George Town is at the head of the Tamar River estuary. This is navigable all the way up river to Launceston but large ships don't go that far. It is a very dangerous waterway with many rocks and shallow channels so piloting has always been a big thing here. It has the second oldest pilot service after Sydney.
We toured the Low Head Pilot Station museum which was run by a very chatty and knowledgeable chap. The old-style diving suit was quite incredible. That's a 40lb lead weight around his neck. You wouldn't get me in one let alone dropping down to 300 ft!
Next stop was the Low Head Lighthouse. This is at the entrance to the estuary and there are many other navigation markers all along the route upstream.
In the picture above we are descending down through an area used by Little Blue Penguins. None in residence at this time of day though - just a couple of skittish Wallabies.
Next stop was the Mt George lookout which gives expansive views over the whole area.
Feeling peckish, we headed back to our Motel room and finished off the leftovers from yesterday's lunch before heading out to the Maritime Museum which is just around the corner from where we are staying.
Bass and Flinders were the main surveyors of Van Diemen's Land (aka Tasmania) and circumnavigated it in a small sailing ship called the Norfolk. This was originally built on Norfolk Island by convicts but then deemed illegal when it got to Sydney because it was too big. By that the authorities meant that it could be stolen by escaping convicts allowing them to sail the high seas. Once that was sorted, Bass and Flinders sailed around Tasmania to prove it was actually an island rather than a peninsula.
The museum has a beautiful replica which is now housed inside but it was sailed extensively when first built. It even suffered a complete roll-over in Bass Strait not long before the ill-fated Sydney-Hobart race where many boats we lost or badly damaged in 1998. Apparently the wave was around 22m high - the mast of the boat itself is a mere 12 m!
The small dingy in the foreground of the above photo is a replica of their boat called Tom Thumb. They actually explored the NSW coast from Botany Bay down as far as Illawarra in that tiny thing!
