Tasmania: West Coast - Day 12

Rain during night destroyed tarp and pole supporting tent annexe fell where my chair had been left out so I found the seat had collected a puddle of water. Our swag got even wetter, tables and stuff under the big tarp all wet. Martin camp not happy...Took ages to pack up. Waited for patches of sun/no rain and used the car heater to dry out wet sheets, pillows and doona. By around 11.30am we departed and headed south to Queenstown and as the day progressed and rain continued we headed directly to Hobart and a hotel room.

Just east of Queenstown the main road ascends and winds around the hills of Mt Lyell with wonderful views.
Further on, we stopped at a wonderfully peaceful (although popular) rainforest walk at Nelson Falls (raining) which made us all feel a little better.

David and I once again took it in turns to do the walk so one could stay with Charade sleeping in the car. We ended up continuing all the way to Hobart today because of the wet swag situation, although I had originally thought we'd camp along the Mt McCall track near Queenstown. The weather is not letting up and we need to give everything a chance to dry out. We did try to get some accommodation at Lake St Clair/Derwent Bridge area at around 4pm but the $50 backpackers bunks were not to the standard of what we had in Strahan and we really needed a place we could stay for 2 nights and spread out everything to get it dry. We really needed a hotel room with a heater to do this as sunshine was not likely anywhere in Tasmania this month. It was 7pm before we reached Hobart and I was on the CDMA phone most of the way trying to find us some accommodation from about 4pm onwards. Waterfront Lodge in New Town just 5km north of CBD was able to accommodate us and it was very much to our liking. Tasmania's hotels are very understanding of family needs, especially that of campers and 4WDrivers. We were even given a safe place to park our vehicles as they realised we had so much equipment and gear on them that we'd prefer to keep them away from the main carpark (or did they not like the look of the muddy vehicles messing up first impressions for the other guests I wonder???). Thankfully, by 9pm we were in good shape once again with a load of washing and drying done, a beef stroganoff with fresh mushrooms cooked and already settled into an evening of normality in front of the tele! All had a good night sleep, and enjoyed the luxuries of showers and flushing toilets.