On leaving Port Arthur we hit the coast road to Coles Bay which is the portal to Freycinet National Park on the East coast, a peninsula covered in white sand coves, beautiful forest and interesting rock formations.It was beautiful. We were staying in a holiday village in a strange six person lodge with bunkbeds and a kitchen. We were really tired so decided to watch a movie and cook dinner ourselves - a marvellous feast of spaghetti in a jar of tomato sauce with grated cheese on the top and a magnum for pudding YUM! Dinner of Champions! We watched a cheesy old Aussie film called 'Paperback Hero' with good old Hugh Jackman in it that I quite enjoyed (guiltily!).

THE thing to do in Freycinet National Park is to hike up to the look out to see the view over Wineglass Bay which is on all the tourist posters for Tasmania (and the picture for this blog), so we dutifully donned our hiking boots and set off on the hour or so climb up to the top. Kirsti had done the walk about 10 years ago, one of her hideous childhood memories so I was naturally dreading it not being great at exercise especially uphill exercise. Happily it turned out that the 600 steps weren't too awful despite it being another beautiful hot day and we arrived at the top a couple of sweaty messes but we did it! The view was outstanding, picture perfect in the sunshine. The hike continued down to the Bay for another couple of hours but as we wanted to get to Launceston that evening we decided to check out some of the other look outs instead. Hoping to see some whales we headed up to the Cape Tourville lighthouse, sadly no whales but another breathtaking view. We also took a walk down to Sleepy Bay in a nice little rocky cove that we had to ourselves. I even had a paddle in the freezing sea which was lovely to cool the sticky feet down. We reluctantly dragged ourselves back into the car for another two and a half hour drive to Launceston (everywhere in Tassie is a two and a half hour long drive).