Launceston to Swansea - November 30th

I guess technically I have never been to Launceston, although I did land in Lanceston airport. A friend who grew up in Tassie told me that Launceston is beyond boring (and he thought Hobart was pretty exciting - I mean, come on!) so when I was planning my trip I decided to go straight to Swansea for the day.

Originally I was hoping to at least drive through the town centre, just to see what Launceston was like only to realise that the airport is 27km south of the town and as a matter of fact, we were going further south so there you go - no Launceston for me.

We took highway one and turned west at Campbell Town. One of the things I really like about Tasmania is that they have really beautiful photos on road signs. It is normally a photo of a landmark or a 'famous' church, etc. This proves to be extremely misleading sometimes. Just after we got onto B34, we saw this road sign that says 'Lake Leake' with a stunning photo of this millon dollar lake view, pink sky with golden clouds as a backdrop.

I have always thought I am the ultimate suck-up for marketing ploy but I then realise that my husband Yuting was 10 times worse. He fell in love with Lake Leake the second he saw that photo and insisted we go check it out, ignoring my protest against the weird name (it sounds like lake 'leak' which is not a good sight if you think about it).

So we turned into the unseal road (feeling a bit nervous as the nice Hertz lady told us that there is a 2000 bucks excess fee if we smash the car on an unseal road) and drove for a few kilometers only to find a really quiet bush and a lake that is not really that exciting. I am sure if you do trout fishing or something like that Lake Leake could be the place to be but obviously we are tourists so I guess the lesson I learnt is that photos can be deceiving and dont trust any places with a weird name.

Swansea was just what I expected, peaceful, great ocean and clean. We stayed at Piermont Retreat, which according to Lonely Planet, is categorised as 'high-end'. We got one of those really cute sand stone cottages and it instantly gave me a home-away-from-home feel.

We got really excited just checking the cottage out, and then we decided to go into town and get some 'fresh local produce' so we can cook our own dinner in the lovely place. The local general store was quite nice, although the steak in the fridge looked a bit fishy. As the non-adventurous tourists we are, we decided to go for frozen Teriyaki chicken and pasta. I was sure I could be more game later on during the trip (which we actually did - it just kind of takes time to wind down and not care you know?).