Tuesday, March 22nd …..

Whoever talked about the camaraderie of the road didn’t know what he was talking about. It’s every man for himself out there!
On Sunday evening, after a very enjoyable day, I put on the generator for Marilyn to cook dinner and to put a bit of charge in the battery. About 8.15, I went outside to refill the kettle when a man from a camper parked about 50m away, stormed across in his pyjamas.
‘How long is the generator going to be on?’ he said.
‘ Why?’ I replied
‘Well, it’s too bloody noisy and we can’t sleep,’ was the reply.
I had deliberately bought the quietest machine on the market, it was parked at our back wheel under the awning because it looked like rain, and it wasn’t disturbing us, but clearly this gentleman and his partner had particularly sensitive ears, and what were they doing in bed at 8.15 in the evening?
I’ve realized that it’s all part of the great divide in caravanning between the generator enthusiasts and those who would ban them totally. There is an unwritten law that it’s OK to run your generator up until 10 o’clock at night but for the zealot that’s much too late.
No doubt this will happen again and again and we’ll just have to become immune to it.
Last night, in the caravan park at Bothwell, we were just settling down to a quiet night of watching TV when there was a peremptory knock at the door. There stood a little gnome of a man, bald head and grey beard, telling us to turn our TV down. What? We’re hardly head-bangers, playing heavy metal too loud. He was camping the width of a tennis court away and behind a hedge. What ever happened to live and let live?
I think it’s interesting that the first fellow was camping in a whizz-bang which are universally hated by every serious caravanner. A whizz-bang is a little camper with a sliding side-door which makes the noise whizz-bang when you shut it. If you have one camped beside you, you will be driven mad by the constant opening and closing of that side door. But, do we complain? Well, not face-to-face anyway.
The second fellow was in a camper with a fold-out tent and I suspect was a purist for simple camping – no radio, no TV, no need for electricity. Well, he’s welcome to his simple ways; our way of camping is a little bit fancy and we won’t be put off by zealots trying to tell us what to do.
As you will have noted, yesterday we moved to Bothwell in Tasmania’s midlands. It’s another town of convict-built sandstone buildings, dating back to the 1830’s. The town also has the oldest golf course in the Southern Hemisphere with the first balls being teed off in 1839. A local farmer, Alexander Reid, imported several wooden clubs and feather-stuffed balls from Scotland. There is a nice little golf museum in the town which highlights this little bit of history.
When we had set up the ‘van, we drove up to Waddamana, an old Hydro town which has been used as an Outdoor Education Centre since the early 1970’s. Marilyn and I took our first group here in 1975. At the time, we all stayed in the old guesthouse which was managed by Bill and Fran Middleton. Bill was a real bush carpenter and made furniture out of left over bits of wood. We still have a wine cabinet and tea trolley he made. Fran was the cook but when our groups were there, Marilyn would give her the week off and take over her duties. This ensured the dog would be kept out of the kitchen and there would be no danger of cigarette ash in the soup.
Later on, Friends School leased three cottages and began to get serious about Outdoor Ed. in this setting. The cottages are still there but I suspect the lease has long since lapsed. We had some wonderful weeks here, our last one being 1986, just before we moved to Townsville. The visit yesterday brought back very happy memories.
Waddamana was the first serious hydro-electric station in Tasmania with the first generators coming on line in 1916. The history of the development of hydro-electricity in Tasmania is a remarkable one. The country is demanding and the climate harsh. Workers in the early days lived in tents and worked on hard physical tasks no matter what the weather. Horses provided most of the heavy pulling power and motor vehicles were few and far between.
At Waddamana, the first water was brought 1000ft down the mountain through wooden pipes, reinforced by steel bands. Although these had to be replaced very soon by steel, as they couldn’t withstand the pressures of the long drop, wooden pipes (made of King Billy pine) continued to be used on other schemes until the 1950s. Some of the last wooden pipeline at the Lake Margaret station was retrieved last year and has been preserved in various ways.
After World War II, workers were recruited from Europe and stories are told about 150 Polish soldiers who worked on a number of projects. There is a Polish Club in both Hobart and Launceston which date back to this time. Power is no longer generated at Waddamana and the original 1932 power station has been turned in to a museum. I liked this example of a non-PC poster from the 1950s.