Deloraine – Evandale - Windermere

Awoke early as Woolworths had deliveries at 7am. Oh well. Had a nice walk into town and stopped at the local café the very popular Deloraine Deli. Its seemed the hoi polloi of Deloraine stopped for Breakfast. Midget refused to like our new friend Buster – a lovely little bitza who was terrified of Midget.

We got off around 10:30am for the Evandale National Penny Farthing Championship. The cute little heritage town. The centre of which was cordoned off and bailed off with lots of hay (for accidents). Have you seen how tall a penny farthing rider sits? No brakes and no way would you get me on one of these.

There were 62 entrants in the race this year – up from 42 last year. There were entrants from all east coast states. The winner of the 2009 (and 2008 as it happens) was from NSW. There was some stiff competition. The bikes must weight a minimum of 12kgs and you are not allowed to take your feet of the pedals (ie pedal fast then coast) as there is no gears, so you have to pedal fast and you cant stop! Its quite dangerous. The ambos were called to one accident.

The winner is the bloke in the front of this picture. Doesnt it just look hillarious seeing all their flash lycra suits and snazzy shoes and hats and their sitting on a 100 year old bike! I saw one bent front wheel (not sure if it was the same accident), and another busted handle and a shaken rider (his first accident). The most interesting for me was the crazy woman doing an arabesque on the top of one, while manoeuvring around a corner.

Being a very hot day, and already suffering one case of sunburn, I opted to return to the car as soon as I’d viewed some of the gorgeous classic cars that were also in the parade. It was a well organised event. Well worth a visit if anyone reading this should be down this way. And of course, what event wouldnt be complete without the obligatory Morris Dancers...

We headed on out taking the back roads to Ben Lomond National Park. This is the ski field region of Tassie. It was pretty and also quite remote even though it was just 70kms from Launceston.

Midget had her first encounter with an echidna today. She didn’t seem to like the fact that it didn’t want to put its head up and say hello, but instead just wanted to keep digging looking for ants. She squealed and barked at it. It was very entertaining. I was surprised how much fur the echidnas have on them down here. I hadn’t seen it on the mainland varieties. Must be the cold. Hillarious footage...

We pulled up on the waterfront at Windermere to watch the sun set up the river.