Tasmania

Week two of the holidays we flew into Hobart the main city in Tassie. Tassie is a State of Australia but not attached to the mainland and about a 45min flight from Melbourne. Its a very beautiful Island with amazing mountains, forests, lakes and beaches (although parts are looking quite brown due to the droughts). We hired a bright yellow car (apparently this is the only way to get around the island) and set off. The first night we headed for ............. National Park with a bit of sudden breaking as we got used to driving an automatic. We didn't arrive till afternoon and as always Nick picked the longest of the walking options. From our pics you can see it was getting a bit dark on the walk back but the bonus was that we were the only ones there to appreciate the beautiful falls, it was well worth it.

On day two we spents quite a long time driving and seeing different sights, we took a bit of an unmade road across some proper outback which nearly shook our car to pieces. Our accomodation was in Swansea (Shell cottage), thought Em and Mark would appreciate this choice. Very beautiful but cold and windy. During the afternoon we embarked on a 2 ½ hr trek to Wineglass Bay (Freycinet National Park). The bay has been voted amongst the top ten beaches in the world. The pictures don't really do it justice but in true Zoe and Nick style we were there so late that we ended having it all to ourselves. Also, the trek only took us 1 ½ hrs as Nick made us run down the mountain.

Tassie Tip: Don't drive at dusk in Tasmania due to all the kangaroos that are around on the roads, we did have a few close shaves over the week and saw lots of Tasmanian devils by the side of the roads. See the very photogenic shot of me with a wallabie.

The last night we spent in Hobart enjoying all the fresh seafood on offer. We stumbled across a Real tennis club (very old Royal version on tennis/squash) and so went in for a look. The pro at the club took a liking to the two of us and invited us back for a real tennis lesson in the morning. We really enjoyed the game. It's very tactical with some quirky rules such as bonus points for hitting a picture of a monk or a bell in one of the galleries. Chris we decided this is your type of game! There are some pics of the two of us, one looks like Nick is wearing the crown.