Swansea-Bicheno-St Marys-Fingal-Campbell Town-Lake Leake-Swansea

View Larger Map We travelled up Elephant Pass on our way to St Marys through wooded mountains, when we came across a pancake place, called Elephant Pancakes. Both Drew & I ordered savoury pancakes - which were lovely, but the cost was a little too high. The pancake shop was near a craft shop which we will have to explore another day. When we travelled through the little hamlet of St Marys which is a small township nestled at the junction of the Tasman Highway and the Esk Highway on the East Coast of Tasmania,just 10 kilometres from the coast. You can reach the town from the coast by crossing the mountains via St Marys & Elephant Pass. It has a population of 522. The town is part of the Break O'Day Council. It offers a range of accommodation, a craft gallery, bakery, shops and supermarkets, and the St Marys Hotel, built in 1916, which dominates the town centre. Then onto the next town which is Fingal which is a township with a population of approximately 400 in an elevated valley in the North-East of Tasmania. Located 237 km east of Launceston via the Tasman Highway and 249 km north east of Hobart. The Fingal Valley lies east - west, adjacent to the coast and at a low elevation. It is surrounded by the forests of the Eastern Tiers which are managed by Forestry Tasmania, with extensive logging being carried out in the area over many years. Fingal came into existence in 1827 when it was established as a convict station. It grew dramatically, if briefly, after the discovery of gold at Mangana, 10 km north west of Fingal, in 1852. This discovery is widely regarded as the first discovery of payable gold in Tasmania Mining for various types of ore including Gold, Tin and Wolfram has traditionally sustained another large segment of the population but now the only mining is carried out by the Cornwall Coal Company which directly employs 60 persons. The landscape is rural and several medium size landholdings still derive an income from agriculture, grazing sheep (for wool and fat lambs) and cattle as well as cropping. Common cash crops are poppies (for morphine production), potatoes, wheat and other grain and fodder crops. As we drove through the agriculture rich plains we noticed diversity of both cattle and sheep being able to be farmed on the one property. From Fingal we drove to Avoca which is a small village located 81 kms south-east of Launceston. Avoca and the surrounding area had a population of 123. Avoca is situated on the banks of the South Esk River and was first settled in the 1830s. It was originally named St. Paul's Plains by the explorers who surveyed the area in 1833. The area was officially settled in 1834 as a farming, coal and tin mining village. Today mines in the area have closed and Avoca serves only as a farming community.