We say goodbye to Nola and Rick at about 9am and after filling up the tank ($1.38 a litre.. I ask you!) we head off up to Cradle Mountain. What a wash out! It is raining so hard and is so miserably cold, we instead forgo the hoped walk and decide to lunch at the Cradle Mountain Château. The food when it comes is just beautiful and we get really large portions though we did have a long wait - 25 minutes before our entrées even reached us.. and it wasn't very busy either.
We leave Cradle Mountain and wind our way up to Sheffield. I want to see 'The Town Of Murals.' I have to say though and I don't say this lightly... I have never felt this cold and miserable. It's freezing!!!! The wind feels like it's blowing straight off a massive chunk of ice and even our clothes and the windows of the car feel like they could shatter if you touched them. The incessant rain has stopped us from walking or even taking any photos so we visit the supermarket and decide to just buzz off to Latrobe instead. What a bummer.
Latrobe is a funky little town. Quite modern mixed with older shops. We find a caravan park to stay the night - Latrobe Mersey River Caravan Park - and then head a few streets away for coffee and warmth at the Axemans Hall of Fame. We wander through the platypus display (sadly no platypus - unless you count the stuffed one.) There were fish though in the water tanks though. Quite strange.
We looked around the Axemen of the Past display - stopping to watch old footage of these men in woodchopping competitions. We head out under cover for a bit to drink our hot drinks and get talking to a Mr Wayne R Appleby, a lovely gent who has been the country music scene for over 50 years. He's toured with some great names - Jean Stafford, Slim Whitman, Charley Pride - and has worked with Wayne Horsburgh, Smoky Dawson, Chad Morgan and Ann Kirkpatrick. He also knew Keith Urban as a child in Nashville and can't believe how big he is now in all over the world. I think he is spun out a little he's now a grown man married to Hollywood royalty and is a dad. Wayne's wife - Jean Stafford - is a Tasmanian who is currently touring the U.S. and is big in the country music scene - especially over there. Wayne gave us his card to look his wife's site. I will do that when I have internet access again. Thanks Wayne.. it was lovely meeting you and was a highlight of the day.
We book into the caravan park and find it's not our day. We are plugged in to the power but there's no electricity coming through. We have lights but no heat. Big eek! We then try to call the hire company and the credit runs out on Chris's phone halfway through the conversation. It's bang on 5pm and we know the workers will be heading home because the work day is almost finished if not already.
A bit of mucking around later, we finally have a working phone and now heat also. It was as simple as changing plugs outside. And here we were checking every damn thing in the van thinking the switch had maybe gone.
It's 5.45 now - so we will try to get some T.V. reception and just kick back for the evening. Nothing else to do. Tomorrow we head to Launceston.
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