He said to me: “Go forth and go to the promised land”
So we did.
But first a bit of background…
Back in the pre-Tasmania days when Danita and I were negotiating what “move south” meant I made a promise to her.
It was a guarantee that if we moved to Tasmania we’d go somewhere different each week so we wouldn’t be locked into an isolated place where we didn’t know anyone.
Danita can get a little stir-crazy so it’s important we get out of the house on a regular basis.
(The reference to “negotiating” was deciding on where we wanted to live once we’d finished house-sitting.
We both agreed we wanted to be out of Sydney and we wanted to move south.
So far so good.
Danita’s definition of “south” was the south coast or southern highlands of New South Wales, while mine was Tasmania.
As you can see I won out and so I have been very diligent in keeping my promise.)
Our day-trip this week was to Cradle Mountain.
It was somewhere we’d both been wanting to go and finally were able to set aside enough time for the trip.
It wasn’t a REALLY BIG TRIP – there’s nowhere in Tasmania which is a really long way from anywhere else – but it did involve getting organised and having a free day with no other commitments to things we needed to do.
(BTW there’s no “Anywhere Else” in Tasmania but there is a “Nowhere Else” – see below.)
One of the joys of house-sitting is you don’t have to worry about many household issues like maintenance, furniture, decor etc – that’s someone else’s problem.
Now that we have our own home, albeit renting, we have to do the “normal” stuff that we’ve missed out on for over five years.
So taking time out to be a tourist does take a bit of work.
Anyway, as I was saying, today we did our first trip to Cradle Mountain.
It’s an absolutely gorgeous place, very much like Mount Kosciuszko, except that it takes us less than 2 hours to get there instead of a day 🙂
Here are a couple of photos from the day.
As you can see, we met up with a wombat who wasn’t road-kill, which was very exciting.
“All very interesting” I hear you say “but what’s that got to do with a Biblical journey?”
In order to get to Cradle Mountain we first of all went via Forth (“Go forth…” OK bit of a long shot).
Then on the way back we passed Promised Land AND as an extra treat, Paradise.
Yes, these are real places, as you can see from these maps (Google Maps doesn’t lie).
And to complete the triangle is Nowhere Else.
Located in Promised Land is the Village of Lower Crackpot.
There is even a post code for these places – 7306.
With all that going on I’m beginning to wonder if there really is a guy named Santa Claus living at the North Pole: Terry Pratchett, where are you when I need you?