Some rain overnight confirmed that Lach’s fixing of a leak had worked with no more dripping indoors, however Lach heard a new drip, or a no longer disguised drip, outside – at least its not inside this time. 

Another relaxed morning before we headed off for some adventures for the girls – lolly shop on a train, a playground, feeding ducks, followed by a milkshake in town. We were hoping this would allow us to squeeze in another couple of vineyards to complete our Coal River Valley wineries. 

The Lolly Shop ‘Chew Choo’ which is on an old locomotive which was built by Robert Stephenson in the UK – it houses a lolly shop, a pancake restaurant, a cafe, a doily shop and a children’s shoe shop. The shop was unfortunately closed, but the girls (and Lach) had a look around the well restored train before we got back in the car to pick up the Cluedo board from Emma’s work which we left on Sunday.

The heavens opened so we decided that the playground would be a bit wet, but ducks like the rain so we went and fed them anyway. There were plenty of ducks at The Duck Park in Kingston beach, a white one which we named ‘Jemima’ and there were also two pacific gulls which were more friendly than we have see before (even a local lady commented that she hasn’t seen pacific gulls so close to humans before).

We headed into Hobart for a morning coffee at a cafe which i remembered from my visit years ago with mum and dad. It was in the Atrium behind Henry Jones Art Hotel – it was covered with plenty of room for the girls to run around and some nice art galleries to wonder around. Lach and I took it in turns to walk around the galleries whilst the girls pretended to ride horses around the courtyard – the majority of the people at the cafe were having business meetings but didn’t seem too bothered by the children having fun.

We decided that we should head off to Stefano Lubiana Wines, which we have attempted to do twice, before having lunch in town. So we piled into the car, the rain had stopped by now, and so we explained to the girls we would do a winery, then lunch, then the lolly train (as it was due to open at 11). They were happy and we were happy that they were happy. I looked up the address and realised that it was closed on Tuesday’s. I then looked up Agrarian Kitchen (recommended to us by Donna) for lunch, but it is also closed on Tuesdays. Seeing as we were in the car already, we decided to head back to Richmond to finish the Coal River Valley region of the vineyards we wanted to tick off our list. Puddleduck Vineyard was our first stop – starting with watching a very serious race of remote controlled yachts on a tiny little pond.

The shop was full of all types of ducks you could imagine, and I started my tasting with a glass of Bubbleduck Puddleduck 2016, which was rather lovely, followed by Riesling 2018, Chardonnay 2017, Rose 2018 and Pinot 2017. It is only a small vineyard of 5 hectares and they only bottle 1500 a year. We left there and headed for a quick lunch at the bakery in Richmond. Such a beautiful village with sandstone villages and lot of history. The Richmond bridge is Australia’s oldest bridge still in use and was completed in 1825. St Johns Catholic church is also considered the oldest Roman Catholic Church in Australia, built in 1836. We found a lolly shop, which the girls decided to spend some of their money in, it had all the lolly jars behind the counter where the sweets were weighed out. Reminded me of my school tuck shop. Pear drop’s, bonbons, jelly babies…. Audrey spent $3.50 and Ava spent $5.70, as they wanted money left over to spend at Chew Choo’s. We then crossed the road to a Puzzle Shop – it was fantastic. We left there with a few items to entertain ourselves during the rest of the stay in case of inclement weather, which included a puzzle board, and a 3D puzzle of the globe.

Back in the car we agreed with the girls to do a d-tour via one last vineyard to Chew Choo’s, so we headed up to Campania to visit Domaine-A/Stoney vineyard. The cellar door has been closed for a while and re-opened on 1st December, so we headed up their beautiful driveway via some lavender and a bee hive, but the cellar door was very closed. No-one in sight anywhere, we drove around even up to the private property at the end, then backdown to the front gate and pressed the buzzer – nothing. Conclusion is that their website is incorrect and it didn’t in fact re-open on the 1st December, and that its most likely closed on Tuesdays, along with a lot of places in Tasmania. Not meant to be…no more wine tasting for the day.

We arrived at Chew Choo’s, but the door was closed with a note saying it was closed today and tomorrow due to unforeseen circumstances – lucky we had already been to a lolly shop.

The sky started to clear when we arrived back at the van. So Lach packed away as much as he could ready for our departure tomorrow morning to Bruny Island. He also started his preparation of our delicious dinner – ‘Special Chicken’ – my mouth waters just at the thought of it. It will be a first for him to cook it on a BBQ, but it will be just as divine I am sure.

We collected a lot of brochures from the Tourist office today, so we can continue our research to ensure we capture as much of Tasmania as we can. 

Bruny Island next stop…