Forth – Kindred – Sheffield – Deloraine

We had a great sleep and awoke to rain. In fact it rained most of the morning. We headed off to Kindred to see a couple of properties we saw. Took a nice walk along the river, but one was awful and too small to use, but was on the river, the other we couldn’t find.

You may have noticed in the news over the last few years, that Tassie is prime Opium Poppy growing country. We heard it was pretty easy to do, you just have to have a customer signed up and you apply for a licence and they do a police check and then you get it. Of course, your customer cant be a drug dealer (except a legal one like Glaxo Klyne etc). Anyway we thought the picture of the fields were interesting, and also the signs that are on all fences around them...

Moved on to Wilmot. Home of the first permanent Coles store in 1910 – 1921. It formed the beginnings of the GJ Coles empire.

The shop is quite unchanged and still houses all the old fixtures around the wall. They could do considerably more with it from a tourist point of view, such as staff that can hold a conversation with a shoelace, but maybe I’m being harsh… The most fun thing about the place is its letterboxes. They must have held a letterbox competition as the town and roads in and out, are filled with fun filled letterboxes from Ned Kelly to Tassie Tigers and its fun to drive by. You can even by a postcard of these letterboxes in the Coles Shop.

We also passed a street that I couldnt help but take a photo of. Here's one for Steve's brother, Frank:

We then moved on to Sheffield. This was a bustling little town, but quite expensive being quite well placed between Launceston and Devonport. The town backs onto the fabulously stunning Mt Rowland. This is the most glorious outlook as the mountain is just so rocky and sharp as it comes out of the ground.

in this photo you can see the cloud rolling over the hills in the foreground. Quite a stunning location.

We were amazed at the fabulous IGA store in town that had a huge light well on top of their magnificent two storey Victorian building. We went in to check it out, but it was all covered over. A worker in the store (possibly the owner) saw us walking around looking up and admiring all the decorative features in the building inside and asked if we wanted help. We said we were looking for the light well and noticed it was now covered up. He then invited us upstairs to have a look. He said he gets asked often as many people can see the fabulous architecture of the building. We walked up the well worn wooden stairs – still all original to the unpolished upstairs floors. All that was housed up there were millions of toilet rolls – all they could be bothered storing up there due to having to walk up stairs. In the centre of the room was an oval shaped thick banister rail held up with about 200 turned wooden posts. Above were the most massive timber trusses holding up the exposed roof and then the beautiful window light. He said that the building was built pre electricity being in the town, so they built it to allow light in to both levels of the building. You can see how effective it would have been. It was so wonderfully warm and well lit (on a cold and overcast day) that you’d have to say they were nuts to cover it in. Anyway it was the original Don Store and they shut down over 40 years ago, but the locals still refer to it as the Don Store not the IGA! Another fabulous piece of history.

Arrived in Deloraine in time for dinner and then a bit of technology catch up. Ended up next to a park that we stopped at on the way in. Anther couple drove up and parked next to us and sat outside till after midnight talking really loudly. I had to leave. Moved back to our Woolworths spot.