Launceston - or near enough

The road to Launceston from St Helens appeared to be another one of Tassie's great winding trails and it didn't let us down. It was about 180km but a travel time of nearly 3 hours. I have learnt to really enjoy these drives and the sights they offer, along with the forest walks and lookouts that are generally on the way. And this drive was as every bit windy as suggested. And more. 

Our target stop was to be Scottsdale, but it was momentarily interrupted with a walk through one of the many forest walks to stretch our legs and relieve some pressure. It was also during this road trip that we first noticed all the smoke in the air and it very quickly became more dense and pungent. There are apparently 70+ bushfires burning out of control at the moment in Tasmania, most of them in the Northwest of the state, which was where we had started this whole trip some 3 and a half weeks ago. We started to realise that if we had chosen to tour in a clockwise direction, we may have actually been forced to dtour or even turn around due to the fires being very close to some of the spots we had visited already. 

Scottsdale was a great stop, but we moved on pretty quickly to get to a suburb of Launceston called Longford where we had booked in for the next 3 nights. This next section was almost as un-straight as Tracy's hair in 80% humidity, and meant we averaged only about 45 km/hr for most of the way. However, as we got closer to our destination, we realised that being out of the hills and in the flats meant the smoke was going to be a real nuisance

We didn't do a lot after arriving, other than set up and watch the sun trying to burn through the smoke and finally disappearing with an almost blood red glow that just couldn't be captured with the camera.