A day off the bikes in Snug

All of us slept till late this morning - 0900, which when you consider that we’re usually up and about by 0700 at the latest, is a bit of a sleep in. But it was pouring down again, so it didn’t matter as we had already decided that if the weather was pants, we would do the laundry, tinker with the bikes and generally have a day in the dry.

And pants it was, bright sunshine interspersed with black clouds and downpours. No wonder they have such green grass down here.

So after chucking the dirty washing in the machine, Nadine and I spent an hour or so looking at routes for when we’re back on the mainland, scoping out dirt roads instead of main highways that we could take between places, and finding stockists of suitable front tyres. We don’t need to replace them quite yet, but we will when we start to move west after Christmas, particularly if we follow our gravel road plan. We could ride Australia along the main roads but as this is one place where unsealed routes are everywhere, we have a prime opportunity to use them. Riding from town to town on tarmac is not really what we want to do, anymore than planning each night or knowing where we’re going to sleep.  It sort of kills the wandering aspect of a trip like this.

Gordon did a bit of tinkering with his bike, ringing the  spokes, all of which were fine, before cleaning and lubing all of the chains. We need to buy some oil tomorrow and then do three changes, but its not urgent.

The rack mod on my bike works well; I just unbolt it when we stop for any length of time and leave the leg scything and car denting bottoms at home. Easy, and I don’t really understand why the racks were built as they were in the first place.

Just up the street from where we are staying is a sign to ‘67 Black Tuesday’. Its a proper street sign thing, but neither google nor wiki knew anything about it. 

But then in a break between rainstorms, we took a walk along the beach and stumbled across what it is all about.

It relates to a day in February 1967 and the worst bush fires ever in Tasmania, and Snug was caught up in them. The whole coast seems to have been in their path, with Margate just up the coast a bit saved. But the residents of Snug had a hard time and most took refuge on the beach, standing in the water whilst the worst passed, but 62 people locally, 11 in Snug, as well as many properties were lost. A sad story.

The little memorial garden down by the beach tells what happens, including the ironic fact that the Chief Fire Officer was called Crisp. And the area has been planted with fire resistant plants, one of which is called Pig Face.

The beach is really small and its hard to envisage how so many people crammed onto it, but they did.

There are some very noisy Plovers nesting just out the back of where  our cabin is. They’ve got four eggs in the grass and defend them quite viciously should anybody wander too close. 

But how silly are they? They sit in the grass, no nest as such, nor any protection for their eggs, so people step on them. Get a tree house and use your wings you soppy Plover birds.