The East Coast

We spent two and a half days travelling up along the east coast of Tasmania. We left the Tasman peninsula Sunday morning and splurged by staying the night in a motel in Swansea. It was an interesting little seaside town with a shearwater colony which is quite an impressive bird that spends the summer around Alaska and winters in south Australia. Somehow we could relate to that effort more than we could a few summers ago.



Monday we travelled over to the Freycinet peninsula and explored beautiful Freycinet National Park. We enjoyed a nice picnic in the park and then went up to Cape Tourville lighthouse for some spectacular views of the ocean and Wineglass bay. The weather warmed up nicely so we spent the afternoon on the Friendly beaches and watched some impressive surf and wind turn fine white sand into finer white sand. We then headed north up the coast and spent the night camping in St Helens.

Tuesday we spent the morning exploring and caching along the Bay of Fires which we discovered later was the place where a girl was bitten by a 5 m white pointer shark just a few days earlier. With the multitude of beaches and surfing in Australia, its really remarkable that more people aren't turned into fish food but given the prevalence of flake (shark) in fish and chip shops perhaps it is clear who is eaten more. Anyway it certainly adds an element of excitement to swimming in the sea, similar I suppose to the excitement that Aussies get hiking in the bear infested woods of North America.

Realizing that we were burning up too many days on the one side of Tasmania we bee lined west through the hills toward Launceston stopping only for a pretty waterfall: St Columbia Falls, a couple of geocaches at scenic vistas, and resisted a stop at the pub which boasts a beer drinking pig. We had a bizarre experience along one highway that switch backed up a very steep hill that had been in the sun all afternoon in the 30+ degree heat. The pavement tar was so hot that it was slick and we nearly came to a standstill spinning tires without traction. Perhaps the mix was a little heavy on the tar as most Tasmanians aren't used to temperatures in the 30s. For that reason I imagine that Tasmania is probably the most compatible Australian state for most Canadians.