Burnie and Wynyard

While using Wynyard as a base we also visited Burnie.  Burnie was a very industrial town, with serious pollution issues, but has now made great efforts to clean up its environment.

We visited the local museum, which was fantastic. It was set up as an indoor street from 1900 Burnie, and you looked into the various rooms and businesses of the time.

I loved the hotel, which looks more like a cluttered lounge-room than a pub!  But sadly, I only started taking photos after that room, and forgot to go back :-( . Here, for your enjoyment, I have an actual lounge-room, the dentist and the store.

We also walked up Fossil Bluff in Wynyard. It is known for its fossils, but it also has spectacular views.

Emu Valley Rhododendron Garden

Oh wow!

This garden is absolutely stunning. It is owned and run by a rhododendron club, so mostly by volunteers, including the cafe. 

The gardens are set out in countries, to show where different species originated, and it is a beautifully designed garden, with wonderful vistas and glorious flowers.

Rhododendrons grow huge in Tasmania, often towering over the houses. Some of the older specimens in the garden are huge too. 

The garden was built in a gully, with very steep sides, and many trees and treeferns are still present. While a bit tiring to walk around, it is certainly spectacular.

We just loved it,  and spent ages wandering about.  We also had delicious lemonade scones (made by a volunteer) with homemade jam.

Us, in front of Golden Dream, the first rhododendron planted on the site

As always, I  have far more lovely photos than I can post.  So, if you go to Tassie, don't miss this glorious garden so you can see it all for yourself!

Tulips!

Moving on to Wynyard, we visited Cape Table again, this time in much better weather.

The brick lighthouse was lovely, and the view from the top was pretty good.

The star attraction though was Cape Table Tulip farm.  I have dozens of photos, choosing a few was very difficult.

I decided that it isn't possible to walk through fields of tulips on a sunny day without smiling :-) .

Stanley

Stanley is a very pretty little village clustered around the foot of Circular Head, or the Nut, as it is known.

Many of the buildings date from the 1800s, and most have been charmingly restored and are now bed and breakfast or holiday rentals. We wondered if all the locals live in the less picturesque town of Smithton nearby, and rent out their Stanley homes.

The other notable feature is a post office which is also a yarn and haberdashery store. Now that's my kind of shop!

The Nut is a massive volcanic plug, which you can walk up, although we chose to take the chair lift!  The views are spectacular and you can see that the strip of land connecting Stanley to the mainland is very thin!

Looking down on caravan park

We also visited Highfield house, which was the home of the Van Dieman's Land Company general manager, and is now a museum. 

The early settlement there was not a great success, despite the land now apparently supporting more dairy cows than I have seen anywhere. In those days the merino sheep died of cold, the VDL Co almost went broke and Curr was sacked.  Curr's management was also responsible for slaughtering local aboriginals, putting a bounty on thylacines, and flogging his convict workforce more than anywhere else in Tasmania, so he doesn't reflect well in our modern view of the era either. Highfield is, however, a charming property.