road trippin’ in Tassie, East coast
The next few posts are going to be what I’ve done the last week and a half with no access to internet…
What started as me meeting up with one guy looking to share a car ended up with 5 of us in total setting out from Hobart in a car we got a great rate on for 10 days. None of us had met any of the others before Wednesday… Thursday morning we got the car and since it was a gorgeous day we drove up to Mt Wellington, overlooking Hobart for some fantastic views.
The Destination for day one was the tasman peninsula and Port Arthur, one of the original infamous prisons here from the transportation era (convicts sent here from the Britain). What’s left now is about 1/3 of buildings that were part of the complex in ruin. The ghost tour is apparently the thing to do and we got there in time for it (at dusk). Good tour, walking around the buildings under the stars and a full moon with the guide telling stories of the prison creates a nice aura, didn’t see any ghosts though…
Next morning we went back to see the place in daylight. Apparently this site is a major cash cow for the Tasmanian tourist industry, the admission fees were ridiculous especially since we had paid to go on the tour the night before. An alternate/side way in away from the ticket booth was discovered, utilized and we wandered around for a good couple hours.
From Port Arthur we drove North, along the East coast. The Southern section of this coast has cliffs and rock formations and once you get farther North there’s lots of nice beaches. The weather was another beautiful sunny day and despite the fact that it wasn’t that warm out (and the ocean definitely wasn’t warm) this beach looked too good not to swim in..
It rained that night, but the next morning had cleared off quite a bit in time for visiting Wineglass bay in the Freycinet national park.
The hike into the bay is nice, through some cool rock formations, the bay and beach are stunning. More swimming was done here, despite the water being even colder than the day before. A lot of the rocks in this area have a very vivid orange lichen growing on them making for some great colour contrasts with the water.
After we left wineglass bay the weather changed, ala New Zealand and pissed down rain for the rest of the day. We didn’t bother trying to continue North along the coast to see more beaches in that weather so we just headed for Launceston, Tasmanias 2nd “city”. Overall I can’t complain about the weather down here at all, it’s supposed to suck but my first 5 days were sunny and warm (ish). Good enough weather to go swimming the last 2 days!
Tags: Australia
Adam
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