For some reason my last blog entry cut off the end of our Cairns experience and the beginning of our time n Tasmania. As Jim says, there are a few bugs in the WordPress IPad App.
Nevertheless, we had a great flight out of Lizard Island back to Cairns. We got to ride in the small plane with Taryn, Tom, Captain Sam and the first mate, Hamish. The plane gave us a great view of the coastline as we flew down.

As we approached Cairns the tropical rains began and they really didn’t stop. It’s probably still raining there today. Our pilot, Nicki, was fantastic and gave us a very smooth flight with a gentle landing.

After we checked back into the hotel we took a long shower before heading out for a walk around town, some food and a movie. We dodged the heaviest tropical rainstorms by taking refuge in shops and eateries around town. Cairns is a strange town with both high end shops and rundown vacant areas. We saw the Grand Budapest Hotel which is a strange little movie befitting our location.

We flew to Hobart, changing planes in Melbourne; picked up our car, got our bearings and whilst chanting “stay left” we headed to our hotel: The Henry Jones Art Hotel. It’s a former jam factory that has been remodeled into a great boutique hotel, with lots of old wood paneling and sandstone. Our room was originally Henry Jones’ office and our bathroom the waiting room for the conference area.

After dropping of our bags we headed to the bar and drank local scotch whiskey and ate a yummy antipasto plate while listening to a local musician playing Johnny Cash type music.

This area is a bit like Scotland and South England with town names like Glenorchy, Brighten and Devonport.

In the morning we explored more of the wonderful architecture of our hotel. They have added a glass roof to the huge inner courtyard where we had breakfast, safe and warm from the passing showers. The architects did a fantastic job. This is a great concept for Seattle.

Surrounding the courtyard are a few shops and an art gallery. The hotel is decorated with lots of art from local artists. We slept In a bit (no 6:30 wake up call this morning), enjoyed a leisurely breakfast in the courtyard, read the local paper and looked at art before hitting the road around noon for a 3 hour drive to Freycinet National Park. We drove through forested coastline, including curvy fun sections, forests of peppermint trees (they look like Dr. Seuss Pom Pom trees), wine country and then along the shore of Great Oyster Bay to the miniature red granite mountains of the National Park that includes all of the Freycinet Peninsula southeast of Coles Bay.

We saw our first “beware of wildlife sign” with an animal drawing that looked like a kangaroo. But, alas no kangaroo sitings today. We did see lots of road kill, sheep, what had to be the world’s largest back Angus bull, a few coyotes and we think what might be wallabies (small kangaroos) in a field.

Check that. They were definitely wallabies and one just hopped around the corner of our cabin as I write this. Cool!

We checked in at the lodge and drove a short distance to our cabin just in time to enjoy the sunset. Tomorrow we are going to do some hiking for sure.

As the sun goes down today here we want to wish Julie Spady a very happy birthday from down under!

We enjoyed a quick dinner at the lodge with a special scotch/whiskey tasting. The local single malt whiskies are quite good. We especially like the Lark. Chris, our scotch whiskey tasting guide was adorable.

Freycinet National Park

We slept well and woke up a bit late and headed out for our buffet breakfast. Really the only bad food we have had our entire trip. But the croissants were adequate and we had some yogurt and coffee. Then we headed out for our hike with some fruit and other snacks along the way.

Freycinet National Park is named after the French sub-lieutenant on a ship sent by Napoleon in 1802 to explore the “Great South Land.” Not bad for a Sub-Lieutenant!

We decided to do the full 11 kilometer (6 mile) hike over the small mountains to Wine Glass Bay on the Tasman Sea, back across the isthmus to Hazard Beach on Great Oyster Bay, and then along the hills above the shore back to the parking lot. It really was an awesome hike.

To begin, you hike up about 1000 feet through unusual red granite formations and interesting foliage including lots of peppermint and tea trees to a spectacular overlook above wine glass bay. Then you leave the crowds behind as you descend down do the beautiful beach of Wineglass Bay were we put our feet in the Tasman Sea and waved toward New Zealand. We saw a very friendly Wallaby, dolphins, oyster catchers and of course seagulls. We sat in the warm sun and ate some snacks before heading for the isthmus trail to Hazard Beach. The bird song was lovely and we heard all kinds of elusive flying creatures. After repeated attempts we did finally get get a fuzzy photo of one of the very large black cockatoos. As we walked through Hazard Beach we also saw a scampering Tasmania Pademelon.

We still had quite of bit of the hike left and as usual for us we were cutting it tight for daylight. It also appeared we were the last ones on the trail. I did pack one headlamp, but left the other behind because of weight, which was ridiculous. At this point Jim and I are both thinking to ourselves (but not voicing out loud) “what were we thinking?”

So, we picked up the pace and made it out just fine while watching the beautiful late sun as we walked above Great Oyster Bay (almost as big as San Francisco Bay but almost completely undeveloped). As the Aussies say “no worries, no drama, it’s all good!”

When we exited the trail we were famished and decided to head past our cabin another 10 minutes to the little town of Coles Bay. We passed a quaint little restaurant that advertised wood-fired pizza with a view of the bay. The proprietor was cleaning the windows and told us he opened in 30 minutes. He handed us a “takeaway” menu (they don’t say “takeout” here) and it looked perfect so we drove on to the end of the road and parked at a little warf to watch the sunset and stretch.

Dinner was scrumptious and the local wine Devine. We shared a thin crust pizza, some local fresh fish and chips, salad and sorbet. Yum!

When we got back to our cabin, we packed for today’s early drive and flight out of Launceston (north-central Tasmania) and then soaked in our tub before bed.

Our itinerary for today told us it was a 2.5 hour drive to the airport and we needed to check in by 9:50 AM. We grabbed some fruit, coffee and croissants for the drive and headed out for a drive along the north end of Great Oyster Bay and then across some beautiful high plateau ranch land on the way to the airport.

It was early morning and the soft pastel light bathed the trees and the countryside. We also so a lot of road kill. Jim coined the game, “Guess that road kill!” Wallaby, Possum, Wallaby, wallaby, unknown, pademelon. Not surprisingly given the large amount of road kill we saw an extremely large vulture-like bird – as big as any giant Condor either of us had ever seen. This bird was much bigger than an Eagle and appeared to be very well fed.

We thought this would be a great place to sell a t-shirt we once bought at a truck stop in the middle-of-nowhere Arizona, that said “Road-kill Cafe – you kill ’em, we cook ’em!” Gruesome.

We made it to the airport with time to spare and avoided adding to the roadside carnage.

We are now on the plane to Melbourne. Our last Qantas flight. As we sat down we were serenaded by the expressive and loud sounds of two very large parrots in the bay behind us. That’s a first.

We are looking forward to our exploration of Melbourne over the next 3 days before driving up the coast to Sydney for our flight to the Cook Islands – our last stop on the way home.

It’s a little overcast here in Melbourne with rain forecast for tomorrow , but we had fantastic warm weather in Tasmania, which is really lucky for that far south in late fall. It should be perfect weather for museums.

We also need to wish John Spady and Alan Middleton a very happy birthday too!