Tasmania Day 2 and 3

Day 2- Sunday 18 January We woke up and checked out of the hostel for 10am, after a night of what Diva called ‘A Symphony of Snoring” and went to get the rental car. Then it was down to the harbor for breakfast and to find a new hostel for the night. Both were achieved after a short detour at the Steve Irwin- the Sea Shephard ship- that was in port re-fueling for a few days before heading back out to the Southern Ocean to chase Japanese whaling boats. We talked to a first mate for a while and then got a short tour of the ship. Very educational and a rare experience indeed.

Aboard Sea Sheppard's ship the Steve Irwin

The rest of the day was spent window shopping, finding a place to hire camping gear, and driving up to the top of Mount Wellington, which overlooks Hobart. The road up was narrow and f*cking scary! Tassie’s are maybe the most reckless drivers I’ve ever come across! But it was worth the nerve-racking drive for the view from the top. Stunning!

View of Hobart from the top of Mount Wellington

Later on we had dinner and then picked Kate up from the airport and went to bed early in anticipation of the journey ahead!

Day 3- Monday 19 January
First Day on the Road! We hit Woolies for groceries before heading towards the Tasman Peninsula. I made the mistake of reading in the car along the super windy roads and felt carsick for most of the time spent in the car. We stopped in Sorrell for their famous fruit farm to find that apricots were the only thing ready for picking. Did I even like apricots? Well I do now! We picked about 3 dozen and of course hilarity ensued, a reoccurring theme of the trip.

APricots, not Ape-ricots

Next we passed on paying the $25 entry fee at the Tasmanian Devil Conservation Park and opted instead for the Federation Chocolate Factory just across the highway for some free samples. We also stopped at Eaglehawk Neck, the Blowhole that was through DooTown, and a few other places of interest before checking out the Port Arthur Historic Site: officially the most popular tourist attraction in Tasmania, and one of the first convict settlements in Tas (and the site of a 1996 massacre that resulted in 35 deaths). Former home to some of the worst criminals from Australia, England, and even Canada, it was built entirely by convict labor and some of the remaining architecture is quite beautiful, as are the grounds. We had some fun in the ‘Separate Prison,’ where the really bad guys were kept, and our tour guide, Tom, was very entertaining and definitely the highlight of the afternoon.

Port Arthur grounds from the water

Main convict barracks

After a few hours in prison we found a campsite (total rip-off) on White Beach and watched the sunset over the ocean! In the campsite next to us we saw some sort of marsupial inside a dining tent, it had pretty much trapped itself in there and was banging against the screen walls trying to escape. I told the woman who’s tent it was it had been in there when she came back and she told me it was probably a Potoroo, and that they look like rats, and she doesn’t like rats, and she said rats so many times I couldn’t remember the name of the animal so he became Jimmy-Rat Pettigrew for the rest of the trip.

White Beach Sunset