Monday, September 05, 2011

TASmania! Ch.2: The Tasman Peninsula

Picking up from where I stopped the other time...
After spending some time in Hobart... we headed further south to the Tasman Peninsula...

We had the keys to a friend's shack at Eaglehawck Neck...  by the time we reached there it was late in the evening... and for the first time in my life I had spotted wallabies which ended up hopping towards me and freaking me out...



The morning after we started exploring the area around... we drove to the Tasman Arch which has a stunning view to the Ocean...

The Tasman Arch

And the ever steep Devil's Kitchen... I wonder what was he cooking down there...

Devil's Kitchen

Trying to find some fossils at the Fossil Bay...

Fossil Bay

A fossil at Fossil Bay

And looking at the blowhole... though it had no sound, only a bad breathe...

Blowhole

We kept driving to Port Arthur and though we made it to the site... we decided not to venture going inside. Port Arthur has a major role in the History of Australia. This was a convict settlement in the 1800s where British and Irish convicts were brought here. The site is heavy with memories as another tragedy took place in 1996 when 35 people were killed in what is know known as Port Arthur Massacre.

Port  Arhtur

Arching over Port Arthur
* Image by the Hubby

Along our drives... we came by a nice white beach... simply beautiful... a beach no famous but for those lucky enough to live nearby...

White shores

White Beach

We drove by many small towns... and had fish and chips at a local place in Nubeena where instantly we felt we were the strangers and the new faces of the day for the locals eating and working there...

Tasman Sea

We visited Maingon Bay...

Maingon Bay

Maingon Bay

where you can see the special rock formation on the outside wall of Remarkable Cave

Outside wall of Remarkable Cave

before you actually go inside the cave to take an insider look at how the ocean can deeply kiss the earth...

Remarakable Cave

We reached further down to the Coal Mines Historic Site and walked there until the sunset. This site is full of memories too where convicts were used as cheap labors to dig out coals. Many lives had vanished on that site.

Signs at Coal Mines Historic Site

After that we drove back to Eaglehawk Neck finishing up the whole road circuit in the Peninsula.

Sunset in Tasman Peninsula

Next day we managed an early visit to the Tessellated Pavements... a marvelous work of time and pressure... nature being sculpted in the most precise geometrical forms I've seen in nature.

Tessellated Pavement

Tesselated Pavement-closeup 2

 Tesselated Pavement-closeup 1

And then we headed back up to Hobart....  before our next drive up North along the east coast....

Chapter III: The East Coast

to be continued...