Tassie

Last week Monica (from Stanford), Rebecca and I went to Tasmania (where's that?), one of the most beautiful places on the planet. Although we didn't have the time or gear to get into the remote parts of the World Heritage rainforest, we were happy enough to settle for some regular old rainforest.

At the Bay of Fires we spent some time on beautiful white sand beaches. Can you believe that this water is actually cold?

We went snorkeling off Bicheno which had some of the clearest and coldest (if you are in an ill-fitting rental wetsuit) water I've been in recently. But with all the kelp and abalone (for the person reading this who will want to know: blacklip, size limit about 5.5 inches, which these generally were) I loved it. There were seahorses there evidently, but I couldn't find them. At night we went to see the fairy penguins come in from the ocean to their nests in the dunes of the beach. These are chicks, which are bigger than the adults because they don't expend the energy it takes to swim 18 km out to the continental shelf and back every day to feed! (For the person who will be wanting more penguin pictures, they'll be in your email :)

Our next stop was the Freycinet peninsula, with its highlight of Wineglass Bay. Not just because it is in all the brochures, this was one of my strongest memories from when I was there last time (when I was at USQ).

We went to Maria Island mostly because I love the picture of brother Eric there from when he studied at UNSW. And indeed the Painted Cliffs are lovely.


Besides the usual wallabies, we saw weird geese and some less savoury wildlife: a snake over a metre long (only later did we learn that Tasmania has just three species of snakes, and all are very poisonous!) and icky dead jellyfish.



Well, that's quite enough for one post (with three people's pictures it was hard to limit). Stay tuned for Tassie Part 2, where you'll hear about waterfalls, wombats and an amazing hike...