Three days in Strahan

We are finally somewhere where we can use our computer again!  I have no idea how people who live in Tassie cope with intermittent mobile phone and internet access.  LOL.  We do get very used to some things, don't we?  Now I can update you with what we have been up to and where we have been.

After leaving Smithton, we headed to Strahan for three days.  The place we stayed at was called Kitty's Place.  Don't know about you but to me it sounds like a "place of ill repute". 

In the village of Strahan is a shop where you buy the tickets for a Gordon River cruise.  There I bought this hat.  And I've since worn it and worn it.  Brian thinks it's daggy but I've had so many compliments about it that I'll just ignore fashion advice from a man who wears checks with other checks or stripes.

The cruise down the Gordon River was very interesting.  The captain takes the boat through Hell's Gates and out into the incoming swell from the southern ocean. He then has to turn around and in the process the boat is broaching sideways into the swell before the nose comes around.  The water was quite calm the day we were there but as the captain turned the boat, a lot of the crockery in the gallery went flying and broke.  And not one person called out "Taxi!".  The name Hell's Gate is very appropriate. 

All that is left of the cells that prisoners were put into if the offended while on Sarah Island

All that is left of the penitentiary

About a third of the way into the trip, you land at Sarah Island.  A guide shows you over the island and tells you what life was like for the convicts who lived there.  Some of them murdered some of the others prisoners so they could be caught and executed.  They preferred that to having to live on Sarah Island.  Heartbreaking.

Further down the Gordon River, just downstream of the Franklin / Gordon River junction, is another stop.  This time there is a forest.  It doesn't take very long but shows some beautiful trees.  Apparently there was also about three tiger snakes that had been spotted recently but fortunately weren't there when we were!  The weather was unseasonably warm and the snakes we just enjoying the warm weather.

Too soon it's back onto The Eagle for the Strahan-bound trip.  The inward trip was much quieter than the outward trip.  Lots of people napped most of the trip home.  A wonderful way to spend a day in this beautiful little fishing village.