Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Murals and Topiary

We woke up this morning and it was still raining heavily. According to the weather forecast last night it was very widespread over Tasmania. We checked with the visitors centre at Cradle Mountain and they told us it wouldn't be worthwhile us going down there because we wouldn't be able to see anything so we decided to go down to Sheffield through Wilmot and then to Railton.

On the way to Wilmot we went along the letterbox trail. A lot of the properties along Wilmot Road have made their letterboxes a little different to normal. There are some that are made in a similar design to the house that they are outside. Other letterboxes look like Ned Kelly, angels, motor mowers and Tassie Devils. We took about 30 photos of these letterboxes so there were a few.

Today Deb took me to Paradise!!! On the road to Sheffield from Wilmot we passed the turnoff to a village called Paradise. It was one place that we saw and wanted to go to and the other was Promised Land. We'll have to wait for our next visit to go to the Promised Land. I would also like to visit Nowhere Else when we come back.

Sheffield is the town of Murals. A few years ago Sheffield was going through the doldrums and a local person got the idea to put up some murals around the town. Evidently once the murals went up so did the fortunes of the town. There is a mural competition every year and there is a mural square where the murals of the competition are displayed for a year. After the year they are sold off and the murals of the next competition are displayed. They are really good. Some we didn't like but most were nice.

Railton is the town of Topiary. Topiary is the art of making figures out of bushes. They have a frame where the shrubs are encouraged to grow through. When the frames are filled the shrubs are pruned to shape. There are shapes like elephants, people and other animals. Some are not yet fully developed but when all of them are there will be about 50 to 60 of them around the town.

We came back through Devonport and booked our accommodation for Thursday and Friday nights. We have to leave here tomorrow so we thought it would be a good idea to get a place close to the ferry. The ferry is only about 5 minutes away from where we are staying.
Hopefully we will be going down to Cradle Mountain tomorrow. The rain started to go away late this afternoon so we might be able to see something tomorrow.

I'll let you know in tomorrow's blog.

Den

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