With Christmas and New Year Celebrations behind us we made our way down to Melbourne, stopping a few days in Shepperton before booking into Ashleigh Gardens Caravan Park to await our ferry crossing. After a lengthy boarding process and a smooth crossing we are now here in Tasmania and stopping at our first free camp which is just out of Burnie on the north coast. It's a beautiful spot right next to the beach and we are sharing it with the fairy penguins who come up the beach every evening.
Up until last night our weather has been good but overnight it rained and today has been very cold and windy. We did expect Tasmania to be much colder than we have been used to of late but it's still a shock to our systems. Every where is so dry though so the rain is much needed.
We heard on the news today how the "Spirit if Tasmania II" was hit with 100 km winds and was damaged in Melbourne so we can at least be grateful we were not on that crossing!
We visited the Whiskey distillery, just out of Burnie and drove up to Guide Falls. Visited the Table lighthouse at Wynyard, learning it's history from the local guide and drove past many fields of potatoes and poppies. The poppies are grown for the opium to make morphine by drug companies, and apparently Tasmania produces 25 percent of Australia's potato crop.
Now we have moved on again and are staying at Boat Harbour. We couldn't ask for a better spot, right on the water's edge of a little rocky bay and about 100 metres away from a beautiful beach with surf club. The weather has been better here and we have even ventured into the water a couple of times! It needed a bit of will power to get us in but so worth it once we were.
There are a lot of bush fires burning in Tasmania at the moment but thankfully not near us. We awoke yesterday to a smokey atmosphere, really thick and it took until lunchtime to clear. We will be heading towards Arthur River way (Nth West) and have been told that it's ok out that way so fingers crossed and if this is the last ever entry on this blog you'll know the reason why!