Day 31 – Eddysone point   

 The first stop in the morning after a nice peaceful morning wake up was Mt Paris Dam wall which was built in 1936 for the Mt Paris mine.  The wall was really cool, it was 250 metres long and 16 metres high and made of concrete.  It’s not used any more and has been emptied.  In 1970 they stopped using the mine, so they emptied the water and in 1985 they blasted a hole in the side to stop the water building up, and then a bigger hole in 94 to allow the river to flow naturally out of it.  The only reason it wasn’t knocked down completely is for it’s historical value to Tasmania.  It is one of those funny things to look at, when you are driving through the bush and all of a sudden is a huge dam wall beside you just sitting there abandoned.

 We drove out to the town of Welborough, which literally is nothing more than a pub on the corner.  The books we had said it was full of character and served good grub and was worth going in to have a look.  We decided would be good to go in and have a meal, the day’s crumbed chicken special.  Going inside we soon realised that the new owners had stuffed it up, well at least changed it.  On the outside it was a nice old pub, but on the inside it was quite modern looking with little character, and not really worth the bother which was a shame.  We ate our chicken special, which was a reconstituted chicken thing that tasted like chicken nuggets, and quickly left to continue our journey.

 Up the road we drove through an enclosed ferny track which lead out towards the Frome dam which feeds the near by Moorina Power station, but originally ran to mines.  On the way to the dam we were going to take a challenging track to a weir.  We got out of the car to walk the track a little to see how difficult it was up ahead.  I was getting a bit excited and decided to run up the rocks, but quickly lost my enthusiasm when I almost bounced on a big black snake having a sunbake.  After such a close call, neither of us really felt like climbing up the rocks with the car any more so we turned back and went off to the dam.

 The dam wasn’t really all that exciting, but we met an older couple from Launceston who were also having a look.  We chatted with them for a while and patted their border collie.  They had just been to a nearby abandoned building to take a look and informed us of a big snake sitting in one of the rooms.  We decided not to check it out.  They told us the power station was interesting, and we were soon on the road again to see it. 

The Moorina power station is privately owned, the only one in Tassie which is, and we were expecting to see something fancy like the Tumit one we toured in Victoria.  When we got there we had to have a laugh because it looked more like the abandoned relics we had just been visiting than a power station.  It looked like something I could imagine seeing in Russia, there were a few run down old buildings near by which presumably belonged to the power station owner, and when we got to the pipe line, it was just a single rusted old pipe running down the hill with all these leaks in it spitting out water everywhere.  At the bottom was another old shed that housed the power station, which had some normal looking power lines coming out.  It was really fascinating and it would have been great to get a tour, but we didn’t know if the old man who owns it was around or not.

So we moved on to an old abandoned and flattened overgrown mining town called Garidaldi, which used to house mostly Chinese miners who were brought in as cheaper labour than the Europeans in 1880.  The Moorina power station and Frome dam once used to power this town.  There wasn’t much left to see, and after some searching with the GPS we found an old Chinese oven dug into the ground.

We drove on for a couple more hours and saw more dams and more old water races, but they weren’t very interesting.  We arrived at Eddystone point in the afternoon and set up the tent.  Jo wasn’t too keen on camping near lots of other people again and near the smelly beach, but we had little choice.  The place is quite nice and there are little kangaroos or wallabies, not sure which that hang around the site.   

While we were cooking this funny looking little kid came up on his BMX.  He looked a bit like the kid from the mad magazine but skinnier with big teeth and pokey out ears.  He was really grubby and turned up to ask how long we were staying and to say hello.  He didn’t stay very long and went off again on his bike.  A ten year old girl also came over to say hello, she was a bit more social and chatted for a while as we made pasta.  Her family comes here every year over Christmas, and she stays for 6 weeks, so I guess she would get pretty bored if she didn’t get to know everyone camping in the place.  Her name was Hannah, and she must have approved of us because she said we should stay two nights instead of one, isn’t that special!  Later on her Dad came over and we chatted for a while with him too.  He was a good bloke, easy going with a very laid back Aussie kind of attitude and well weathered face.  He works in the abalone trade on the boats, so is pretty familiar with the coastal areas around Tassie.  It was interesting to hear about his work and was good to chat about things until it started getting dark and we went our ways.