October 10, 2004
Stepping Out
Every time Rob gets more than a day off, we try to get out of town. Tasmania is a big state and we want to see as much of it as possible before we have to leave. So, this past weekend, we were off to the Tasman Peninsula. The main tourist attraction in the Tasman Peninsula is Port Arthur, which some of you may have heard about in the news several years ago. Port Arthur is a tourist destination because of its convict history – it was a secondary prison for the worst offenders from 1830 to 1877. Many of the old buildings still exist and there are tour guides who explain the area and tell stories of the convicts. Port Arthur is very interesting, but that was only one stop on the trip.
The Tasman Peninsula is absolutely gorgeous. There is an isthmus at Eaglehawk Neck connecting Tasman to the Forestier Peninsula. There are dramatic cliffs stretching out over the crystal clear ocean, beautiful long stretches of remote beaches, hidden caves and natural wonders. Some of the sites are so close that you only need to step out of your car to view them. Tasman’s Arch is an enormous rock archway formed out over the ocean. The Tesselated Pavement is a natural formation on ocean rocks that looks so exactly like cobblestone pavement that it is hard to believe. The Remarkable Cave is called so because the mouth of the cave forms the shape of the state of Tasmania…remarkable!
One of my favorite moments from the trip is our walk to Lagoon Beach. It’s a much lesser known area, not crawling with tourists, just a few campers around. It is on the northwest end of the peninsula, starting at Lime Bay Beach. Lime Beach is nice, but nowhere near as spectacular as Lagoon Beach. The walk there only takes about 40 minutes and on the way there and back we saw a forrester kangaroo and an echidna, which looks like a porcupine, but is more like a platypus. Once you get near the beach, you see high sand dunes ahead of you. After the scramble to the top of the dunes, you are treated to the view of clear blue-green waters and a curving beach that is about 2 kilometers in length. Completely abandoned. The only drawback? The water is freezing. (Thank goodness for wetsuits. I went swimming for about 20 seconds before I got tired of the numbness in my feet and hands and tired of screaming “what??” to Rob on the beach with no wetsuit. We went for a nice walk instead.)
We stayed at a Bed & Breakfast with some lovely Australians, Terri and Diane, who talked politics with us and cooked us the most fantastic breakfasts. We had some great meals and stopped in Hobart on the way in and out. I now have a visa sticker in my passport, so we can stay for a while.
Posted by at 10:25 pm
sounds lovely…miss you guyssach () - October 14, 2004 at 3:43 pm
