To Snug

What a daft name for a town but that was our destination today. Snug. Just south of Hobart and on the coast, it was a 180 kms from where we had stopped on Lake Pedder last night.

It must be great to be the person who invents a town, as you get to call it what you like because there is nobody there to argue. And anybody who doesn't like it has to go and live elsewhere. But Snug. WTF? Who thought that one up? Why not call it Buggeroffville or Mytownmyrules or something? 

I found out the other day that Melbourne was known for a short time as Batmania, after a bloke called John Batman built a house on a hill there and began the town. Now that is a really good one - Batmania. But it got renamed Melbourne after Lord Melbourne, Queen Victoria's mentor when she first came to the throne. Personally though, I'd rather have been mentored by Batman.

It piddled down during the night, really heavy fat rain that kept waking all of us up, but all of us stayed dry. It stopped at first light though, really peculiar as it turned off like a tap. And it stayed dry for a good few hours. Laurel and Brian turned up again to see if we were OK as the rain had woken them too.

The descent down from Strathgordon was very different from the climb up yesterday. It was dark and quite cold, with big clouds rolling off the hills, but it got warmer the lower we got. 

We reached Westerway at the bottom just in time as fuel was running low. Whilst we were in the roadhouse there, looking at the mural, the heavens opened again and more water fell from the sky. 

We stayed put for about 90 minutes but left with our wet weather gear on which was a good call as it came back not much further down the road.

A place called Plenty, en route to new Norfolk has salmon hatchery ponds which are the oldest in Australasia, whilst Bushy Park, just down the river is the hop growing capital of Tasmania, although as we discovered yesterday, nowhere near as many are grown as in years gone by.

The ride from thereon to Hobart was very blustery, with sidewinds alternating with headwinds, slowing our progress. But we kept going, made it through Hobart in the ever present rain, and found a cabin to stay in at Snug. The lady took pity on us and gave us a good deal, and a cabin with a car port so that the bikes have a bit of shelter, which will also make things a bit easier for us when we come to do maintenance in the next few days. But she doesnt know about the tinkering plans - yet.

We’ll need to do another oil change as we’ve done about 1600 kms since the last one, the spokes need checking as we have done quite a bit of gravel and unsealed road, and Nadine’s bike has a bit of a stutter when she accelerates. It might be another air intake quirk, and its not serious but we will sort it here while we can and while we have a place to work on it.