Tulip Farm

For Craig's mother's 80th birthday present, we took her along the North West Coast of Tasmania with a visit to the Tulip Farm as the highlight of the trip. The Tulip Farm is located just outside the small town of Wynyard where the pastures are lush and the soil rich red brown. To the north is Bass Straight beyond undulating cliffs. To the south beyond the checkerboard of pasture and crop fields are the blue and purple peaks of the highland mountains, their tops still lightly dusted with snow.

The sights were breathtaking, the kind that make you glad to be alive.

It was freezing! Only 7 degrees C at midday so we were very rugged up! The lighthouse in the distance shows how close the farm is to the cliff tops.

If you have ever heard of colour therapy then you will understand when I say that it felt like we were breathing in energy from the intense blocks of colour surrounding us. There were lots of visitors and I could tell they were all feeling the same way by the delight on their faces as we gazed at complete strangers with silly grins!

We had a wonderful time and a suitably memorable one for the 80yr olds birthday. Sometimes the best present you can give someone is....your time. It was a whole day of adventure and enjoyment.

We also went to Penguin hee hee! I can highly recommend the "Groovy Penguin" cafe for breakfast!

Another must see is the emporium of emporiums....Reliquaire of Latrobe, a maze of 20 rooms filled floor to ceiling with dolls, venetian masks, sciencenalia, educational toys, gifts, puzzles, puppets, costumes, cosmetics, antiques, replica Roman and Greek statuary, period restoration ware. Every week is a different theme and the staff are all dressed in costume and everyone who enters is greeted with a character bearing a silver salver of homemade fudge. This trip I bought all the little toys I need for my Christmas bon bons this year. Every year I have a colour theme for Christmas and I make the bon bons (crackers) in kind with all the toys inside following the theme. Everyone loves them and looks forward to them each year and there is lots of playtime at the table!

After Latrobe we stopped at Christmas Hills Raspberry Farm for a very late lunch. Their specialty is raspberries completely encased in rich dark chocolate. You need to pop the whole thing in your mouth at once and as you bite into it the raspberry explodes through the chocolate with intense moist memories of summer.

A blissful day was had and truly you would never think Ann is a day over 65 really!

P.S. I also found some Royal Worcester egg coddlers at the Leven Antique Centre in Ulverstone. The small were $15 and the large $25 which is very good buying for anyone looking for egg coddlers to pass down through the generations.