After buying some provisions at the índoor' Salamanca market & having some good fish & chips (made with a blue eye Travalla fish that Taz is famous for), I headed down to Fortesque Bay for my first night camping... the van was great - although it was a little top heavy, which made driving in the wind a little challenging (learning to drive in Wyoming helped out ;0)
I didn't get there until sunset, which it turned out was a good time to try to find penguins... the ranger told me about a rookery that was just down the beach... he gave me a special red film to put over my flashight to keep from blinding the birds and I was off. Let me tell you, it was dark... there was no moon and it was a stormy night so no stars... this also meant the ocean was pretty crazy, big waves crashing all around, which was a little unnerving at night.When I got to where the penguins should be I camped out on some rocks - I was pretty sure I was in the right place becasue it stank... I was expecting that from what Bella had told me... well I was getting pretty relaxed at one point (even lying on a rock) when a huge wave came in... just about got me and sent me scampering up the hill as fast as I could (in the dark) - as I jumped over the rock behind me I came face to face with this site:
It was Sealy the Dead Seal... guess that wasn't penguin poo I was smelling... well if any penguins were coming i'm sure my yell scared them off. Needless to say - I was pretty unsettled at this point. There were some dark woods behind me and dead things around me and huge waves coming in... I got myself under control and waited another 20 minutes but when it started raining I decided I'd had enough and headed back... ah well there will be more penguins...The next day I hiked up to the Freycinet cliffs, it was a spectacular walk and a great view from the top.
It was spectaular & VERY high up from the water on a sheer cliff face... so very cool. At one point I looks back into the bay and say a whale jump!!! I stayed for another 1/2 hour with some fellow hikers looking but we never saw it again...
It was hard to leave that place, but I moved on and drove down to Port Arthur in the afternoon. It was a fairly nortorious penal colony for 50 years or so... pretty harsh conditions there - so lots of history to learn about. It was able to turn some convicts around with skills and release them (most didn't go back to Europe though - in fact 1/3 of all Tazzie's had relatives there).
That night I headed up to Freycinet National Park - I got there after the sun went down so was able to see lots of Wallabies standing by the road - sort of like seeign deer and night, you the brakes and hold your breath, lukily I didn't hit any... lots of dead one on the road though... the next morning I was able to see what they really looked like in the parking lot for the hike site... they are really cute - these come up to your waist or so:
The only living thing you really see while you're driving around are echidnas... which are very fun to watch - they're slow and bumbly - don't worry about cars or anything much with all those spines... so you do see some of them squishes once in a while as well...
It was nice hike up a mountian and then down into Wineglass bay (descibed as one of the top beaches in the world -and I could see why):
On the topic of hiking - Tazzie's are really proud of their weather and how frequently it changes... every one of them made some kind of comment to me about 'the Taz hiking outfit' which is a weatherproof coat on top shorts on the bottome and layers to add/remove... it was true - I would always start off bundled up (freezing) and end up in as little as possible (sweating)... then it would suddenly shift back... it was pretty crazy.. these are typical "'beore/ after' pics:
The beach was so cool - the biggest, most perfectly formed waves I've ever seen... all the way up and down a huge beach... didn't do too much wading though - besides the water being freezing cold there were these blue bottles floating in it which I was told packed quite a wallop if you got stung by them...
I did get wet a few times though and collected some beautiful shells (including one that shoudn't have touched as it looked like it might be a Cone Shell - which if the little animal is alive inside can deliver a poison toxic enough to kill you - I was pretty sure it was hollow before I picked it up... its a great shell, what can I say).
Then it happened! I spotten some dolphins very close to the beach - that was cool enough, but then they did something I would never expect... they rode the waves in like body surfers! I was really neat to watch - they did it all the way up and down the beach as long as I was there... at first I thought they were having fun... but I think they must have been using the waves to hunt somehow - I"m attaching a movie, don't know how well it'll work:
The next day I drove up the coast (which was great with the big waves) to St. Helen's and then across a rainforest (which huge ferns and very windy mountain roads)... the views were really great- everything there is so amazingly green:
I stayed in Mole Creek campground and the next day I explored a wetcave with a river running through it - it also had glowworms in the ceiling! They turned off the lights and it looked like green stars covering the to of the cave... very cool. When I cam out of the cave I felt like was coming out into jungles a dinosaur might have seen:
I also went into a animal reserve and was able to see soem Koala Bears and my first tasmanian Devils - which are so cute you can't understand why they're called devils - until two of them come together that is - they ALWAYS make these aggresive screams at each other and bear their teeth - usually ending up in one chasing the other away... super aggresive - they were really fun to watch, I stayed for 2 hours watching them...
I drove on that night to Cradle Mountian - as i was taking a shower (the first I'd had in 3 days so one of the best ever ;0) this guy came trapsing into the shower with me - I about dropped the shampoo on my toe... it was fun to watch afterwards though (its a quoll). I seen on the night before with her baby clinging to her back in the trees, but it was dark and hard to get a pic...
I started my hike the next morning with the intention of making it to the lookout for Cradle Mountian (how picturesque is that):
Then I saw snow in the distance so decided I could at least hike to that.... I played a little...
At this point I realized that it was only 2-3 hours or so more hiking to get to the summing so off I went - I'm SO glad I did, it was spectacular on top! The end bit was pretty challening, jumping from boulder to boulder and pulling yoruself up foot by foot - at the to I hunkered down between to huge columns of stone and had some lunch...
By the time I made it down (and did a hike around a lake) the sun was starting to go down, which meant it was the perfect time to see more kangaroos/ wallabies... the one thing I hadn't seen at this point was a wombat, so I was on the lookout. I heard some rustling in the bushes and waited for a few minutes and sure enough this one eventually came down to the trail (its about the size of a dog).
They are pretty much blind - so it didn't suprise me too much when it walked right up to my shoes! This in sniffed back and forth for a few seconds (never looking up to see what it had run into) and took a nibble on one of my shoelaces... well that enough so I finally made a movement back. That startled it pretty bad - but the crazy thing is it came at the shoe for more - I guess my shower helped... I backed up the trail and it kept coming after me - I was laughing the whole time ;0) It finaly got the idea and went back off into the bush..
The next day was a long (6 hour) but very scenic drive back to Hobart to catch my flight up to Melbourne.
Tasmania is, without a doubt, one of the most beautiful outdoor experiences of my life - it could only have been better with some of you there with me...
