Last day in Tassie and it was still raining... we took a shorter drive over to the Tasman Pennisula and Port Arthur where we used to send the convicts who reoffened once they got to Australia. Really enlightening place and an absolutely stunning location. Unfortunately there is also a rather horrible recent past as a crazy gunman a few years ago went on a random shooting in one of the cafes on the site in which a lot of people died. We took a boat ride around the...

Thursday was a BIG driving day. Left Cradle Mountain after grabbing a coffee at the Cradle Mountain Lodge (the only place in the area with power) we drove all the way down to Strahan on the West Coast for lunch. Had a fish and chip lunch overlooking the harbour avoiding the seagulls who were intent on sharing our lunch and had a chat with a couple of guys on a Sydney - Hobart boat who were returning to Brisbane. Unfortunately, they'd been out of contact with the ...

As we'd expected we woke to more rain on Wednesday, but undeterred we drove the couple of hours up to Cradle Mountain (a UNESCO world heritage site) and did a 2 hour hike around Dove Lake. For a few seconds the cloud did clear to expose the top of Cradle Mountain, but overall it was pretty wet and windy (so much for Australia's summer!!!) We were trying hard to spot a platypus in the lake and streams or a wombat in the undergrowth but unfortunately it wasn't to b...

Launceston is Tasmania's 2nd largest city and it's small. We were told that the population of Tasmania (500,000) doubles during the summer months, but everywhere still feels extremely quiet. Many of the buildings in Launceston were really pretty, colonial houses with wrought iron balconies and big verandas. We spent the overcast but warm Tuesday morning walking around the very pretty Cataract Gorge and checking out the town. The afternoon was spent sampling the d...

We timed our departure from Freycinet perfectly as the minute we got to the car it started to rain. Unfortunately, it didn't really stop all day which put a bit of a dampener on our plans to camp at the Bay of Fires. In true British spirit (who ever let a bit of rain get in the way?) we made the most of it, calling into Bicheno for eggs and coffee and then Suvi and I shared a rocky road pancake at Mt Elephant Pancakes - delicious! Although the rain was pretty tor...