Head for the Hills

We have been for an outing. 

Off to the Western Tiers four wheel driving with the Rovers Club of Northern Tasmania. Only a small group today of five cars, so we didn't anticipate being be-nighted like our last trip with 13 vehicles and quite a few mechanical issues( we got back to Launceston at 8pm with a car load of fatigued kids).  We headed up to Great Lake via scenic Longford, and Cressy. Through the hedge-rowed farmland of Blackwood Creek, verdant green pastures  spotted in bright white lambs and pitch black calves. And the ever increasing architecture of pivot irrigation. Wow there is some money laying about those paddocks these days!

Past Poatina and we enter the beautiful sub-alpine forests of the Central Plateau. Tods Corner is the turn off and we hit scree covered tracks that weave back and forth along the foreshore and lower hills of Great Lake. Bright orange lichens splatter the dolerite rocks and ghostly dead woolly tea-trees protrude from the barren rocky beaches. It's such hard country, it's amazing thinking of early settlers battling these conditions to graze sheep and cattle. But I guess it's probably not much different  in climate to Highland Scotland, Western Ireland and the like.

Some of our native cut flower's at the farm have originated from these types of areas. When we trialed our Tasmanian native plants as cut flowers we focused on varieties that came from tough areas like the Central Plateau. Dusty Daisy bushes (right) are one of my favourite.

No Disco today, we took the Hilux - also known as the "LowLux" given it's pathetic ground clearance and innate instinct to find bombie rocks to grind its diff or sump guard on. My Disco has got a lot more clearance and a lot gentler suspension - I think I'll have a stiff neck and back tomorrow after the Lowlux's rigid travel !

Tonite back to some real paying work (fingers crossed they like it). I have a perpetual flower arrangement to finally finish. I have procrastinated over it too much and need to get it into place at Cimitere House. Hopefully I should have a piccie tomorrow. 

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