Thursday, Oct 8th, Deloraine

Greetings!

Tasmania takes much more than a week to see.  Nevertheless, our travel hopes were to see as much of the coast, mountains, and major tourist attractions as possible.  We've visited the area around Hobart, and the coast north of it.  As we head out to the rest, we've chosen to circle the major mountain range in the middle of the island.  The rest of the coast is probably beautiful, but the roads leading to them are  isolated and mostly long arteries.

Today, we followed the trail to the "cute" towns which were founded by sheep ranchers in the early 1800's.  We even drove over a bridge built by ten of them, and supervised by a robber sentenced to death, who became a successful businessman in the town.

The successful sheep ranchers came from England as free men, petitioned the government after a few years here to acquire huge tracts of land, and then contracted convict labor in the 1830's to build the structures.

One family, the Archers, has lived on the Woolmer and Brickendom estates for seven generations. Unlike other tourist destination historic estates, all of the furnishings within are original belonging to the family.  Unfortunately, they wouldn't allow photographs inside, because the tables, chairs, porcelin, and art rivals any great estate we have visited in England.  The buildings, however, are almost 200 years old, and are pretty good for unpaid day laborers.

Here is a link to the photos we took today.
Thursday, Oct 8th, Deloraine