Welcome to "Dolphin Sands Road!"

There’s a stretch of road atop a sandbar that separates Moulting Lagoon from Great Oyster Bay.  This sandbar isn’t quite big enough to reach all the way across Great Oyster Bay, meaning that if you want to travel by road from Freycinet National Park to the tiny bayside town of Swansea you are forced to go around Moulting Lagoon.  In a car, this is probably not much trouble at all; carrying your tent and essential belongings on a bike riding around Tasmania, this is somewhat of an inconvenience. 

What could have been a 15 km ride along a beautifully named road on the beachside, becomes a torturous 48km ride backtracking on roads already travelled for the sake of an inlet 493m across.  To top it off, there used to be a bloke who operated a ferry service (AKA chuck your bike on the back of his tinny), but “he stopped that years ago”, according to one helpful local who also commented “you could probably chuck your bike over at low tide”.

It is really quite hard to understand the physical and emotional toll that Dolphin Sands Road has taken from Kat and myself.  As we completed the “detour” and passed Dolphin Sands Road (in January 2014) from the west, we raised our fists angrily and shouted “Dolphin Sands Road!” with menacing voices. 

When choosing a blog name we considered many names but none felt quite right. Kat got frustrated that some of our preferred names were already taken and exclaimed "Dolphin Sands Road!" whilst shaking her fist. Then she realised what the potential of what had become one of our everyday expressions.

And that is why our blog is named “Dolphin Sands Road!”, because sometimes you need to go the long way to get anywhere in this world, something we like to keep in mind when “no tent” incidents occur, or anything else that disrupts your plans.  Sometimes you also end up with a funny story to tell. Other times you realise later, it was the journey and not the destination you were after all along.