Motel World with the Abel Jazzman

Motel World with the Abel Jazzman
Launceston, Australia

Launceston, Australia

After a sweaty night with a malfunctioning fan, we had an early start to get packed up and on the road to the boat. It was a little concerning when we woke up to find that every other van around us also on their way to the boat had long departed and we were all alone. We just had to hope that our google map planning of the route to the boat plus the morning traffic was correct and we were not going to miss the boat.

The sun was shining and it looked like a beautiful day to be sailing, but with the infamous Bass Straight to cross it was any bodies guess as to whether we would be enjoying the sea views or just clutching at sick bags for the 9 hour crossing.

Being the flash packers that we are and also based on the fact that the crossing to Tasmania was extortionate and a cabin was only £20 extra, we treated ourselves to a cabin for the day crossing. Having been on a few boats on our travels we were extremely pleased with our purchase when we saw our beautiful sea view room with crisp white linen.

Getting to the boat was thankfully without incident, we did have the odd heart palpitation when we saw the traffic but we made it and were headed onto the boat before we knew it. There was one small hiccup, in that a vertically challenged member of the land crew advised us that our gas bottle was not suitably fixed in its cupboard and had to be removed. We advised him that we didn’t have a spanner to which he just shrugged his shoulders and told us that it had to come out. The less than helpful man with a serious attitude problem eventually called someone else to bring us a spanner. Eventually the problem was resolved by us removing our entire gas burner hob with the gas bottle attached and putting it in the cage to be transported separately, how that is safer than it being held safely in place in our cupboard is beyond me but hey ho, problem solved.

In our cabin we quickly settled in, did a circuit of the boat to see what was on board and watched as we departed Melbourne and headed out into the great blue yonder.

We stocked up on guide books and leaflets from the onboard Tourist Information to plan our stay and retreated to our cabin. Before long it was clear that this was the best £20 we had spent in a long while. We drew the curtains had a nap, watched a film, had a nap, ate some lunch, had a nap, watched another film and probably had some snacks and a nap. Before we knew it the announcements were being made that the boat would shortly be arriving in Devonport. I was devastated, I could have easily done another 9 hours of this.

As we arrived late in the evening we had booked a camp site just around the corner from the harbour and joined the rest of the boat setting up camp there for the night. Funnily enough we had met a nice couple in Melbourne the night before and low and behold they pulled in next to us in Devonport.

There was something instantly different about Tassie….. oh yeah, it was absolutely freezing! We were donning our pyjamas that we hadn’t needed since we first arrived in Perth and were so pleased that we had gone shopping in a heat wave to buy an extra duvet as boy did we need it. The fan was safely stowed in its box and we were taking to drinking excessive amounts of tea and coffee in bed just to use the stove to warm the van up. This was something of a shock to the system.

It was pretty funny the next morning waking up to see little La Toya parked in amongst all the huge mobile homes, she was by far the smallest and oldest girl on the campsite.

Our first day in Tassie we were headed to Launceston. Anyone from Cornwall will be disgusted to hear that the Aussies have taken our local town name and destroyed it by pronouncing it Laun-ces-ton rather than Laun-ston.

Anyway our first taste of Tassie was going to be another Help-x job, a totally different kind to what we were used to, we were going to be volunteering at a Motel in exchange for a free room. For anyone who has not travelled Australia, Motels are the exclusive hotels of the more rural and smaller towns, outside of the big cities you are unlikely to find hotels largely because everyone drives and needs to park so Motels are generally single story rooms with a car park space out in front. We had by now experienced a couple of Motels, but sadly generally in bad circumstances of heatwaves or car breakdowns so this was to be something of a treat.

En-route to Launceston we had set our self a bit of a mission, we discovered part way through our journey through Oz that the Aussies have something of a fixation on making huge resin things at the side of the road for advertising. Our first taste had been the Bowen Mango and from there we were hooked. Our Tom-Tom was programmed to take us to all the big things in Australia and Tassie had an awesome selection for us to find.

Our route to Launceston took us to the giant coffee pot in Deloraine, which was actually a fuel storage container for some haulage company down a back lane to nowhere and a huge set of cricket stumps to celebrate some famous cricketer who was from Westbury. Both were very exciting, and just made us more aware how sad our lives have become that finding a huge coffee pot in a car park is a highlight in our day. We really need to get out more, or perhaps we need to stay in more??!!

We eventually made it to Launceston and with our trusty Tom-Tom leading the way we pulled into the Able Tasman Motor Inn. We didn’t really know what to expect and with the usual nervous energy that you get turning up for your first day at work we walked into reception. I am not sure who we expected to meet, I guess some middle age Aussies who have been running the motel forever. What we actually met was a beautiful young Cassandra who with Duncan bought the motel just over a year ago and were renovating and building the business from the tired and forgotten motel that it had become.

We had a chat, met the ever lovable Rupert the dog and met Duncan who gave us our gardening job list to start the following day.

Once we were settled into our lush room with a huge bed, ensuite bathroom and a tv we set off to get some food and to have a little look around the area. We also had one more job to do…… Get La Toya looked at by a garage. Since she had her new radiator she had been drinking coolant like it was going out of fashion and whilst we couldn’t see any leaks it was pretty clear that she had one somewhere or so we hoped as that was the best case scenario. We pulled into the local Repco which was fast becoming one of our new local favourites along with K-Mart and Big W and thankfully the mechanic agreed to do a pressure test for us to check for leaks. With baited breath, on our hands and knees, literally, we watched as coolent poured all over the floor. It is not often that people would be delighted to see this but we were as it meant La Toya just needed a replacement jubilee clip. $100 lighter we were back on the road and finally after a few more days of obsessively checking the coolant and watching the thermostat we could finally confirm that La Toya was fixed!!

