Today has been a miserable day, weather-wise, though fortunately we have been doing some indoor things as well as the outdoor things.
Our first trip, to Table Cape, was not really a success because of rain. Table Cape is the remains of an extinct volcano, and very fertile. There is a huge tulip farm, but we could only see the tulips from a long distance away, as they are not near the road this year - the field use is rotated. The lookout point, out onto Bass Strait, is supposed to be magnificent, but unfortunately we could see nothing at all because of the clouds and rain. I took a photo of the distant lighthouse, which you could just see through the rain, but we were not scheduled to visit that.
Fortunately, by the time we had reached our next visit, the rain had stopped for a spell. We visited Highfield House, which was built about 1827 in the Regency style for the administrator for the Van Diemen's Land Company. The land at the time was wilderness, sometimes an impenetrable wilderness, at the edge of the world, but people apparently still expected to live in their accustomed style.
The house had a gracious drawing room
and dining room, a study for the administrative work, a commodious kitchen, bedrooms with mod cons
a nursery, a cellar and various servants' quarters which we were not able to see. Of course, a lot of the work was done by convicts, and you can still see the ruins of the convict barracks at some distance from the house. We spent an hour or more in the house, and when it was time to return to the bus, it was raining hard again and blowing a gale. For this reason, nobody wanted to take the chairlift up the Nut, a circular volcanic plug which you can see very clearly from Highfield House.
We had been looking forward to that - but it seemed unlikely that the chairlift would even be running in the high wind. So we went to the nearby town of Stanley for lunch.
Stanley was a little town full of old houses, and we had time to photograph a few after lunch, the weather having improved.
Then we had to return to Burnie, where we were booked for a paper making tour.
Until about 6 months ago, there was a big paper mill at Burnie, but it has closed. Now the only remnant is the specialist paper making at a centre for artists, called the Makers' Workshop. We had a demonstration on how to make the paper, then we were able to have a go ourselves. It wasn't hard. There was already a sink full of water and pulp. You stir this mixture using part of the frame on which you make the paper. Then you dip and scoop the frame through the pulp and water mixture, and shake it to settle the fibres and remove the excess water. You put aside the top of the frame, and turn the whole thing over onto a sheet of felt and press it down to remove more water. Then you have to release the pressure quickly and remove the frame. I made a bit of paper with a wombat watermark, and was very pleased with it. Unfortunately, it has to go through the press, after which it takes 24 hours to dry, so I had to take home a piece somebody else had made earlier. Shades of Blue Peter!
We also had a talk about the centre itself and went to look at some of the work being done, and examples of other work previously done.
Tonight, I hope to make it to the penguins. There were two stuffed ones in the Makers Workshop (ones who had been washed up dead) and they are really tiny, only about 8 or 9 inches tall. There was also a stuffed platypus, and I was surprised to see that it was of a similar size - 8 or 9 inches long. Somehow I had the idea that they were about he size of otters, but I see that is quite wrong.
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