On disembarking it quickly became obvious I was in another place, and time. It was only around 7.30pm but the streets were deserted and from what I could see Devonport seemed to be in a time warp, somewhere back in the ’60’s.

I had no plan and decided to head to the Mersey Bluff lighthouse to spend the night hoping there might be a decent sunrise. As I approached I was alarmed to see what I thought were dozens of rabbits darting across the road in front of me and quickly realised they were too big to be rabbits. Looking more closely I was surprised to see they were tiny kangaroos, which I was later to be informed are called pademelons, I’d vaguely heard this name before but thought it was a salad ingredient.

Pulling into the lighthouse carpark I was mildly disappointed to see that it was painted plain white and didn’ t have the vertical red stripes I’d expected. The wind was still howling and when I checked the weather forecast I was alarmed to see that it was currently 8 degrees but the wind chill made it feel like 1c and it was forecast to drop to -1c overnight. Welcome to Tasmania in May, I decided to go to bed!

Surprisingly, when I awoke the weather had cleared and the lighthouse had regained its stripes, it turns out only the seaward side has the stripes. The lighthouse is reasonably impressive and overlooks a fairly bleak coastline with low cliffs and fields running down to the ocean, somewhat reminiscent of parts of Ireland I remember seeing years ago. Devonport wasn’t much more animated by day than it was the night before so I decided to head east to my next port of call, the Low Head lighthouse which I was surprised to discover was only an hour and a half away.

As you may have noticed one of the amusements on my trip so far has been to observe the strange place names we give various landmarks and it seems Tasmania is no exception. On the way I passed Squeaking Point and crossed the Rubicon River, as far as I know Julius Caesar (or Bob Dylan for that matter) never made it to Tasmania so I can only assume there’s more than one Rubicon River.

I noticed an alternate route took me through the town of Beaconsfield which was the focus of national attention back in 2006 when the local gold mine collapsed trapping 17 miners over a kilometer underground, 14 were rescued quickly but 2 were trapped for over two weeks and one man died. Bill Shorten, then head of the ACTU lapped up the media spotlight and as a result almost became Prime Minister were it not for his pre-election hubris. Apart from it’s 15 days of fame, there’s not much to see here except the gold mine which is now closed and has become a tourist attraction, and Beaconsfield has drifted back into relative obscurity which the locals seem happy about.

As I pushed on I was intrigued to see that I was heading for the Batman Bridge? What could that be I wondered but before I got there I was derailed by a wild hunch.

I noticed a sign to the “Lavender House Perfumery” are remembered that when I was living in Hong Kong in the early ’90’s a girl and her partner I know there had moved to Tasmania and set up a lavender farm. I couldn’t remember their names but think hers was Carol, and given the serendipity I’d encountered on my trip so far I felt sure this would be them. It turned out it wasn’t them but a couple called Denise (from Scotland) and Tom (from New Zealand) who’d never heard of the people I thought they might be. Once they’d established I wasn’t mad or there with ulterior motives they told me the strange white striped cattle I’d seen on my way to their farm, which I’d assumed to be the handy work of Robbie Waterhouse and Dulux, or possibly some weird genetic engineering experiment involving pandas were in fact a breed of Scottish cattle called “Belted Galloway”. They also told me of a strange little lighthouse down the road at Auld Kirk and a nearby town called Lower Crackpot! After an accidental but enjoyable hour or so I left visiting the lighthouse on the way back to the highway. It turns out there’s only one house, with a lighthouse in the front yard (and it’s For Sale) and a church in Auld Kirk, and it’s pretty much under the Batman Bridge which I discovered to be a fairly substantial asymmetrical modern bridge with about as much aesthetic charm as a modern lighthouse, they just don’t build ’em like they use to! Having made these two unscheduled diversions I decided Lower Crackpot would survive without my visitation.

So on I rolled, crossing the Batman bridge and heading toward Low Head light which is at the mouth of the Tamar river, some 50kms downstream from Launceston. This is a particularly drab and uninteresting part of Tasmania and the Tamar is a wide lazy looking river, far from the beauty and wild waters that I know lurk in other parts of this island state. Low Head light is similar in many ways to Mersey Bluff except the red stripes are horizontal and due to its isolation there are keepers cottages, a nearby pilot station and two smaller lighthouses that act as leading lights for ships navigating the river.

After a brief visit I headed toward Launceston wanting to get there before dark to find a suitable campsite. Since arriving I’ve been impressed with how good the main roads are down here, it’s another story once you get off the beaten track, but the run into Launceston was easy and I arrived in time to find a splendid campsite down by the waterfront where there was still evidence of Tasmania’s past reputation for building the best wooden boats in the world out of the locally sourced huon pine, many of which are still seaworthy today more than a hundred years after they were built.

