Kicking Back on Bruny

A week at Jetty Beach on Bruny Island was perfect for a bit of relaxation and absorbing Tasmania "summer style".............

Jetty Beach was our base at Bruny Island

Not all days were like this of course, but you soon forgot about the wind and rain.

Caves on the east side of the island from the Bruny Island Cruise boat.

A flock of muttonbirds on the Southern Ocean.

You go first family, I'll catch up.....

Closing in................

On Lighthouse Beach.

Hitting the beach Tasmania summer style.

Little F. That's an echidna. Okay, that's school for today.

A rare dinner out. The quirky yet delightful Hothouse Cafe.

Central Highlands and Southern Tassie

Big F inspects this ancient Myrtle in this freezing forest.

Franklin River

Lake St Clair in all  its summertime glory.

Lake Pedder.

A monster in a forest filled with many others like it.

Mt Field National Park

River of boulders at Mt Field

They call this place...wait for it....Tall Trees.

At the bottom of Oz.  Next stop that way  is Antarctica

From our camp at Port Huon, the boys sat and watched this bushfire while the girls were stuck on the other side....

Helicopters were quickly on the job...

The Convicts Called It Hell's Gate

Our last west coast stop was at Strahan where we enjoyed the scenery and took a cruise along the Gordon River. The convicts had a brutal time at Sarah Island and dubbed the entry to it "Hell's Gate", but we had a great time camping there knowing that we could leave anytime.

Call us weird but we like picking up dead stuff

Can't help ourselves. Digging up a big whale bone on the ocean beach.

The Gordon River Cruise took us through the narrow and windy  Hell's Gate passage.

The huge dunes on the ocean beach were the source of endless fun for fivegooff and some fellow Queensland kids.

Cradle Mountain

If you hadn't already guessed from previous posts, the weather in the west can be a bit fickle. But we couldn't have asked for a better day to tour Cradle Mountain. It might have been really cool to start with, but the 10 kilometres we hiked soon warmed us. Even Little F charged through the walks.

E soon regretted not wearing long pants, it was a very  cool morning.

Lunch in the bush

Jackets soon came off as we walked through the most beautiful alpine vegetation including alpine heath, button grass meadows, mossy forests and open woodland.

 Flowering teatree and button grass in the afternoon light. J's favourite photo of the day.

The Boatshed at Cradle Mountain

Lake Lilla

And as a quick endnote, we know the Queenslanders among you are having a devil of a time with the weather, so here's some interesting Tasmanian summertime info from your in-absentia Queenslanders. Today we abandoned our walks at Lake St Clair in the central tablelands because it was simply too cold for we the ill-equipped. Overnight temp of 3, and the mercury didn't get above 9 even at 2pm. So we left..............

North West Tassie

Cape Grim, Dismal Swamp, Linger and Die Creek, Suicide Bay, Murderer's Plains and Savage River. The early settlers obviously had a harder time in Tassie's north west than we did.

On board the "Spirit of Tasmania" for an overnight Bass Strait crossing.



At Levens Gorge

  Gunns Plains



Playing around at our Gunn's Plains Camp





Sunset from the caravan door

 Stanley

A historic town on a peninsula in the north west. A great camp right on the beach (great when we weren't being blown away).

Our camp on Godfrey's Beach at Stanley



The best watering hole in the north west!





Every north west Tasmanian should be an expert kite flyer!



Right on the beach



"The Nut"



Bit cold for a Queenslander.



Stanley has plenty of warm escapes on a cold and windy day.

The West Coast - Marrawah

  

Lucky the kids didn't get out of the car here - we would have lost them in the wind.

 Table Cape Lighthouse