Tasmania - West

The final part of our Tasmanian adventure was in The West.   We drove to Queenstown one evening so missed the scenery between there and Hobart but had a nice drive dodging wombats and black possums.  We don't have black possums at home so these were a novelty (everything is fun when you are on holiday).  There was an amazing storm in Queesntown that night and I was glad we had checked in to the motel before it hit town as the rain lashed vertically down the street in a white wall.

We had driven to Queenstown so we could go on The Wilderness Railway.  We ended up in the good carriage with the open deck which was a lot of fun.  I enjoyed the champagne as we got there and the children found drinking juice out of a champagne glass to be a great novelty.  We managed to get another rare photo of us all together.

We spent a lot of time on the open air deck as we would through the forest alongside the river.  It is amazing to think that men mined here in such rugged terrain and bad conditions.  In the photo above you can see the rack and pinion set up that the train uses to climb the steep sections of track.  Such clever yet simple technology

I love trains.  I really think I enjoyed this more than the rest of the family.  I spent so much time out on the deck.  On the return journey the engine turned around so our deck was right behind the engine.  You could see the drivers just 1 meter in front of you and the steam was so wet.  I loved this feeling!

The train derailed on the way down home.  We were not going fast which was lucky as the four of us were still out on the observation deck when the engine lurched sideways and our carriage ran into the back of it.  Blue bumped his chin on the guard rail but was not injured.  If anything, this was a highlight; not many people can say they have been so close to the action of a train derailment!

 

We loved this holiday.  We were away from home for 2.5 weeks and enjoyed almost every second.  We were told the roads in Tasmania were not great but we found them to be pretty good.  Our roads at home are equally as bad if not worse so we were used to the driving conditions.  I loved that you could drive from Launceston to Hobart in a few hours and everything seemed so close.  We did not see everything we wanted to, we just ran out of time.  It may be a small state but you need more than 2 weeks to see it.  We managed to drive around and cover the state but we have a list of things we want to do next time.

I can now say I have been to every state in Australia although there are areas I would like to further explore one day.