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Thursday, June 03, 2004

Walls of Jerusalem - Day 2 - Out, then to Hobart

[image]When I woke up this morning, it was still raining, and I discovered that my tent was now partly in several small puddles. I packed as best I could in the rain, and set off back toward Herods Gate. The wind and rain combined to make it quite miserable walking, especially at Herods Gate where the wind was agin very strong.

The rain continued all the way back to the car, which was fortunately only about 2 hours walk. I packed my gear in the car, and started the drive back toward Deloraine. I stopped for lunch again at Mole Creek, and by the time I reached Deloraine, it was no longer raining, and there was blue skies. I decided I wanted to take the road going over the top of the Great Western Tiers, Through Miena and Bothwell.

From Delorine, the road quickly came to the edge of the Tiers, and climbed steeply up toward the top of the cliff line. The view from near the top were excellent, and I stopped at two small lookouts to admire the view. At the second lookout, a few snowflakes fell started falling out of a virtually clear sky.
I drove on, up on the plateau now, and came to a small lake on the right which wa quite pretty, but stopped only briefly for some photos, as the wind was icy cold.
There was still the occasional few snowflakes as I came to Great Lake. Again this was an ugly lake due to it being a hydro power lake, and the low water level exposing much bare earth on the lake shore.
The snow became a flurry as I was driving along the shore of Great Lake, and the road became gravel, and the many potholes were hard to see. The road continued south past Great Lake, where the snow became a blizzard, and reduced my speed to a crawl. Fortunately the snow on the road was very thin and still fresh. In the middle of this blizzard, I came across a sheep farmer hearding his flock along the road to another paddock. The sheep completely blocked the road, and it took quite a while to inch my way through the flock, as I was going the same direction as the sheep. The sheep, and everything else was covered in snow.

Soon, I was out of the blizzard, and the sun came out again on the way to Bothwell. I'd decided to go to Hobart for the night, and as I came into the city, it started pouring rain again. I was also in peak hour traffic, although by comparison to sydney traffic, it was very light. I stayed the night at the Pickled Frog hostel again.

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