoy the glow worms.
At any rate, Aaron assures us that the only way to get a decent picture of them is by a 40 minute exposure on a tripod. He knows this because that's exactly what they have to do to track the success of the colony. They photograph and then manually count the number of glow worms in the picture! I could not imagine doing that, there were thousands of them up there. Mr Smart took the best cave photo of the day shown below:
After our tour we headed back along Fern Glade, picked up a souvenir magnet and headed off toward Beaconsfield. We'd not gone very far when we stopped on the road to allow this little guy to cross. They walk quite quick but Mr Smart managed to grab a camera and hop out and grab a couple of snaps. The echidna of course, was completely unperterbed by this. The truck that came up the road a minute later however, was a little upset with me for blocking the road.By the time we hit the turn off for Beaconsfield it was lunchtime so we made a pitstop in Westbury. It certainly wasn't a memorable meal and for what it was service took forever. Though as Mr Smart reminded me, it was a $10 pub counter meal and it was at it's value for money mark quality-wise. It was certainly edible and managed to fill the hole.
It was back on the road to Beaconsfield to visit the Beaconsfield Mine & Heritage Centre. It was an interesting historical site. The old mine ruins right alongside the current mine where Brant Webb and Todd Russell were trapped for two weeks following the collapse on Anzac Day 2006. There was a whole large room dedicated to that collapse and the subsequent rescue of the two men and it's community knock-on effects. Other rooms contained equipment from the past and Mr Smart and I both had fun ringing one another on old-timey telephones.
My favourite parts of the Heritage Centre were the old mine ruins. I always enjoy the juxtaposition of the idle machinery and decrepit buildings against the overtaking greenery. The water wheel however, was still working. You could press a button and water was pumped in to it to power a large stamp press. Apparently it can generate 15 horse power. It was a rather impressive and noisy sight.
By the time we finished at Beaconsfield it was almost 4pm so we decided to head for Launceston, our next sleeping spot. On the way we stopped at Brady's Lookout and we got a number of fantastic views of the Tamar River. We also found out next native fauna for the day. Mr Smart stumbled upon four skinks sunning themselves in a quiet spot. Three of them scattered on seeing us, but the last one, the bravest I suppose, waited until I was really quite close before he scarpered.
We reached Launceston and found our hotel, Auldington without much trouble, despite the abundance of one-way streets in the city centre. We had picked up a brochure for a place called Jailhouse Grill at one of the other touristy spots and the desk clerk had it on his list of places to reccommend so we decided to go there for dinner. We even scored a 10% off coupon from the desk clerk. This is the view from our 'City View Room' on the second floor of the hotel. It's not a perfect stitch but you get the idea.
We got ourselves settled in our room then walked the two or three blocks to dinner. We scoped out the menu displayed in front of the building and found some intriguing choices so we agreed this was a place to be tried. Mr Smart ordered the pork ribs, despite warnings on the menu that they can be a little too salty for some people to handle. Turns out that salty wasn't really the problem. They were the toughest ribs ever. You had to tear and gnaw the flesh off them like some sort of caveman.
We mentioned the toughness to the waitress and at the end of the meal when we went up to pay the manager not only honoured our 10% off coupon, he also gave an additional 10% off for the poor quality ribs, admitting that they were in the middle of sourcing a new supplier. That is all very well and good I thought, but if you know something you have is poor quality then just tell people you are out of it. Don't go hurting your own reputation by serving up sub-standard food.
On our walk back to the hotel, we stopped by the bottle shop and grabbed a bottle of Moscato. After we shared a glass of wine, I started processing photos and here I have sat for far to long with Mr Smart now peacefully dozing beside me. Not sure how he can sleep through the tappity-tap of the keyboard but he seems to manage very well.
Today's food was:
- Breakfast was a glass of orange juice and a cup of tea with one sugar, a bowl of homemade granola with plain greek yoghurt and homemade fruit compote (an apricot and a slice of pear) followed by grilled mushrooms on toasted and buttered homemade seeded wholemeal bread. It was definitely the highlight meal of the trip so far. Every bit of it was scrumptious.
- Morning snack was half a dried peach, two Brazit nuts, four almonds, two hazelnuts and two pecan nut halves.
- Lunch was a pub counter meal lunch special in Westbury, $10 chicken parmy with veggies. The chicken parma, for what was paid, was reasonable and tasty. The veggies were a little weird, I suspect cooked up with some sweet chilli sauce or something. There were not a great deal of lunch options evident in Westbury and I probably wouldn't try eating there again. It was just unfortunate that we were still a bit far away from Beaconsfield as there were a great deal more options there.
- Dinner was a 330ml Bulmer's Apple Cider with a salad bar plate, half a bacon and scallop skewer (not pictured because we ate it immediately) and then duck with roast potatoes. I also had a couple of Mr Smart's pork ribs and he had some of my duck.
- Dessert was half a glass of Moscato.
It was a pretty full on day and I think Mr Smart and I are both wishing we had longer to spend in each place. There are definitely some places we've missed completely and some we'd have liked to spend more time in. I am trying to think of it as an overview, we can always come back another time once the coffers have sufficiently recovered.
Jess
No comments:
Post a Comment