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| View from the back of our motel on the edge of Deloraine |
On the fourth day, we rested in Deloraine, a town Southwest of Launceston on the northern Tasmanian plain, surrounded by farms and grazing land. It was a quiet day.
This was my fifth trip to Australia, but cycling for nine days together with a group of majority Aussies offered me my closest brush with some local features, including Vegemite. Apparently Vegemite is present in 90% of Australian homes. It is a yeast-based spread (a by-product -- waste product -- of beer-making) that is applied to buttered toast and cherished for its rich B vitamins. It is nearly as much a part of Australian life as white short-grain rice or miso soup is a part of Japanese life. Errol spoke of his search to build a collection of bakelite Vegemite containers from the 1950s -- each one with unique imperfections. Vegemite also, to this and most other foreigners, tastes vile. I was told that it should be applied in a very thin sheet over generous butter. I will stick with jam on my toast, not vegemite.
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After a breakfast that was not quite what I would have wanted on a rest day, most of us headed into town and wandered around a bit in search of good coffee ("flat white" -- Australian for latte with some of the foam scooped off).
The town had a B&B with a cycle theme, with a kind of Cadel Evans mannequin sitting on the porch, and an ancient bike repair shed on the corner of the property. Also, the town's Empire Hotel occupies a building that at one point was a bicycle factory. The restaurant still bears the name Cycles.
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Cycling theme B&B. The "Cadel Evans" mannequin is obscured by one of the pillars on the porch ...
Tin-roofed bicycle repair shed in the foreground. |
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| Delicious, satisfying meal here in the evening. |
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| I needed a haircut ... will need to deal with in Launceston |
The most famous resident of Deloraine and environs in its history? Malua! No, not the
village on the Samoan island, and not the
Dutch DJ, but the horse. Apparently Malua is the most famous horse in Australian history. Not the fastest, but the most famous. Kind of a Seabiscuit, a horse that won some major events and struck the public imagination. The Eddy Merckx of Australian horses.
There was a park at the bottom of the hill along the River Meander (which did meander through the town and the fields up and down the Meander Valley). Errol mentioned that a platypus was in residence, and Pauline and I joined to walk along the river bank a bit and see if it would show itself. I asked two local women who were sitting near the river if they could offer any guidance. One said that great patience was required, and that we were there at the wrong time of day. She had lived in the town for more than 40 years and only seen a platypus in the river twice, and that we were there at the wrong time of day in any event. Oh well. All the more remarkable that Fred seems to have actually photographed one, perhaps this one! The lack-of-platypus reminded me of my last visit to look at one, last year at Fitzroy Falls en route from Kiama Beach to Canberra. Nice platypus habitat. No platypus. We did at least see some turbo chooks (nativehens -- a local flightless bird) and very prickly vegetation. Many things here in Tasmania are different.
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| Turbo chooks. |
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| Very prickly |
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| These would grab clothes or slice skin. The bush is not so friendly ... |
A quick walk through the local historical society/museum gave some sense of the life of a Tasmanian settler. Life must have been hard - farming, or trapping animals.
But they did have nice wooden Jimmy Possum style chairs for a rest at the end of the day.
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| Jimmy Possum chairs |
A quiet afternoon, a dinner with some of the riders I had not yet gotten to know (Simon Maddison from Melbourne, Tim Jones, one of the Tasmania based riders, Warren Page, and several others), and an early bedtime to prepare for the 5AM start.
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| Lavender being pollinated by bees at the back of the historical society/museum |
That night, I dreamt of Malua. According to Epic Ride Weather, we would ride with a tailwind in the morning ... perhaps as fast as the great horse?
On the fourth day, we rested in Deloraine, a town Southwest of Launceston on the northern Tasmanian plain, surrounded by farms and grazing land. It was a quiet day.
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