They call it “Tazzie” here in Tasmania but spell it Tassie. I was planning on just doing one blogpost for Tasmania, but we are half-way through our road trip and I already have way too many awesome photos. This place is beautiful and I need to share what we have seen so far. We are now in car road trip mode, which has turned out to work just fine for us while Meg is still recovering from the broken knee. We are about 4 weeks after surgery and she is doing fine getting in and out of the car and doing some short sightseeing walks. We have seen a lot in just 5 days and we are feeling better about not letting a bum knee cancel our Tasmania plans.
We flew from Melbourne to Launceston, Tasmania which is the 2nd biggest town on the island with about 90,000 people. I went for a bird walk in the morning and saw a lot of new birds but also saw my first Wallabies. I didn’t think think they would be in the marshes but there is a lot I don’t know about Tasmanian wildlife. Wallabies are very common, and we have now seen quite a few. Most are dead on the side of the road after being hit by cars. After the bird walk, we packed up and started off on our road trip. The first stop was the Cataract Gorge in Launceston. It had a ski lift to take you across the river and a suspension bridge that you were supposed to walk back on. We were fine seeing everything from a short trail on the cliff. We saw a wallaby there too! Next stop was Little Blue Lake. It was an old mine turned into a very blue lake because of the aluminum and other minerals that were mined. We then made it to Saint Helens a small town of the coast on the “Bay of Fires”. The orange algae on the rocks made for some great pics the next few days.
We spent the next day driving along the coast to the town of Bicheno. Lots of white sand beaches but also lot of beautiful orange stained rocky beaches. We had our Tasmanian Lobster roll at the Lobster shack while we watched some fur seals sun themselves on the rocks. The seal pics weren’t that great but I was able to get a lot of great sunrise and sunset pics in Bicheno. I was hoping to see the little penguins that sometimes come to shore at night and have been spotted sleeping under the porches at the resort we stayed in. Unfortunately, we didn’t see any. I still had fun taking pics as the weather had changed from clouds of the first couple of days.
OK- thats enough Bicheno pictures…. but I have many more…. The next day we started in Freycinet National Park. This is our first National Park but we will hit many more in Tasmania so we bought a multiday pass. It is known for it’s beautiful beaches and cliffs as well as some big multi day backpacking hikes. We just saw the beaches and cliffs that were relatively accessible.
The next day brought us to Port Arthur, home of the Port Arthur Penal Colony which is a UNESCO World Heritage site so we had to see it. It cost US$35 to get in, but included a scenic boat trip to see some of the sites in the bay. Australia is famous for being started as a “transportation” site for British prisoners and this was one of the first jails. It was a big site with a lot of old jail buildings to see from the 1800’s so they had a electric cart to help those with mobility issues. Meg wanted to walk 🙂 We ended up doing over 8500 steps. Probably not what the doctor ordered, but she was really proud of her crutch walking and we didn’t want to be on the cart with the “old” people. Healing must be happening inside that leg brace!
After the jail tour we were a bit tired, but it didn’t stop our site seeing. We needed to see some more oceans cliffs, another blowhole, an arch and the “tessellated pavement”. The Tessellated pavement was a geological phenomenon where the flat rocks on the beach were cracked and looked like tiles. Really weird and interesting. We then drove a couple of hours to the “big” town of Hobart. Hobart is the largest city in Tasmania and also one of the oldest cities in Australia. We had some more adventures there but I am going to leave that for a few days when I post Part 2 of our No Worries! road trip in Tasmania.
That’s way more than enough for this post! Stay tuned for Part 2…..