Okay I'm going to try and blast through the last two months .... k sooooo from St. Helens we then headed to The Garden's which is where the famous Bay of Fires is. It is apparently the 2nd most beautiful beach in the world ... how they determine what the most beautiful beaches are in the world I don't know .... but in all honesty I much preferred Wineglass Bay in Freycinet National Park. Anyway, so we drove over to The Gardens and Bay of Fires where we planned to hike the Bay and camp on the beach. We had a bit of a later start so we only hiked a couple hours and then found this amazing spot to camp, which we later found out wasn't as great as we had thought. It was right at this one part of the beach where a little lagoon/stream thing emptied out into the ocean and there was a tree that was covering this really flat bit of ground. It really looked like it had been put there on purpose. We set up camp and then plopped down and started into some lunch. Partway through lunch I felt something on my bum and I thought oh maybe it's just a stick poking into me and so I just dusted off my bum and then sat back down only then I felt this really sharp pain and definitely felt like something was biting me! .... and sure enough I had a few really really painful ant bites! Aaaaagh, so painful. It definitely put a damper on my day :(. It even continued to hurt for another few hours, and then became exceedingly ichy for several days.
Aaaanyway, my Dad and I hiked along the long long beach and admired the beautiful scenery, turquois water, and the funny scamper of numerous Oyster Catchers (birds). It was quite windy, so at night it got very cold and we packed it in pretty early after having some of the famous O'Donnell Ihara Gloop (basically a mixture of various pasta packages/rice packages, tuna, and vegetables). I thankfully had my iPod which has a few movies on it, so my dad and I watched Monsters Inc. in our tent before we went to sleep. haha. Soooo good.
The next day we hiked out of Bay of Fires and drove tio Bridpoint where there are supposed to be some amazing wildflowers, espescially known for wild orchids .... we didn't see any .... haha so we then drove on towards Launceston and stopped along the way to see the St. Columba falls which were quite beautiful. It was surrounded by this amazing rainforest, which the biggest Ferntrees I've ever seen! We also stopped at this random farmhouse type place that the Lonely Planet had mentioned and got their famous milkshakes ... but we weren't impressed.
Launceston was alright, not a whole lot going on, as far as we could tell. We just relaxed a little bit then headed to Burger Got Soul for some dinner, we got really delicious burgers and then attempted to walk to the Cataract Gorge ... only my Dad took us in the wrong direction so we ended up just walking back to the hotel and watching part of Sherlock Holmes and Law-Abiding Citizen.
The next day we went to the Cataract Gorge and took a walk around, it was quite pretty and seemed like it was a good spot for swimming .... if it was warm. We even saw a young guy in his swimming trunks and holding a towel. It was pretty cold,definitely didn't seem warm enough for swimming.
After the Gorge we headed to the famous Cradle Mountain! It was a longish drive but I slept for most of it I think and so we arrived in Cradle Mountian National Park and decided (I was a little hesitant) to hike to the Scott Kilvert Hut, we were told it would take us about 6 hours ... it took us 3 haha. We were even warned that it had snowed quite a bit in the last few days But it was quite a beautiful hike. Unfortunately it was a bit rainy and VERY foggy/misty so we couldn't get a great view of the Cradle Mountain .. and unfortunately my camera ran out of battery and I foolishly forgot the charger in Melbourne, so I didn't even get any pictures of it! :( I promise we did infact go there even if there is no photographic proof.
Some of the trail on the way to the hut was completely overrun by water, we would have to climb up on the sides of the trail and even then were still getting a bit wet. I was very thankful I had Gortex walking shoes on! The hut was really great. When we arrived there were already two groups there cooking dinner. One group was a group of 4 young guys in there early twenties from around the area and the other group was a group of 7 people that had all travelled together, and man had they brought quite the load. They had brough two bags of Port, some wine, chicken and potatoes, aaaaaaand most importantly they brough two huge bags of fire beads!!! So they made the hut nice and toasty.
The following morning we hiked back to the car and started our long journey back to Hobart. We stopped in Strahan on the way and got some lunch and then stopped in Mt Field National Park and tried to spot some platypus ... no luck, and then we had dinner at a Vietnamese place in Salamanca Square in Hobart, did some laundry at the hotel and packed for our early morning flight.
On the morning of Monday October 11th we flew back to Melbourne and had our last hours together in the airport. We had breakfast in the airport and then we parted ways, my dad staying at the airport waiting for his flight to California to visit my Grandma and me heading to Melbourne to start my solo journey.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
October 4th/5th/6th
On our second day in Tasmania we left Hobart and started driving through the beautiful rolling hills of Tasmania heading towards Cole's Bay and Freycinet National Park where famous Wine Glass Bay is situated.
