North West Coast , TAS.

 We drove through Burnie and discovered it is a bustling little agricultural town, surrounded by gorgeous rolling hills filled with plump cattle. We loved it!!

When we were postcard shopping in Penguin, the kids found a postcard of a flower farm and decided to buy that one even though we had not seen the flower farm. Imagine their excitement when we drove past a flower farm with rows and rows of colour. Zara was on the correct side of the car so was quickly given camera duties - she did well to capture this one.

We headed almost as far North West as we could go and arrived at a tiny town called Marrawah, which had a generous free camp on the beach. We stayed here just one night as the winds were blowing strong. Again beautiful views of hills, Saul and the kids searched for shells on the beach, and Kylie saw a large group of Padamelons visiting the grass at the playground at dusk. We didn't know what they were at the time and thought they were just strange looking wallabies, but we have since learnt about this little Tasmanian macropod. We also had a very curious pair of blue wrens hanging around our camp. The blue boy was very interested in our fake grass mat and the girl was comfortable enough to sit on the step of the van at one stage.

We headed South now planning on driving the Tarkine forest on the Western Explorer road, however we only made it to Arthur River before we saw a sign informing us that the Western Explorer road was closed due to an unsafe bridge. We still enjoyed seeing the Edge of the World at the entrance of the Arthur River, and then had to go on a big back track to Burnie and then take the road south from there around the Tarkine.

As always, the detour took us to some more amazing places. We drove through some Tasmania Devil territory and we weren't holding our breath on seeing one in the middle of the day, but as we were driving one ran out and crossed the road right in front of us. We stopped to try and see him but he was very well camoflaged in the bushes. We stopped at Wynyard for a play and lunch, and found a giant pine tree and the kids enjoyed collecting pine cones with Saul for firewood.

We then drove South and found ourselves at the Hellyer Gorge - what an amazing place. We drove up the hills, and then down into the gorge and there was free camp on the river complete with toilets, tables, bins and a fireplace. The tables were perfect for catching up on some school work.

We had a little orange bellied bird who was obsessed with it's own reflection in the car. Saul tried to scare it away multiple times without any luck. In the end we just had to clean the windscreen in the morning.

The walking track along the river and in the rainforest bush was lovely - Kylie walked it 3 times. It was our first real experience with the temperate weather rainforest, and we are loving the different things to see. It was a popular spot for locals to stop along a long windy road, and we meet some friendly Tassie locals who were willing to share stories with us. The local spiders were a bit too friendly though with this one landing on Kylie.

Saul worked hard to find dry firewood and made a good fire to keep us warm and to cook us dinner - A delicious camp oven stew. 

The next day we ventured back along the coast again, towards Glenville Harbour, which is a tiny the fishing shack village on a wild area of coast. It is ruggard but stunning. The turn off into Glenville from the main road looks like a rough gravel track, but once you get around the bend a little bit it is one of the best sealed country roads we have been on. We think the locals are trying to scare the tourists into staying away by making the road into the village look too rough. Once in town though, there is a free camp just on the edge of town and the road in there is super rocky and we took it very slow. The reviews said 4WD caravans only - our little Wickham Rover did it easy with no damage.

The views here were stunning, and we can understand why the locals might like to keep it a secret. We enjoyed finding lots of sea creatures, with lots of star fish living in the rock pools and dolphins visiting the bay on dusk. It was also home to the biggest mosquitos that we have seen and they must have been clever enough to come through the tiny gaps in the canvas ends of the caravan because at 1am we all woke to mosquitos everywhere in our beds!!