At home in Bicheno

One of the great things about Bicheno is that it is centrally located in the North east and allows us to explore all the regions attractions. There were lots of good things to see from Darwin, but often one had to drive hundreds of kilometres to see them. Here is Tassie, the distances are very much smaller. So in the past few weeks we have visited the Mathinna falls, the Saint Columba falls, Launceston airport, Evercreech forest reserve, Storeys creek falls, the Launceston airport, the Meetus falls, Lake Leake, Launceston airport, the Lost falls, the Hardings falls and we have climbed Ben Lomond, making it to the cairn on the top of Tasmanias highest mountain whilst on the way to the Launceston airport. One of the highlights was viewing the "White Knights" a stand of white eucalypts at the Evercreech Forest reserve, each one of which is in excess on 90 metres. Tassies climate has allowed us to return to our bush walking regimen, in the NT walking 10 metres left us both drenched in sweat, but today we walked 6-7 kilometres, much of it in 13 degrees at the top of Ben Lomond. Cecile has been snapping away as usual (do digital cameras snap ?) and even managed to catch some shots of me climbing out of a creek into which I had just fallen. Tassie continues to delight, with glorious mountain scenery and wonderful Georgian architecture at every turn, however it must be said that there is the occasional little town or settlement which presents a less attractive picture. We came upon a group of towns to the north west of Hobart which are certainly the poorest that I have ever seen in Australia. Whole villages without a single property which did'nt need a coat of paint, or repair, ( or demolishing) in which the most popular recreation appeared to be a competition to determine who could get the largest collection of broken down cars into their front yard. The East Coast Holiday Camp where we work is, like most hospitality in Tassie extremely seasonal, flat out Christmas to Easter, with about 250 people on site each night, but then dead quiet for the rest of the year - where to next I wonder ?