Tassie Trip 2015
Day 10
Hobart - Bruny Island - Mount Wellington - Hobart
Well if Melbourne has 4 seasons in 1 day, then Tassie has about 30 seasons in 1 day. It's the only place I know that you can take a photo now in absolute sunshine and take the same photo in 20 seconds time in grey overcast skies - maybe even with a hint of rain!
Today dawned a nice sunny day - a very pleasant surprise for us. Things were looking up for us. Today we decided to drive about an hour to the Bruny Island ferry to see what this rather lengthy island just off the mainland of Tassie has to offer. It's about a 15 minute ferry ride across and the island is about 50km long. We drove the full length of the island stopping at a place called the Neck where the ocean and lake system are separated by only a small single laned strip of land. It's here that thousands of fairy penguins have decided to make a rookery and come ashore every Night to tend to their chicks. You can climb about 100 steps up to a lookout over the rookery over the neck and there are nests the entire way up the hill. From there we headed right to the end of the island where the lighthouse is situated. The view for there was simple spectacular but extremely windy - that bitterly cold wing coming of the Antarctic too! After warming up back in the Disco having walked back down to some shelter, we headed for Adventure Bay and for lunch. It was an Adventure to get there as well - 4WD only for the first time this trip and the slippery, rocky gravel road with lots of washouts didn't disappoint us. The climate also changed in our climb up and over the mountain with mist descending upon us very quickly into the climb- and a few degrees cooler as well!
We reached the bay to watch Albatrosses dive bombing fish in the bay and putting on a bit of a show for us as we lunched on the shore. After lunch we drove back up the island to the Bruny Island Cheese company , an artisan cheese company who handmade all their cheeses and gourmet relishes and sourdough bread in their wildfired oven before heading back to the ferry for the trip back across.
Seeing as the day was still warm(ish) and mostly clear, we decided the trip up the 1270m of Mount Wellington to view the expanse that is the city of Hobart. We started the trip in 17 degrees and by the time we go tot the summit it was a balmy 8.5 degrees. The weather app though said although it was 8.5 it felt like 1.7........in summer!
The view was breathtaking....very cold but breathtaking. The amount of water coming off the top of that mountain following the torrential rain we had was also a sight to see. Waterfalls throwing litres of water off the mountain very minute was something to see! And there were lots of them.
We were glad to see a bit of a sunset tonight eating dinner outside and will hope that this weather continues tomorrow for us to enjoy Hobart more.