Monday 11th March 2019 - Freycinet

Today’s itinerary took us up the east coast of Tasmania and eventually to the Freycinet peninsular. The drive took us through the pretty town of Richmond, with a lot of buildings built in the Georgian style. The bridge that crossed the river was built by convicts back in the day, and could easily have been in Yorkshire!

From here we continued north passing many vineyards along the way. This is becoming a more important source of income as vineyards in Southern Australia are struggling with high temperatures and the climate here is more suitable, so some are beginning to move production here. There were also lots of orchards, including a large walnut one, fields of salad greens and potatoes as well as sheep and cows.

Timber and logging are also important industries, although it would seem that there are more controls on this now to better manage the supply.

Whilst driving Ludger is very good at imparting lots of information. Today there was a section on dangers! So I thought I would give you a snake update! Australia has 140 different varieties of snake and 3 of those are found in Tasmania. The white lip, copperhead and the black tiger snake. All 3 are venomous! We were told that the tiger snake is the second most venomous snake in the world but that if we were bitten we were not to panic 🤔. The venom is spread through the body not in the blood stream but via adrenaline so panic is counterproductive 😂. Stay still, and get help. You have 4 hours to get the serum! 😬 Happily we haven’t seen one, despite much looking 😂.

The drive took us north and then back south as we had to follow the wandering coastline, which really is very pretty. The Friendly Beaches were particularly beautiful with white sand that stretched for miles.

Eventually we reached our accommodation at Freycinet - lovely cabins all tucked into the bush. And this after the snake talk🤦‍♀️🙁

Having dropped off our cases we then went for a walk up to Wineglass Bay Lookout. It was only about a 90 minute round trip, up quite a lot of steps but nothing compared to New Zealand. On the way up we came upon a wallaby who is obviously well used to humans so obligingly sat for photos!

The views from the lookout were well worth it! Beautiful blue sea and sky and white sand beaches. Then it was back to the hotel for dinner and we hope with a clear night to get good views of the southern night sky.