The CB and I had ever so briefly been to Stanley many (many) years ago and it obviously never registered what a charming, picturesque place it is even if, like all other Tasmanian coastal towns it is exposed to elements which would have daunted the most intrepid of explorers.
I did most of the planning for this trip (after a suggestion from GF1) and up to now it’s been a resounding success which is just as well. Can you imagine (if you are a man) being in a car for hours on end with three disgruntled females. But I hadn’t expected the response to cute little Stanley. It was positively orgasmic. The place is full of neat, immaculately presented period houses and they all seem to have views to die for. As we were leaving yesterday, GF2 demanded the car be stopped so she could get out and buy a house. And then there’s The Nut, a large rock that sticks up out of the land (50%) and the sea (the other 50%) like a miniature Ayre’s Rock.
And there’s penguins. Back along the coast a few kilometres there’s a place called Penguin but their attempt to corner the region’s penguin driven tourist economy failed when word got out that there are penguins all along the coast. Common as bums they are, but they still generate the sort of reaction generally reserved for tiny babies and puppies. So we duly went down to the sea wall / boat ramp / wharf a couple of nights ago to watch and listen as the juvenile penguins whinged and whined for their food like so many tiny babies.
The old pub in Stanley was a welcome respite after a few hours in the car and for an hour or so, we were the only ones there. “How’s the serenity” one might say if one was in an iconic Australian movie or in a quiet (when the bloody jukebox was on recess) country pub. But eventually we were joined by other tourists and perhaps the odd local.
Now we’re all of the friendly persuasion and are quite happy to converse with those of a similar bent. Unfortunately GF1 inadvertently opened a conversation with a gentleman who had ignored the two women he was with but was happy to talk at us with a relent that would have done the ever persevering Wylie Coyote proud. I tried to do a Road Runner on him to shut him up by saying I was holidaying with my three wives and this was the one time of the year they are allowed out in public, but he was unphased. Admittedly my “wives” were wearing jeans and skirts rather than freedom sacks and we were in a pub and we were drinking so my attempt at cultural intervention failed miserably. I should have said I was a Mormon.
But back to The Nut which so dominates this place. There’s a chairlift that takes you to the top which never gets more than a few feet off the ground. GF1 who doesn’t like heights, figured this was her kind of chairlift after the somewhat more challenging experience of the largest single span for a chairlift in the world over the Cataract Gorge in Launceston. During the 2km circumnavigation of the top of The Nut the clouds and rain moved in. This was more like the Tasmania we knew and loved in our three year Tasmanian sojourn many years ago.