A rude awakening by my noisy neighbours at 5.30 was unnecessary to say the least. I dozed until sunrise when I took some photos of Maria Island, the location for today's adventures.

Maria (pronounced as in Mariah Carey not Maria from the Sound of Music) Island was named after Van Diemen's wife and is now a national park and wildlife haven. Having driven to Triabunna I boarded the Maria Island Ferry complete with comedy captain who managed to get a Costa Concordia into the safety briefing! We arrived in Darlington on the island 30 mins later.

I logged my intended walks and headed off to the Fossil cliffs and quarry. The first section was through forest where I saw some Cape Barren geese, wallabies, swift parrots and some pandmelons. I did some fossil hunting in the disused quarry, which wasn't too tricky as they were everywhere and the reason this is a world heritage site! As I was happily walking back to Darlington across the sun bleached land I saw a couple walking towards me and then I heard my name. It was Jill & Ken! We walked across to meet one another and Ken very kindly gave me a copy of a book he has written, Double Bogey (available on ebooks and amazon)!

I carried on my walk stopping to look at the cemetery (Dad, your habits have rubbed off!) and various buildings. Maria Island was the site of a probation station where hundreds of convicts were held and worked to produce cement from the fossil cliff rock amongst other things.

I walked to the painted rocks next, where a beautiful bay gave way for some exquisitely patterend and coloured weather eroded cliffs. I timed my walk with the tide so there was plenty of space to view them without getting soggy. I found a shaded spot for lunch then went rock pooling. I found Waratah anemones, Sea stars, limpets, tube worms, barnacles, whelks, chitons, mussels, neptunes necklace seaweed and pacific gulls, which I think is what we'd freed a few days ago (not the exact same bird though!). As I walked back I caught up with Jill & Ken again. We took a lovely walk back via the oast house, although we were busy chatting and missed the turn off. We saw wombats as we approached the collection of buildings and said our goodbyes.

I mooched around the cottages, houses, church, coffee palace, penintentary and the commissariat store before strolling down to get a somewhat bumpier cruise back to Triabunna.

Knowing I had a drive to my next campsite I fuelled up with trevalla and chips from the Fish Van. The drive to Fortescue Bay in the Tasman National Park (south) was not without event. Dusk was approaching rapidly and I had 24k of gravel road initially which meant avoiding wallabies and big roos. My final 12k was also on gravel tracks, approaching dark now. The last 6k were bone shaking and I felt the car slip on a few occassions despite driving slowly and taking care. I used the self registration booth and put up my tent just before dark. The site is set in woodland behind the beach and was full of chatter and the smoke from fires, yum! I managed to get a quick stroll on Fortescue Beach before it was too dark and fell asleep to my American neighbour playing his guitar by his camp fire accompanied by the sound of the waves on the shore.