To get to Wine Glass Bay you have to do about an hour long hike up through this small mountain pass and then walk another 30 minutes to get to the camping spot, which we of course planned on using. On the way to the campsite we saw a Wallaby for the first time! It even had a little Joey in it's pouch. How cute is that! We soon found out that this was not as rare a sighting as we thought. We set up camp at this really cute, simple camp area and then went and explored the area a little bit. We went to bed pretty early because we were planning on doing a pretty long hike the next day.
The next morning we woke up, ate some breakfast, and then headed for a hike around the park. We hiked up Mt Graham, then up Mt Freycinet, then down to Cooks Beach (where we had a very chilly dip in the ocean) then over to Hazards Beach over the Isthmus Track and down Wine Glass Bay beach back to the campsite ... this all took us about 7 hours ... when it was supposed to take us 6 hours to get to Cooks Beach ... not bad eh! haha Unfortunately in Freycinet National Park, water is pretty scarce so you have to bring in all your water ... adn we did not really bring enough water. We only brough 1 litre for the both of us on our 7 hour hike ... and then had very limited amount of water left when we got back to the campsite. I have NEVER been so thirsty in my life! I really hope I never am again. I had weird dreams that night ... kept dreaming of ways to get water and of finding secret wells of water and basically more water based dreams! How tortuous! What makes up for this is the fact that Freycinet National Park became my absolute favorite part of Tasmania, and Wine Glass Bay one of of the most beautiful places.
While at the camping area we met a really interesting guy named Barry who was originally from Australia but has spent the last 10 years or something living in China ... I think ... I can't remember exactly. He was pretty interesting. He was travelling by himself and doing some research into finding trees for an animation film he was working on! Pretty cool. He was also quite knowledgable about the wildlife, and told me all about the kangaroo family and we spotted some shy Pademelons and during dinner my dad and I experienced a pretty cheeky wallaby trying to eat our food .. even sticking it's head into our bowls and not leaving until I physically lifted it's head out of the bowl!
The next day we woke up, packed up camp, and then headed back over the mountain pass to the car park ... which seemed like it was never coming ... espescially being incredibly parched. I have never been so happy to have water in my life! Then we drove over to St. Helen's and checked into a self-contained unit and checked out St. Helen's Point, got some pizza, watched some of the Commonwealth Games, did laundry, annd went to sleep. Oh and it poured down rain and there was thunder and lighting .... so glad we didn't camp that night.
To get to Wine Glass Bay you have to do about an hour long hike up through this small mountain pass and then walk another 30 minutes to get to the camping spot, which we of course planned on using. On the way to the campsite we saw a Wallaby for the first time! It even had a little Joey in it's pouch. How cute is that! We soon found out that this was not as rare a sighting as we thought. We set up camp at this really cute, simple camp area and then went and explored the area a little bit. We went to bed pretty early because we were planning on doing a pretty long hike the next day.
The next morning we woke up, ate some breakfast, and then headed for a hike around the park. We hiked up Mt Graham, then up Mt Freycinet, then down to Cooks Beach (where we had a very chilly dip in the ocean) then over to Hazards Beach over the Isthmus Track and down Wine Glass Bay beach back to the campsite ... this all took us about 7 hours ... when it was supposed to take us 6 hours to get to Cooks Beach ... not bad eh! haha Unfortunately in Freycinet National Park, water is pretty scarce so you have to bring in all your water ... adn we did not really bring enough water. We only brough 1 litre for the both of us on our 7 hour hike ... and then had very limited amount of water left when we got back to the campsite. I have NEVER been so thirsty in my life! I really hope I never am again. I had weird dreams that night ... kept dreaming of ways to get water and of finding secret wells of water and basically more water based dreams! How tortuous! What makes up for this is the fact that Freycinet National Park became my absolute favorite part of Tasmania, and Wine Glass Bay one of of the most beautiful places.
While at the camping area we met a really interesting guy named Barry who was originally from Australia but has spent the last 10 years or something living in China ... I think ... I can't remember exactly. He was pretty interesting. He was travelling by himself and doing some research into finding trees for an animation film he was working on! Pretty cool. He was also quite knowledgable about the wildlife, and told me all about the kangaroo family and we spotted some shy Pademelons and during dinner my dad and I experienced a pretty cheeky wallaby trying to eat our food .. even sticking it's head into our bowls and not leaving until I physically lifted it's head out of the bowl!
The next day we woke up, packed up camp, and then headed back over the mountain pass to the car park ... which seemed like it was never coming ... espescially being incredibly parched. I have never been so happy to have water in my life! Then we drove over to St. Helen's and checked into a self-contained unit and checked out St. Helen's Point, got some pizza, watched some of the Commonwealth Games, did laundry, annd went to sleep. Oh and it poured down rain and there was thunder and lighting .... so glad we didn't camp that night.
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