Feb 19: Motorized

Burnie -> Rosevears (via Stanley and Wynyard and Penguin)

We packed up and said goodbye and a huge thank you to Lee-Anne. Felicity is riding the holy low-exertion bicycle as she was directed not to strain herself for at least a week post surgery. I’m glad F didn’t realize everything could fit on my bike earlier! (Yes, it’s as heavy and unwieldy as it looks, but not as bad as the infamous Ikea load).
The booked rental car looked small, but we managed to fit in both bikes, and all the gear with room to spare.
With a motor, and maniac F at the wheel, we sped off to Stanley, part of Tasmania we didn’t think we’d be able to see.
It has “the nut” which is a basaltic plug from an old volcano, of which the rest has eroded away.
This beach is the one on the left of the above shot; it was sheltered from the wind by the town.
We’d also heard Stanley was home of the best fish and chips. If it’s true, we didn’t find them. But the dessert was pretty darned delightful!

We’d booked a paper making workshop in Wynyard, so we beetled off to that. Unlike “The Pulp”, Creative Papers is still around after several decades, but they haven’t been bought up by companies with ulterior motives. They produce handmade papers. Handmade does not mean tool free – the beater machines bash fibers into a slurry, and the straight sided vats are perfect for keeping the exactly shaped A-sized screens level. Large felt mats absorb moisture, aided by a huge press, and the sheets dry on moveable vertical walls. Even the little watermark screens we used were much more professional (and effective) than any of my previous paper making attempts!

We learned that you can make paper out of pretty much any plant fiber. At Creative Papers, they use the following:
Recycled cotton towels (consistency)
Cotton thread (pre dyed spools, adds colour)
Hemp (adds strength)
Poops (added texture and fun)
Eucalyptus (remarkably fast growing fiber)
We learned that lignin is a cell structure component in plant fiber, but it defragmemts readily when exposed to UV. For some things (maybe a watercolour you want to last for ages), this matters, so you cook the lignin out, but lignin adds bulk to your slurry, so for things like newspaper where the news will be old and irrelevant in a few days, the lignin makes your slurry go further. The slurry in the vat today was low in lignin with real seeds in it, which was a regular order from an artist who commissions “seedy” paper for cards.

Creative Paper had also bought the paper maché people that Lee-Anne recommended to us. They were made by a duo of artists who have since retired.
We drove through diverse farmland, including tulip farms right on the coast. I bet if you time it right, that would be absolutely stunning.
We stopped for groceries and a snack in Penguin, which is a cute little seaside town with a beachfront esplanade and a sense of humour.
It is a bummer not to be biking, especially when the weather is gorgeous and sections of our route today had glorious separate bike paths.
But, we made it to Rosevears and are relieved this plan B is working out!

Alice and Flis

The sadness is real.

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