As on most days, I made the most of a shady spot and a dim camper and slept till about 9.30. Plenty of hot water at this camping ground so I had a long hot shower and washed my hair. Three dollars and four minutes was all it took. Feeling human enough to face the day, I strolled back to the van stopping to talk to a few people along the way.
I followed up on an invitation from last night and had coffee and home made biscuits with Marie who was waiting for her husband Bill to arrive back from climbing a mountain.The clothes I had rinsed out 12 hours ago were now dry so I packed up and set off for Derby, just under 50 km away.
Derby was the site of a very prosperous tin mine in the mid 1800s with thousands of workers, about half Chinese many of whom had come from the goldfields of Victoria. Tin mining requires vast amounts of water which was initially piped long distances through intricate constructions of races and pipes. Eventually a huge dam was built. After exceptionally heavy rain, the dam burst flooding the whole valley and the mine with more than a billion litres of water. An interpretation centre in town gives a great multi-media explanation, well worth a visit.
That was my first stop of the day. After a good look around and enjoying the 15 metre screen experience, I had a coffee and wrote some postcards. After a stroll to the post office, I went back to the cafe for a long lunch, reading my book and also sharing travel stories with a couple of groups of fellow travelers. I think there are more visitors than locals in Tassie and all seem to want to talk. And here in Derby that was particularly noticeable. From its heyday with ten thousand residents, it is a tiny town of no more than 30 buildings with half a dozen shops probably barely making a living.
After a long hard day so far, I found the camping area - once again a free camp. I had a bit of a chat with Sharon and Doug. When they left for a walk through town, I had a little afternoon nap. Refreshed, I followed with a stroll along the river bank, at least a hundred metres each way. A few others had arrived by now and I got some recommendations for the next few camps.
I met one of those intrepid cyclists. Antonina is a Polish Canadian woman in her late 50s doing a three week cycle from Hobart, up the east coast, across to Launceston and back to Hobart. Then she is flying to Alice Springs to do another three weeks around Uluru and The Olgas. Each year she goes somewhere different, Norway, Spain, Japan being recent trips. Some trips are more strenuous than others and she may not have cycled more than about 1000km!! Here in Tassie which I would have thought was fairly mountainous, she was averaging 50km a day. While she pitched her tent, I made a cup of tea for us, figuring that she had her preparations down to a fine art by now.
Sharon called in later and we had a long talk. I hope I catch up with her again. She and Doug have discovered geocache.com which I intend to find out more about. It is like a global online treasure hunt - sounds like a great interest to add to a trip.
A bit of reading, a few rows of knitting and mt exhausting day was at an end. I have been out of Internet range so this blog is already old news but I'll post it anyhow.
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