Wine Glass Bay and further on

6th March....special day for me...6 years ago today I had my first op on my leg, and today we are up early (well early for us about 7am...Tassie time) because we are walking to the Wine glass Bay Lookout.  Bacon and eggs, tomato and toast...a breakfast for champions and we were off to the Freycinet National Park.  It has warmed up nicely this morning, hot really and it took us 25mins to walk to the lookout and we are greeted with this:

We sat and caught our breath and we waited and waited and waited...with the other 20 odd people.    We sat and chatted to others, Tasmanians and Mainlanders, and after about 40 minutes the fog lifted and it was like a bunch of Japanese tourists...Cameras came out from everywhere to get the perfect shot.

Our walk down, a different track most of the way was not as busy as going up and our wildlife today is a blue tongue lizard.

We were on the road again and we looked at a couple of free camps on the road but decided to drive on; one free camp was a little bit small and we sort of jack knifed the car and van, we must have touched because we heard a crunch but Steve got us out of a very tight spot and got to Bicheno in no time.  It was getting late in the arvo and still no resting place in sight.  Drove around looked at the blowhole and the Gulch (where the fishing boats come in)

but did not want to stay in a caravan park so we drove on to Swansea for a fuel stop and we found a stay beside the backpackers for $10/night and we can use all the facilities in the backpackers...sweet. Ken our host tells us about the hot day they have had...28C...But it was hot enough in Hobart to start fires again and for most of the east coast to loose power.
Steve bought a new cask of red from the bottle 'o next door and he popped the tap on it while he was putting it in the car...red wine soaked through the car. YUK!!! The car smells like a wine cellar probably a cheap one at that.
While in Swansea we walked and drove the town and looked at some of the stone cottages built in 1830-50's still lived in today and we looked in the Bark Mill Museum that happened to be next door with a bakery attached...mmm lunch.

This is in the Bark Mill not the Bakery

We also found out what the crunch noise was when we jack knifed the car, we crushed the light connection...it was smashed to bits. Got a new one from the servo down town and Steve fixed that the morning we were  leaving Swansea.  We spent 2 enjoyable nights there, backpackers can be full of some interesting people and one guy David cray fishermen, didn't have any crays but helped Ken cook up some flathead caught that morning and because we supplied them with some flour and bread crumbs we scored some fresh flatty tails, ohhhhh yummm.  David was also very excited because on Saturday is the opening of the duck hunting season and all the "rednecks" (Ken's words not ours) were going to be out with their guns, and there's a lot of them apparently.
So Friday morning we figured it would be a good time to move on.

Next town is Triabunna, definitely a boat and fishing town.  We had another first here:  we saw a squid boat.

Took us a while to work out why so many light bulbs? and of course Steve worked it out.

We had lunch at the local take away and had some of the best sea scallops ever. The seafood is delicious here in Tassie.  We asked about some roads less travelled towards Port Arthur and we turned left at Buckland and through Nugent; if the name isn't on your map, don't worry...there is only a hall and a church there but they do have a cricket team...that's another story.



We had to drive through the devastation of the bushfired town of Dunalley...OMG it is heart breaking...most of the place is burnt to the ground, some people are living in tents, some have just put a for sale sign on the gate and left but there is a lot of work going on there, they have a huge clean up to do and they're on the job to fixing it.