Wednesday 8th May 2019
Today we started the day with a nice breakfast in our quaint little B&B. The Old Colony Inn. It was filled with antiques and reminded me of things from my grandmothers era. The little old lady gave very good customer service. The meal we had last night was lovely – lamb shanks and gravy, cauliflower and broccoli au gratin, peas and carrots. A lovely home cooked meal.

We then headed away early as we had a 5 hour hike up to Mt Eliza 1289m high and we have to drive 2hours to the start near Strathgordon in the far south west of Tasmania. The drive was beautiful and scenic, we went through the area of the January fires and the damage was incredible. Unfortunately our plans to walk to Mt Eliza were thwarted as the track was closed due to fire damage. So we got to give our legs a rest, maybe for the better but David was very disappointed and annoyed with himself for not checking before we drove there. In hindsight it didn’t really matter as the drive, the views of Lake Pedder and Scott’s Peak were beautiful. We also went to Gordon Dam, the dam wall was 140m high and they abseil from it, the wall was built in an arc for extra strength and at a lower cost. The Dam wall gave a beautiful view of Gordon Lake.

The day was quite good considering the forecast, even though we missed out on our hike, we had a lovely drive. It was over 450km and 7:12 hours driving time without stops. We headed home about 3.30pm and arrived in Hobart about 6pm to another B&B tonight. We are getting a little soft, but the nights have been very cold. Only 1° last night so the accommodation has been welcomed.

So yesterday we were as far south as you could go, today as far to the south west as you can go. We have travelled far and wide so far this holiday, I will be interested to see all the roads we travel by the end of the holiday.

The Gordon Dam, also known as the Gordon River Dam, is a major gated double curvature concrete arch dam with a controlled spillway across the Gordon River, located in South West Tasmania, Australia. The impounded reservoir is called Lake Gordon.

The dam was constructed in 1974 by the Hydro Electric Corporation (TAS) for the purpose of generating hydro-electric power via the conventional Gordon Power Station located below the dam wall.