After puffing up over the Gog Range and whizzing down the other side we thought we had landed in Paradise, but we hadn't... the little settlement of the same name was over another bloody uncycleable hill!


We are in Northern Tasmania, 35 km short of Cradle Mountain in Tiger country, or that's what some of the tourist blurbs have been saying. Of course the chance of seeing one of the long extinct Tasmanian tigers is about as likely as coming across a moa in Fiordland!



No, not the extinct Tasmanian tiger, but a model of a Tasmanian devil outside a wildlife enclosure on the way to Mole Creek.

We've been pedalling for days since we were on the East Coast. We haven't seen any cyclists for a long time, except for the Warm Showers hosts in Launceston and Westbury we stayed with (Warm Thanks to our Warm Showers hosts, Vicky in Launceston and Jen and Pete in Westbury!). Maybe it's the hills, some of which have been quite serious. In fact, we have actually had to push the bikes twice now, once across Launceston, Tasmania's second largest city, more a navigational mistake than anything else, but today while crossing the Gog range from the Meander Valley we had to push the bikes twice.

The landscape from St Helens West has been very similar to East Gippsland in Victoria, rolling hills with gum forest in between farmland. The rivers are all platypus habitat, but we have only glimpsed one shy platypus in a river pond at Scottsdale, but we have seen quite a few echidnas. We've tried to encourage them to waddle into the bush as there is already too much road kill on Tassie roads.



One of many echidnas on the A3. Get away from the road, you silly bugger!

We've now rejoined the tourist circuit, as Cradle Mountain is on the tick list of places for tourists to visit, but between St Helens and here there has just been a smattering of little Aussie towns and villages and very few tourists. Many of these small rural Aussie towns have very good accommodation options, as the rural councils attempt to lure grey nomads to linger and spend their money, to keep the towns from dying. Council run campgrounds are green, free, donation only, or cheap with toilets, water, rubbish bins and space to pitch a tent.



We met up with Tim and Nanette, out on the nomad run from Pt Sorell near Devonport, by a platypus pool at the council run campsite at Scottsdale. Tim and Nanette sailed at the same time as us in the Sail Indonesia rally in 2008 from Darwin to Malaysia. They dropped in to see us in Tutukaka in 2016.

We've been using Warm Showers a bit more, too. For anyone who is depressed and distressed at the way America appears to have slipped into an abyss of late, Warm Showers, an American invention, should warm the cockles of your heart. It's like couchsurfing for those determined not to be couch potatoes, or basic AirBnB for free. It's free accommodation, a space for a tent or a bed, for touring cyclists, provided by touring cyclists. We are theoretically hosts in Tutukaka, courtesy of Saraoni, although Saraoni is now in New Cal. Warm Showers is now all over the world, having expanded from its U.S. base. WarmShowers hosts are all avid cyclists, love to yak about adventures and often share meals and a bottle of booze.



Avid touring cyclist Vicki's backyard vege plot in Launceston was our warm Showers campsite for the night.

We are heading up to Cradle Mountain/Lake St Clair National Park tomorrow, then to the west coast at Strahan on Macquarie Harbour before backtracking to Devonport, mid March.