Whispering Spirit Ponies is located along near the end of a long road called Swamp Road which snakes its way up the hill in Franklin.
I'd looked on Airbnb for accommodation and this was the closest 'whole house' accommodation nearest to Huonville (as I was going there for the Huon Valley Mid-Winter Festival).
It's a long muddy driveway into their property, there's also a little farm gate shop present, which I only realised as I was looking around to work out where to go, and to do a U-Turn from where I'd parked. And because a Nissan small SUV had followed me in and was now giving me odd looks.
There was a sign for 'Reception' though not much indications beyond that.
I met Heidi who directed me around to the back of their property. Heidi's German, met her husband too, German accents still strong despite having been in Tasmania for a while I think.
Heidi directed me to "Lemon Cottage", not what it's called on Airbnb, and I realised there'd been some careful photography of the cottage. It's not a fully independent cottage, rather it's semi-detached, joined I think through the main house's laundry and storage rooms. The door that linked the two was locked.
Fireplace in corridor linking kitchen to lounge.
It's called Lemon Cottage as there's a large lemon tree growing in the covered area near the front door.
The cottage turned out to be 4 rooms; a lounge room, bathroom, bedroom and kitchen, and in the corridor linking the latter three was the wood burning fireplace.
Heidi provided me a loaf of bread from their farmer’s shop. The ‘Farmers Loaf’ was...solid, and has an ingredient of ‘quark’ in it. I would've looked up what that is, but couldn't while I was there in the cottage, for reasons I'll get to shortly.
The bathroom didn't have an extractor fan and the shower looks like it’s circa 1970s, the same with the kitchen taps which also look like they’re circa 1970s.
The basin in the bathroom is a probably a Bunnings special from the last few years.
The hot water is provided by a tank inside the bathroom, there’s also a washing machine inside the bathroom as well.
There were a range of towels provided, all different colours. Enough for 3 nights of different towels.
The kitchen was a bit of a mixed bag.
There were a few slices of ham in the fridge, which I wasn't game enough to try, along with a few slices of singles-type cheese, two eggs, some butter, pineapple and orange juice, 2L bottle of milk and a bottle of water.
Having travelled a little bit on my road trips I've learnt to travel with my own tea bags, it just makes for a much better tea experience, having unfamiliar tea means you don't relax as easily. I also have sugar and UHT milk in the back as well. (All of this isn't just my obsessiveness it's part of my emergency food box I've got in the back along with a Trangia as part of the 'just in case' kit).
I also have my own kettle (a collapsible one), but didn't think I would need it.
I knew I'd be using the tea, but didn't think I would be using the kettle, and the sugar as well.
In looking around the kitchen I saw the sugar. There were two jars for sugar, both had less than half a jar of sugar in then. The brown sugar had less than a quarter in it. The white sugar had a few lumps in it, which was fine, lumps are just a bit of moisture that's got in. But then as I shook the jar and pushed the spoon around inside it I found that there were some black somethings within the jar.
So I elected to get the sugar from my ute.
Along with my kettle, which as I discovered looking inside the kettle also had a few foreign bits inside and the element seemed like it was malting a little bit.
Because of these observations I was a little wary of the ham that had been left in the fridge. As, while the surfaces and sink of the kitchen were clean, when you paid a little more attention to the minutiae of it, then things seemed to go down hill a little bit.
The a wood burning fire place kept the cottage warm-ish. If you really feed it and continue to feed it full of wood then it would choof out a bit of heat. If you don’t or if you let it go out, which unfortunately I did, even though I filled it full of wood before I went out and turned down the air flow it still chewed through all that and then went out as the wood wasn't very dense.
I did manage to re-light it, but it wasn't quite the same.
There were also two panel heaters, one which is circa 1970s-1980s I know this because it’s a Vulcan brand and we had something that looked almost the same but as a ducted heater control panel in the house when I was growing up.
The other had been purchased in the last 10 years, I elected to use that one to keep the bedroom warm.
But it wasn't.
Not warm in the cottage, I went through a lot of my tea and continued to wear my warm clothing from outside, inside.
Constantly feeding the fireplace and drinking hot drinks kept me...okay? in the temperature department, but not much beyond that.
Then there was the almost, but not totally, no phone reception.
I have an iPhone 8, with Telstra and I could get 1 bar of 3G reception. And that’s only in the lounge room, and if you stand in front of the fire then you’ll probably get that as well.
In the bedroom it’s SOS only or No Service, the same in the kitchen.
It’s amazing that within a 15 minute drive of Huonville, that you can go from 4G reception to 1 bar of 3G. It was astounding, though not the fault of the hosts. Although when I was looking back through the Airbnb listing it does wi-fi, but there was no sign of any wi-fi signals in the cottage at all. Not even password protected or anything, just none.
Now, in writing this up I've looked up the address of the Whispering Ponies on Telstra's coverage map, and it seems to be in the exact middle of a zero coverage spot on the side of the hill, with no 3G or 4G coverage.Any internetting I needed to be doing I had to wait until I was within Huonville where I'd get a 4G signal.
Maybe it's good for people who want a "digital detox" but I like to have some semblance of internet connection.
If I'd known there wasn't going to be any data reception I would have planned for that. Maybe not have stayed there, I'm not sure.
I didn't put a lot of this in my Airbnb review as it is a little petty / obsessive in its observation.
I stayed at the whispering pony saddle club for 2 days, and was cold for both of those days / nights.
Maybe, like Pumphouse Point in a season that isn't winter it'd be nicer.