Stanley to Launceston

We left Stanley and headed South East to the city of Launceston.  Beautiful city!  Amazing architecture. A great number of the buildings and homes were built in the late 1800's and early 1900's and remain just as beautiful today as they did the day they were built. 

Really, look at that house!  Beautiful.  I would have loved to have been able to see the inside.  I was told that it was really something else.  This picture was taken from a boat on the Tamar River Cruise we took.  The night before the cruise we went to a restaurant called the Jail House Grill and just as Elvis said it rocked.  The time had come for a good steak and the Jail House Grill served up the best steak we've had in Australia. 

I should mention that on the trip from Stanley, we made a number of stops to see various things along the way.  The best stop was at the Ashgrove Cheese Factory, because as everyone knows, wine goes better with cheese!  They had some really interesting thins such as wild wasabi, a different kind of blue cheese called Bennett's Blue as well as the standby cheddar. We picked up a variety and really have been enjoying them along with our steadily increasing collection of wines from Tasmania!

The cruise down the Tamar River wasn't as good as our previous cruise on the Gordon River, but just the same it offered some interesting sites along the route.  First of all was a short trip toward the Gordon River Gorge and under the Kings Bridge.  The Kings Bridge was originally built in the UK and shipped to Tasmania and floated on pontoons to connect the suburbs of Trevallyn and Riverside to the city of Launceston.  This was in 1864.  It was a single lane bridge and soon became too crowed, so the local foundry of Salisbury Engineering made a duplicate adjacent span that was put into place in 1904.

The house in the background was the caretaker's cottage.

We then went under the bridge and towards the Cataract Gorge.  There is a walkway to the Gorge, but we simply didn't have enough time to take that tour. 

From there we turned around and headed up the Tamar to the Batman Bridge.  Along the way we saw a number of very interesting sights.  The first was a complex that was once a flour mill, built in the 1830's.  It was refurbished in the early 2000's and is now a restaurant and shopping complex.

Ritchie's Mill on the Tamar River near the Cataract Gorge, Launceston, Tasmania.

Although the vineyards of the Tamar Valley are generally found West of Launceston, there are some along the Tamar as can be seen below.

The Batman Bridge spans the Tamar River on the Batman Highway connecting the East and West Tamar Highways.  I wondered about the name, but found out that it wasn't named after the comic book hero but rather after John Batman a Launceston businessman and co-founder of Melbourne!  The west bank of the bridge supports 78% of the bridge's weight and is built on dolerite rock.  The east bank is mostly clay and cannot support the weight, therefore it is supported by four piers built on piles driven up to 18 metres (59 ft) into the clay.

The cruise lasted for about 4 hours and we had a wine and beer tasting and a nice lunch aboard the Tamar Odyssey.

Tomorrow we head for the seaside village of St. Helens and hopefully along the way we will stop at a vineyard or two and do some tasting!