Tassie Trip 2015

Day 7 12 January 2015

White Beach - Eaglehawk Neck - Tasman Island Cruises - Port Arthur - White Beach

We crossed 2 seas today in our travels !

This morning we got to see all the coastline we drove down yesterday from the ocean side. We breakfasted and got away the 10 mins up the road to the tour company meeting point and joined a bus for a further 15 mins up to Eaglehawk Neck to our jump off point for 3 hours of high speed 750hp action down some of the most rugged and harsh coastlines this country has. The dolomite rock that makes up this coastline is a ' miners curse' being one of the hardest rocks on earth. It might frustrate miners but it's no match for raging sea. It's carved out massive caves and holes along this coastline that mostly can only be seen from the sea. Our deckie Damo though was shaking his head..... ' we only get about 10 days a year like this ' he said. 'You guys don't know how lucky you are.....' What he was referring to was the half a metre swell we were facing! It's usually 4m on an average day and sometimes up to 18m!! We did see some 4m swell but only in the Southern Ocean for a brief period.

We powered down the coastline looking at colonies of hundreds of NZ fur seals and further apart their Australian counterparts who can't clearly live together. We circumnavigated Tasman Island where a lighthouse stands transmitting a light every 7 seconds which is its signature. This most remote lighthouse was built in the 1800's by hand from materials hauled up by hand winch from the tall ships precariously moored in the raging waters below - and people used to live there! Kids and animals would have to be tied up in heavy weather so they didn't get blown off the cliff.

This coastline also offers some of the best rockclimbing ( candlestick) and cave diving. The cave diving is in dry suits and best done in winter (<9 degrees water temp) where the vis is 60m plus. The caves are up to 500m in length with branches off them- sounds awesome and it's deep under the sheer dolomite cliffs only accessible by boat.

But all good things must come to an end and having broken out of the Tasman Sea and into the Great Southern Ocean, we headed back towards the calmer serene waters of Port Arthur. This deep water (80m) had just had a visit from 160k ton cruise liner 3 days before we arrived and a few weeks prior to us, HMAS Rankin (Collins class submarine) popped up suddenly in the middle of the Harbour unannounced!

Back on dry land, we headed back into Port Arthur for a few boat tours to the 'Isle of the Dead' and to Puer Island (island for boys) for more history on this serene but eerie place. We also walked the rest of the grounds we hadn't seen yesterday in some glorious afternoon sunshine.

We left Port Arthur about 6pm to head back to the beach for a play in the white sand and to watch yet another beautiful sunset over the ocean - and a mandatory game of soccer on the beach.

With the sun finished with its duties for the night (after 9pm) we wearily headed back to camp.

Tomorrow we are off to Hobart for 5 nights and a tour of the Cascade Brewery.