Our first day at work we had a long list of gardening chores to keep us occupied, from mowing, strimming, trimming, weeding and reshaping. As usual for the benefit of the blog we were posing for photos throughout our morning much to the amusement of Cassandra who was laughing at us from the reception.

After our mornings work and our morning chat with Cass, Duncan and after Ruperts morning ear rubs we set off on a day trip to Cataract Gorge. It was a beautiful warm and sunny day and when we opened La Toya there was a strange smell of French cheese emanating from within. It turns out that on our journey from Melbourne a bottle of milk had been leaking in the fridge and had in turn leaked out of the fridge and onto the carpet. I can confirm that this is an occasion where it was worth crying over spilt milk as I then spent the next week using every cleaning product and machine I could get
my hands on to fix the smell. Thank goodness we were not having to sleep in her as this would not have been a pleasant experience.

Anyway I digress, Cataract Gorge is a small but beautiful attraction just outside of Launceston with a chairlift which takes you up the side of the gorge. At the top the grounds were full of wallabies and peacocks and there was a rather nice looking café where we decided to treat ourselves to a Devonshire Tea. Cream teas have become something of a staple in our diets and this was by far one of the best we had even if Tim had to fight to save his from a large and hungry lady peacock.

Initially we had decided that 4 weeks in Tasmania would be enough and we would Helpx for the first 2 and plan our travels and then set off to explore for 2 weeks. During our planning we quickly realised that there was more to see in Tassie than 2 weeks would allow so we decided that we would cut short our Helpx.

The next couple of days we finished our gardening chores, we scraped clean some badly painted window, we folded sheets, helped clear breakfast away and generally spent our time chatting and getting to know Cass and Duncan.

The Friday night that we were with them it was Festivale in Launceston, one of Tassie’s biggest food, drink and music festivals and Cass and Duncan decided to take a rare night off and invited us to join them for a night out. We initially had a couple of drinks at the Motel where Tim asked Cass if she had designed the AJ sign, to which he was quickly advised that it is AT for the Abel Tasman. Opps. However from the faux pas the Abel Jazzman was born and forever in my mind the big Abel outside the motel will be playing a saxophone! We set off with our camp chairs and picnic blanket and set up a pitch at what proved to be one of the nicest most civilised festivals I have ever been to. We drank Tasmanian wine, ate amazing food (well we all ate good food except Duncan who chose Trout Sausage?!?) and had so many laughs that our ribs hurt. As the festival drew to a close we rolled outside to be met by a whole bunch of free buses lined up ready to drop us home. It was a little concerning that neither Cass or Duncan seemed to know where we were going, but frankly none of us cared, we were having far too much fun taking selfies and generally being rowdy. We did make it home and then spent the next few hours propping up the bar at the motel laughing, crying and generally putting the world to rights.

As always we had landed on our feet again, Cass and Duncan or Casso and Dunco as we had now rebranded them were the most amazing helpx hosts and very quickly we were all great friends. We spent more time chatting than working and exchanged horror stories with Duncan about his time in China, shared tales with Cass about our turtle project and our shared love of the oceans. Cass and Duncan have a 10 year plan to make the Abel Jazzman a modern motel to attract conferences and more of a business traveller. Once they have achieved this then they are going to spread their wings and travel the world to catch up with some of their helpxers. Hopefully in the future we can recreate our night at festivale, propping up our bar somewhere in South America, we definitely owe you a few beers Cass and Duncan!!

We did have a couple of outings around Launceston, one was a trip to the Tamar Valley. Not long into our journey we felt like we were facing a losing battle and with the wind blowing us sideways and generally not having much fun we turned around and headed to the Swiss village or Gridlewald. This village was developed in the 1980’s in the style of a Swiss village by a Dutch immigrant to Tasmania, after he sold his Purity supermarket chain to Woolworths. It is built around an artificial lake and the properties all have Swiss architectural style. Frankly this is an odd little place with a few wooden houses, a wooden boat, a few cafes and a view point that we were nearly blown off of. We decided to head home and call it a day. We were beginning to think that we were being wooly Poms, but on watching the news and seeing that someone had been killed in Hobart by a falling tree because of the high winds, it seemed we definitely made the right decision.

Our last evening outing we headed to a river to see if we could find any Platypus. It was a really busy but beautiful picnic spot, lots of dogs and boats and somewhere that we would never have found on our own, one of the major benefits of Helpx is actually getting to see Oz like a local and not just the tourist hotspots that every Tourist Information centre sends you to. Initially we thought we had found a platypus and I was beaming with excitement, but on closer inspection it was a log pretending to be one, gutted. We waited and waited and waited, but sadly the platypus was a no show. We hate driving at dust, dawn or in the dark as there are so many nocturnal animals with no road sense who insist on crossing the road but thankfully we managed to get home without any animal incidents.

Sadly that time came for us to bid fond farewells to Cass, Duncan & Rupert. 2 incredible people who had shown us a great time, been kind and wonderful, and who we most definitely plan to see again. Who knows where or when but I can guarantee there will be wine and we will try to source some trout sausage for you Duncan.

Just time for one more photo…… the Able Jazzman is definitely on our Big Things of Australia Map!!!

Thank you Casso, Dunco, Rupo and the Abel Jazzman for introducing us to Motel World, we miss you x x x x

Thankfully with La Toya now smelling of flowers and not camembert we were back on the road and roughing it like real travellers.