When It's Not Raining

We spent a full day in Devonport and while we didn't see the sun it also wasn't raining so that was a plus. I heard the ship's horn at 0500 as the Spirit of Tasmania came in to port, and shame on me I rolled over and went back to sleep.

We were downtown bright and early to attend to some business but the town had shut up shop and gone to the races (the Devonport Cup) for the day: business would have to wait. We went out exploring Devonport instead.

Devonport from the elevated bridge thingy from which one can watch the cars roll onto the Spirit of Tasmania.

Devonport lies at the mouth of the Mersey River and is home to the Spirit of Tasmania, the ferry that travels nightly to and from Geelong on the mainland. The Spirit's more mundane sister, the Searoad, sails out of Devonport as well, carrying freight rather than people and cars. It even follows the same schedule, just 15min earlier.

The Spirit with the Searoad behind.

We checked out the Spirit of the Sea viewing platform and statue: the platform was as platforms are, the statue was... interesting.

Possibly those who placed the statue should have considered the effect of viewing such an anatomically accurate statue from this angle.

After that encounter I walked along the waterfront to the Mersey Bluff Lighthouse.

Fishers tempted fate on the rocks below the lighthouse. The sea was quiet but the swell still sucked and boiled dangerously in narrow crevices deep between granite rocks. 

A sign breezily reassured me that, should I fall in, there was a life buoy on the path half way to the lighthouse. All I would need to do would be to stay alive in the churning water while someone ran up the hill, retrieved the buoy, and returned to toss it in. Easy peasy. I decided to stay on dry land.

From the lighthouse the path wandered through coastal bushland to the Don River, The Don River was a little river occupying a larger river's space, with a recently constructed and quite grand pedestrian/bicycle bridge across to the other side.

The Don upstream, beyond the railway bridge; and downstream, the Don River mouth.

From the bridge a gravel road wound back out to Don Head. Families fished without success in the river. Out on the beach, pied oystercatchers hunted in the shallows and the rocks tumbled and clattered as the waves pulled in and out.

On the return journey we detoured through the Elm Grove. The map listed this as a photo opportunity but gave no elucidation as to why the elm grove was there in the first place, elms not being a native tree. It was pretty nonetheless, and we watched a fat little wallaby going about his business amongst the elms.

Not a wallaby.

Back at the caravan park, a perplexed man interrupted me as I did my hand washing in the laundry. "I've lost my wife," he said. "Her name's Dierdre and she went to the toilet and hasn't come back."  I searched the ladies toilets for him but Dierdre was nowhere to be found. "Maybe she's gone to watch the boat go out," he said as he wandered off. "She likes the boat."  I went back to my washing and never did find out if Dierdre came home.

And that, with the addition of soup and toast, was that for the day.