The sunset was spectacular and I settled in for the night not expecting to be woken at 6.00am by a group of hardy rowers heading out for training in the pitch black. I rose with the sun and enjoyed an early morning walk around the city occasionally thinking I was back in the UK, stumbling across the magnificent Cataract Gorge and trying to find an open cafe, which I did and completely out of character with it’s surrounds it was a little piece of Latin America which seemed ironic given where we’d be heading in 6 weeks. The owner and barista was Jose from Venezuela and I can thoroughly recommend his coffee and nachos, even for breakfast!

As much as I liked the feel of Launceston other than spending time soaking in nature at Cataract Canyon there didn’t seem much else to do so I headed to Bridport hoping to find a piece of my lighthouse puzzle that had so far eluded me. How to get out to the Furneaux group of islands where there are a cluster of hard to get to lighthouses including Deal Island, Goose Island and Swan Island? My research suggested the best and probably only way was to take the supply ship out of Bridport but this only went to Flinders Island and was a once a week service leaving on Mondays whenever it was high tide. So undaunted I aimed for Bridport to see what my options were. Not many as it turned out, for one the ferry was an 8 hour trip each way and I was quoted $ 800 return with Max or $ 600 without; for two, that would only get me to Flinders Island and there was no sure way of getting to Deal or Goose islands other than by canoe, and for three, I discovered Swan Island was infested by tiger snakes and off limits (evidently if you were a tiger snake and it was your birthday and your partner asked you what you’d like for dinner the answer would be a mutton bird chick or egg, and there are thousands of them plus lots of hungry snakes on Swan Island)!

So the decision was easy, Eddystone Point here I come. (p.s. you can read my second hand reports on these there lighthouses in my “Lighthouse Stories”).

Not far out of Bridport I passed a sign saying “Barnbougle Golf” and recalled some of my golfing mates saying that playing this course was the next best thing to going to heaven. Supposedly it’s the best public access course in Australia, the 12th best links course in the World and the 35th best course of any kind in the World! I turned around and went to have a look, not surprisingly there was on-site accomodation because I assume anyone who could afford to come an play this course would not set foot in Bridport and it was obvious from the angle of the trees, the tightness of the fairways and the impenetrability of the rough that if I was to play here I’d be scoring the number of balls lost rather than strokes taken on on that score I’d be lucky to make par. To me this course was testament to Oscar Wildes famous quote that “Golf is a good walk spoiled”!

One of the things I’d noticed since starting my trip around Tassie was the extraordinary amount of road kill on the roads and sadly most of it was the aforementioned pademelons who obviously have no road sense. As a result of this there seemed to be an inordinate number of very brave / stupid crows who feasted on the deceased pademelons and played chicken with passing cars. On a number of occasions I’d had to hit the brakes and / or swerve to miss said crows and there were a number of close calls. Then I saw one, in all my life I’d never seen a dead crow on the road, but there it was black on black the first ex-crow to come off second best with a car! Live by the sword die by the sword unlucky crow!

Speaking of roads I was surprised that not far past Barnbougle the bitumen ended and I hit dirt, not only dirt but long straight stretches of dirt that wouldn’t have been out of place on Cape York except these were the best dirt roads I driven on, no corrugations, no dust bowls just smooth driving at 90 kph which was just as well because as it turned out there were over 100km of dirt road between here and St. Helens which was the next town of any significance. About half way along this dirt racetrack was the turn off to Eddystone Point lighthouse, ironically speaking of Cape York it was here that I met Jason one of the “Cape to Cape” riders who had just completed the south to north traversing of Australia and who told me that his partners dad, Frank Armstrong had been the lighthouse keeper there and a number of other remote Tasmanian lighthouses. I was hoping to catch up with Jason while in Tasmania but just found out he’s in WA!

Despite the fact showing that there’s a settlement called Eddystone there isn’t there’s just the lighthouse and the various keepers cottages ob a remote rocky peninsular jutting out into the bottom of Bass Strait and the south Tasman Sea. On a day like this both the setting and the lighthouse are magnificent, absolutely stunning and deserted – I had the whole place to myself, I didn’t see another person and in the whole 100km journey I passed five cars travelling the other way. Who would have thought that on such a small island people could be so scarece!

So far on my travels, in terms of location, elegance and history I’d have to rate Eddystone Point in my top three lighthouses and you will see why in the relevant “Lighthouse Story”.

I didn’t want to leave this place but knew daylight was running short and wanted to get to St. Helen’s to restock Max. The trip there was more of the same, the sheer enjoyment of driving on a deserted dirt road through the Australian bush. Way to go!

Job done in St. Helens I have always wanted to go to the Bay of Fires and was advised to head out to Binalong Bay 11 km east of St. Helens arriving there at sunset was extraterrestrial, beyond description, next level – all of the above and more. I figured this was my kind of place and decided to stay for a few days and let the beauty soak in.