Thursday, June 27th ....

We made a trip this week to Smithton which is in the north-west of Tasmania, about 265 Km from Dilston.  The drive there is an absolute delight with great views of Bass Strait and the red soil of this farming area.  We took the chance to check out some potential camping sites for a trip to this part of this world during the next summer.

It’s a pretty under-populated area but we stumbled across the Rocky Cape Tavern which seems to be a meeting place for the local farmers and people visiting the nearby National Park.  We had a really good meal there and were impressed to find a ‘free’ camping site just behind the pub.  Caravans can stay there for nothing but, if you want some extras, you can get power for $10 per night and a shower for $3.  And, with a good eating place on-hand, it’s attractive.

We made a short detour into Stanley which we last visited about 30 years ago.  What a change in that time.  It is now one of the prettiest little towns we’ve ever seen.  It started life as a fishing village and that heritage has been kept.  The old buildings have been preserved although some have been re-designated; two old banks in the main street are now private homes.  The centre of the town, of course, is the Nut, a monolith which shelters the little village at its foot.  We’ll certainly spend some time here when the weather improves.

On the way home, we listened to a podcast of Richard Fiedler interviewing a fellow called Les Hall.  He turned out to be an authority on bats and has just written a book about them.  He had one of those boring academic voices and started his answers with phrase like, ‘Well, that’s quite interesting ...’  what he said was interesting enough, but served up in a monotone.  Richard tried to coax him along by focusing on the idea of bat poo which had the potential to be more interesting than the dry details of how bats’ echo-location works.

Les was describing his exploration of the caves under the Nulllarbor and mentioned that the bat guano was up to 30m deep.  Richard jumped on this and asked, ‘Don’t you find it horrible to be scrabbling around in metres of bat poo?’

‘Oh, no,’ said Les, ‘When you get the whiff of bat dung in your nostrils, you know you might be on to something.  It can really turn you on.’  Mmmm!