Pretty nearly all the places in Queenstown said that they did not have vegan options on the menu, couldn't provide vegan options and quite probably wouldn't even if they could. (That last bit might be a bit of an exaggeration but that was the sense you got). They all said that they had lots of gluten free dishes, which would have been excellent had we been travelling with someone with coeliac disease. But we weren't.
One place, however, said that although they didn't have specifically vegan options on the menu they did have food that could be made vegan and that, given notice, they could provide interesting other vegan options. We gave them notice and went for breakfast yesterday.
Tracks cafe is attached to the Queenstown heritage railway station and is open for breakfast and lunch. We arrived as people were buying coffees and teas to take on the heritage steam train tour of the wilderness areas. So we put our breakfast orders in and then went out to watch the train depart.
And then we had our breakfasts. And very lovely they were too. The full breakfast was almost enough for two. They did Freyja a bowl of porridge with almond milk, and a piece of toast with avocado pulp. Simon had avocado toast with poached egg and mushrooms. They also made up a takeaway pack of rice, stir fried vegetables and tofu with some sort of sauce for Freyja to take for lunch. We were very impressed. Their lunch menu doesn't start until 10:30 and we asked for the lunch pack at 9:30. Very obliging, they were.
Right. On we go. To Penguin first, across mountain roads and then dropping down into valleys and coastal plains.
We bought lunch provisions in Penguin - not that we really needed much lunch after the enormous breakfast we had had. But I had oh-so-nearly gone back to Victoria without having had a Tassie scallop pie. They are ubiquitous across Tasmania but you almost never see them in the bakeries and pie shops in Victoria. I make them sometimes, but it's not the same as dropping into your local purveyor of pies and buying one 😀 Fortunately, the Penguin bakery had some.
And then on to Sheffield, just so Freyja and Simon could say they have been. Sheffield, Tasmania has a population of around 1700 and is famous for its murals
Sheffield UK has a population of roughly 550,000 - which is pretty much the population of the whole of Tasmania. Which explains the large tracts of uninhabited wilderness areas in the state. Or possibly, of course, the large tracts of wilderness areas explain the tiny population!
And so on to Launceston, our last port of call for this trip. We decided that, having spent all day in the car, we should go for a walk. The helpful owner of the place we are staying in suggested we go down the track from Zig Zag reserve, where we are staying, down to the main road. "Some people say its a bit of a rough track," she said. "But I don't find it particularly rough". She may not. If you have ancient, dodgy knees such as mine, it wasn't so much a rough track as a rough scramble down irregular, misshapen, uneven stone steps, parts of which had no handrail. Fortunately Freyja volunteered to be my handrail or I think I would have struggled to get all the way down!
Jim had sensibly declined the invitation to join us and had stayed back at the house with the telly.
Anyway. Down we got. And walked along a proper path to the Gorge reserve. We took a trip on the chair lift and had a little wander around. And then came back to the house by road. It might have been hilly and perhaps a bit steep, but at least it didn't upset my knees or my balance. Mind you, my fitbit says that I got over 40 storeys yesterday, and it doesn't count going down. The scramble down those steps hardly registered for anything. It didn't even count most of the steps, I was hanging on so tightly to Freyja or to the handrails!
Back to Melbourne today. We're flying at 11:45. Best get organised, I guess.
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