My destination, after leaving the Devonport dock was Pumphouse Point, Lake St Clair. But I had to get there first.

I had intended to stop in for breakfast at Windows On Westella a fancy cafe at a pickled onion factory in Ulverstone. But the ship got in quite early so I just went to Cafe Squire right near the port, it couldn't be any more average than a pub I went to nearby the last time I went to Tasmania.

Cafe Squire was reasonably priced, but a lot of their big breakfast options included jalapeños, not something I fancied for breakfast, so I opted for eggs, bacon, mushrooms spinach and hash browns.

The hash browns were far too uniform to be anything but commercially produced.

The spinach was very fresh and the meal was a good sized serving.

The orange juice tasted like concentrate.

So, off I departed.

I had intended to go to Ulverstone and then take the B17, then the C123, to Upper Castra, heading for Lake Lea (near Cradle Mountain) and the continue on to Zeehan before heading to Lake St Clair.

But as I'd eaten early I decided there wasn't much point in diverting to Ulverstone, so instead I took the B15, which also headed up towards Cradle Mountain.

I got about 10 minutes along the road only to be stopped by a Subaru with flashing lights. The Tasmanian police officer explained there were power lines down and asked where I was heading, before I could explain she asked 'Cradle Mountain', I replied yeah, close enough. She asked if I was a local and I said 'not remotely', but directed me to head towards Sheffield, when I got closer back towards the town; GPS / phone data wasn't present where we were.

I thanked her and ignored her advice. Deciding instead to follow the next road along; the B16 which would lead me to where I had originally intended to go.

I got about 15 minutes down the road. Only to be stopped by flashing lights and another Subaru.

This police officer pointed to the power lines at a very bad angle and said 'we don't want them falling on anyone, could you turn around and find another way to wherever you were going', he didn't ask where I was heading, nor offer any advice.

At this point I thought about following the police lady's advice and head to Sheffield, but decided to push on to continue along my original path for the B17, which wasn't thankfully blocked by anything.

Following the B17 to Gawler I turned off onto the C123 - Top Gawler Road – the Touring Route. This actually rejoins the B15, which thankfully had bypassed the road block I'd encountered earlier. Following this road (Castra Road) through Sprent to Upper Castra. Then turning onto Spellmans Road (which continues to be the C132).

It is a very, very steep road connecting to near Cradle Mountain. It's also got warnings that caravans and campervans cannot transverse the road.

It's a 15% gradient.

It is a really nice drive however, through plantations of what looked like spruce trees or something similar, quite a broad leaf and a light green foliage, almost blue tinged.

The decent down to almost river level had the steepest decent and dropped you down through the mist before climbing back out had a wonderful magical ætherial quality to it.

From there I headed to Lake Lea and the Vale of Belvoir - Tasmania's only sub-alpine limestone valley.

I didn't really know any of this before I chose it as my first stop of the day, on the map it just looked like an interesting lake with an interesting name associated with it. Also I didn't want to go up Cradle Mountain, and this seemed like an interesting place.

I did give myself a little panic, as I drove around the lake I came to dead end; doing a U-turn I reversed off the road a bit and then when I came to put my ute into drive...wheels spun.

Panicked for a moment before remembering to put it in 4WD low, slowly got myself out of that situation.

I had to have a power nap in Tullah, the previous night's crossing had not done much for me getting a good night's sleep and the two false starts to the day's driving had put me a little bit behind in my driving mood.

So I stopped here for an hour plus.

I had intended to go from Tullah along the C252 Pieman Road to Whaleback Lookout and Reece Dam, but with the power nap, freezing weather and concerns stemming from that, I decided to forgo that diversion and continue ahead to Zeehan.

Narrow road that leads to/away from Spray Tunnel

I was heading for Zeehan and Spray Tunnel, another random place to go and have a look at, and a useful place to use as a checkpoint.

I'd been to Zeehan before, and commented that in the bright sunshine it looked extra grim. Now, visiting it in the dripping rain, overcast on a freezing day, this made it look better, it suited its look a lot more.

Spray Tunnel was reached by heading for the Zeehan golf course and then following a very narrow path down. The tunnel is kind of interesting in a not very sort of way.

The car park is surprisingly large for what is a very narrow road to get there.

As I was leaving the road that led from Spray Tunnel back towards Zeehan I made a wrong turn and ended up on Heemskirk Road for about 20 minutes until I realised my mistake. From that point on I ended up using my GPS / CarPlay a lot more in my ute, as while I had planned and plotted my route out, it was better to know where I wanted to head to and allow the GPS to plot the actual route for me. Or to allow me to divert and it still re-plot a route for me, that would be a safer / more efficient way than making mistakes like this.