Thursday, February 13th ....

We enjoyed our stay in Deloraine but set off for new pastures about ten days ago. Our first destination was Latrobe which put us close to the Spreyton Cider Factory where our Rotary Club was booked in for a tasting. It's a new venture for the company who were not able to export a single apple last year. The extra cost of getting Tasmanian apples to overseas market is ridiculous; it costs something like $3000 to get a container to Melbourne and only another $1000 to get it on to Europe or Asia. We're not a big enough market to attract international container ships here so, if we want to export, we have to offload in Melbourne and send them on from there. Nobody wants to do anything about it because there are plenty of apples available in other states so Tassie misses out again.

The ciders were interesting, five varieties made from different apples. My favourite was called Dark, made from Fuji apples, fermented with hops (like beer). It had the sweetness of the apples overlaid with the bitterness of the hops. Fantastic!

We only stayed two nights at Latrobe. The local Council now charges $10 per night for the 'free' parking. You get nothing for that except the privilege of parking in a paddock and, to compound the disgraceful decision to levy visitors to their town, they get the local Lions Club to collect it. The fee is split three ways: a proportion for administration (pocketed by the Council), another share to Council for on-going maintenance, and a proportion to the Lions Club. The Lions, who are doing all the work, can only spend their share on council-approved projects. And, of course, the Council will only approve projects which benefit the town. Maybe I'm cynical but I think the Council is running a scam.

We then headed down to Railton for no other reason than it was the next town on the highway heading south. We happened to be there on Friday and were delighted to see that the RSL was serving meals that night, and it was also the night of the monthly Country and Western concert. Unbelievable! A great meal and a hoot of a concert. A couple of nights was enough so we headed back to civilisation to charge or phones and do,some washing.