We had already wandered the western end of town. To complete our Waratah stay we took a stroll to the other end of Smith Street, and back again around the quite extensive lake system which is part of Waratah's charm.
St James Anglican Church was our first port of call, and here we discovered that this neat but relatively unremarkable little church building has a claim to fame.
as detailed on the nearby information board.
Beyond this old church, which I have to say, given its age, is a credit to those who have maintained it, we came to the road junction where, on one side the owners of the Waratah Roadhouse makes much of the fact that this is 'tiger country'.
Apart from dispensing fuel, this establishment is the town take-away shop where this sign clearly indicates that they do not welcome those who dump and run! I did take the time to have a chat to the staff when I took this photo....a real sense of humour does prevail in this shop.
I mentioned in my first Waratah missive that to access our camp ground we had turned off the main street at the old mine manager's house.
Well, here it is, opposite the roadhouse. I must admit, were it not for the fact that it is included in the Waratah 'Town of Tin' walk, and does feature a couple of the signs which go with that, we probably would not have recognised it for what it was.
But reflecting on the photos we had seen of 'old Waratah', this was indeed 'the big house', and its location was clearly significant. And there can be no denying that good old Ferd had been a very busy boy, on and off duty!
That's it for the local history bit, so now we jump to the other end of town and our stroll around the lake
where this good walking track allowed us to do just that in comfort.
Let me pause here for a quick reminder of how this all works (and to have another play with my new toy.....the arrows on the photo). Red=the mine managers' house, yellow=the start of our walk,blue=the iron bridge and white=the last bridge we crossed to return to camp.
As you can see from this photo our short walk took us around the western end of the lake system where a metal cutout on the bank lets all and sundry know that another of Waratah's attractions is the chance to spot a platypus in the lake.
As we walked on towards the road on the southern side of the lake we were able to view the old iron bridge from a different angle, this time with the scared landscape of the Mount Bischoff mine site as a backdrop.
A public picnic shed
and kiddies' playground are features of the park on the southern side of the lake
and just beyond these we came to the pedestrian bridge
from which we could view this rocky section of the connecting stream
and this lovely leafy lakeside area.
From here too we could see across to the road bridge
which I had crossed on my trip to Corinna a couple of days ago.
And with that we were had completed the circuit.
We weren't the only ones out and about. These geese had been our constant camp companions ever since our arrival, and when they took to honking I could easily understand why the Romans of ancient days used these birds as sentries.
And that, dear readers, completes my take on Waratah. What a wonderful stay this had been, and as I mentioned previously, we could not have been more pleased with our decision to make 'Tin Town' our Cradle Mountain jump off point.
On the morrow we were off to 'the big smoke', comparatively speaking. The Cruiser was due for a service. We had booked it in to the Toyota dealer in the north coast town of Burnie which was to become our next port of call.
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