Day 23 – Bruny Island boat trip    

 We woke up at 8:00, in time to get to Adventure bay by 10:00 for our boat trip.  In the morning there was another one of those dark brown possums wondering around.  It walked through the campsite, where it decided to mark it’s territory on a tree.  He was a funny little thing, looking up and giving an evil looking stare if you moved around near him, but still coming close at one stage passing only about 1 metre away from me.   

We got to adventure bay on time, but not without our own adventure.  As we wound our way there through the hills we suddenly had a horrible screeching noise from the Front left corner of the car.  I stopped and had a look, deciding that it was only something to do with the sheetmetal brake guard.  Wanting to get to the boat terminal on time it screeched all the way we had people staring at us as we passed.  On arrival I removed a wheel and found that a rock was caught up in between the guard and disk, no big deal and easily fixed

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 The boat trip started an hour later.  It wasn’t exactly the cruise boat I was expecting, but something more exciting.  It was kind of a big speed boat, with three supercharged 270 or so KW motors on the back.  When we boarded, I convinced Jo it would be more exciting up the front, and no worse than bumping around in the 4wd. 

It was a really good ride.  It was bumpy as we ploughed through the waves splashing them up over the boat, and slapping down over others.  We stopped to look at massive cliff faces along the shore, and caves and interesting rock formations.  At one stage we were driven at high speed in between two close rock formations that towered over on each side, making everyone hold their breath.  It was really fun.

 We were hoping to get to the southern end of the Island to see seals on the rocks, but it was pretty cold, and the water a bit too rough to go further than we did.  So the captain turned the boat around and headed further out to sea where the mutton birds were darting around in a feeding frenzy.  It was really cool going in amongst them and having them darting around us.  We also saw albatross and gulls.  The muttonbirds were able to dart around in between the waves with amazing precision and were interesting to watch.

 After the ride we were given a free bowl of hot pumpkin soup which really hit the spot after being so cold on the boat trip.  We were also given a small gift voucher for their shop, so we got some fudge squares.

 We went back down to cloudy bay to go for a walk, once again driving across the beach.  The walk took about 3 hours and went to the top of a peninsula that overlooked the sea on both sides it was a nice walk, although a little overgrown with bracken.  The view looked out over some rocks that are supposed to have seals on them sometimes, but we didn’t bring the binoculars.

 We got back for dinner, making pasta.  A guy from a tent near by came over for a chat.  He was here with his wife and two small kids, one of the little ones had down syndrome which was a little sad, but he was a happy little thing.  I talked 4wd with him for a while until the bugs started to come out in numbers.  Yes remember those horrible little bugs that made us itchy for days and days, well the same ones have arrived here.  They were not quite as bad this time, I guess they have more camp sites to spread themselves between, but they were not nice, getting in under your clothes and biting away.  This time getting into the tent, we were very careful not to let any in.  Of course some still somehow got in.  I have squashed about 20 of them so far.  Hopefully there will not be any left to bite us overnight. 

 GPS Travel Tasmania photo