Tasmanian Country Towns - Odd Places

As we have been driving around Tassie, we have obviously occasionally passed through or spent nights in a variety of small country towns - as opposed to Hobart which whilst it has a slightly provincial feel to it, is not a small town.

All these towns had a number of things in common we have found, namely they are extremely friendly to strangers such as us, they are all remarkably sleepy and they tend to have very wide and underused streets. By the last point I mean that one can wander around in the middle of the road with almost no chance of getting hit by one or other of the various Utes (flat bed vans) that are the main form of transport in these areas.

 

Another thing they seem to have in common is pie shop/bakeries. Pies, mainly beef ones, but there are a plethora of other types, form a very important part of Aussie public eating, and in all the small country towns we have stopped in, there would always be at least one pie bakery in the middle of the high street offering a wide assortment of meat pies cooked in the place and coffee.

We tried a number of these pies, and by and large they are delicious I have to say, My favourite being what is called a Chunky Beef Pie. The name says it all, it is filled with a delicious mix of reasonably large chunks of well cooked beef in a rich gravy with a variety of vegetables as well.. A total meal in one pie. As you will see from the photo, they are about the right size for a filling meal for one adult.

Funnily enough, those country villages we came across that seem to consist of nothing more than a single short main street with a general store/garage/news agent/pub all in one shop radiated a much more energetic feeling of being alive than their slightly larger counterparts and looked like they might be fun to live near to.
 

Actually, all over Tassie we found that those houses and farms stuck well away from any towns or villages all seemed to have a sort of friendly and chaotic feel to them, as well as often a very iconoclastic attitude to how gardens and houses ¨should¨ be, which appealed to us a lot. Not being too fond of neat, we enjoyed seeing such things as these two past their sell by date vehicles simply turned into sort of totem poles and simply stuck on top of large tree stumps (and in passing, noticed that their letter box was also a small vehicle stuck on top of a post).

We saw many examples of this sort of thinking all over Tassie in the country, and liked it a lot, obviously the independent thinking that Australia was famous for is alive and well in the Tasmanian countryside if not in its towns.