Tasmania - right on point

Tasmania is to Australia like the point of an exclamation mark.

Tiny and inconsequential in some ways, but if you miss it, you miss a significant part of the whole.

Bruny Island

We started our tour by exploring Adventure Bay which is curiously one of the first areas in Australia explored by early European explorers!

About one and a half hours from Hobart airport by car (including a ferry ride), Adventure Bay is in the south-east of an island called Bruny which is to the south-east of an island called Tasmania which is to the south-east of an island called Australia.

Abel Tasman named it Storm Bay after being driven out by a storm when he visited in 1642. (The first European landing in Australia was Cape Inscription on the west coast in 1616. Here is the log of my voyage to that particular spot in 2016).

Then Tobias Furneaux, captain of the HMS Adventure accompanying James Cook in the HMS Resolution on Cook's second voyage of the Pacific, anchored here and explored on land in 1773. The bay was named for Furneaux' vessel.

The charm of Adventure Bay is that it remains a small, beach-side village with one grocery store. Amazing views - as pictured captured in shots from Zach's drone. Fabulous hikes up to the cliffs of the fluted coast, then back by the grassy area that was a whaling station in the mid-1800s.

We spent only three days there visiting the the Bruny Cheese & Beer company (awesome but expensive cheese, bread & beer), the pub called Hotel Bruny which sits on what could otherwise be a wild Scottish coastline, narrow neck being the thin sliver of land connecting the north of the island to the south part, the South Bruny National Park.

The two oddities of South Bruny? On both nights we stayed there, we felt compelled to have a fire - it was cold - and we were told that it was good weather. And in the morning, we got to see the rare white wobbly wallabies of Bruny (try saying that three times quickly).

Freycinet Peninsula

We returned to the mainland, then headed north about 2.5 hours to the Freycinet peninsula. It is VERY beautiful, and therefore, a bit of a tourist destination.

Our plan to hike in the national park was forestalled due to high temperatures and wind. The park was closed due to fire risk.

However, at 4pm, they re-opened the park, and we shot in and speed-hiked up to the lookout over Wineglass bay. Inspired by the view, we hiked on down approximately 1000 steps to the bay itself for a swim in crashing waves that rolled in direct from Antarctica.

Again very picturesque, and beautifully captured in this sunset shot from the Freycinet peninsual from Zach's drone. He very nearly missed the sunset, but using the drone, flew high enough to catch the last rays of the sun setting over the Swansea and the east coast of Tasmania.

Hobart

We then moved ourselves to Hobart finding ourselves a place in the suburb of Taroona where a university friend and his family live. We coindentally ended up being about 100m from their home.

We took a day to visit Kingston, toured the Wooden Boat Centre where they build, restore and maintain wooden boats, revictualled at Frank's Cider restaurant and cellar door across the road, then travelled on to Tahune Forest Adventures to gaze on the forests from on high, to jump and sway on swinging bridges, and to swim in the Huon river (surprisingly warm).

The next day was a trip to the famed MONA (Museum of Old and New Art). We rode a sheep (on a ferry) down from Hobart, and spent hours wandering around. Personally, I'd advise skipping through the Museum of Everything quickly. One review points out that "it gets strange." But don't be misled, it starts strange too!

The more thought-provoking exhibits in my view are those on the other side of the Museum of Everything. I particularly recommend newly opened Pharos wing featuring exhibitions of light by various artists including James Turrell.

So what's the point?

Wild and pretty coasts, forests with trees that are 1000s of years old, waterfalls all make for inspiring natural beauty.

Even the urban areas have a rural and calm feel about them.

And this was during the January school holidays, presumably the height of their tourist season.

The point is, don't overlook Tasmania. It forms a critical link between the old world (Europe) and the new (Australia).

Visiting Australia without visiting Tasmania is like a sentence without an end-point!  Still, I guess many of the early visitors to Australia had just such a sentence - whether sent to Tasmania or Port Jackson!