Geelong, Melbourne to Tasmania

The southern half of Australia has been pretty impressive so far, and Melbourne and Tasmania haven't let down this half of the country. The weather has been absolutely shit though...

 We stayed in Geelong a couple of days, this was a really nice town, and reminded me a lot of Newcastle, except way colder. We had a good time there, and visited the Australian wool museum. That sounds really boring, but it was actually really really cool, and the people running it were really friendly.

 Then we hit Melbourne for about 4 days, which was fantastic. We blew heaps of money on food and clothes, that city has a lot to offer, public transport is excellent there and it has a great feel to it. Definitely in my top 3 favourite capital cities.

 After that we headed over to Tasmania on the Spirit of Tasmania car ferry. The ferry ride surprised me a bit, you got a nice room with nice beds, a shower, there were 2 bars a games room and lounges and a theaterette. It was actually really nice, way better than flying over.

 We're in Tasmania now, and we've spent most of our time at Pirate Bay with family, which is on the south east of the island on the Tasman peninsula. We've also done some tourist things in Hobart as well (headed to Mona and the local markets and shops and junk), but it's the national parks around Tasmania we're really interested in. We managed to paddle out to a local fur seal colony on the Tasman peninsula off fortesque bay, this was a great spot to visit. It's not advertised at all but is definitely worth doing. You can either kayak out from fortesque bay, or you can walk out to cape hauy which is a 2 hr walk and then at the end scramble down the cliffs and swim the narrow channel over to the seals if you don't have a kayak. Either way its definitely worth doing, swimming with seals is becoming one of my favourite things to do, they have so much energy its contagious.

 The freezing cold city of Hobart from above - the temperature reached 25 degrees and that was meant to be a warm day. This is in summer.... That's just atrocious weather

Fat car at the Mona art gallery - There were so many cool artworks in there but my camera ran out of battery after this photo (I don't learn). It was a really cool (and disturbing) place. Some of the artworks just looked like regular junk though

 Some tasmanian devils fighting in the Tasman devil park. This was an excellent place to visit, Tasmanian devils were so funny, they'd be fighting one minute, then sleeping the next. Funniest animals ever.

 Tasmanian Devil - It looks ferocious but its actually yawning

 Tasmanian Devils eating dead wallaby - They are carrion eaters, and they can eat a big chunk of meat and bones amazingly quickly. It was pretty impressive

 A live wallaby getting pats from Rachael - Very cute animal. I don't know why you can't have wallaby's as pets in Australia, if you could then maybe all the feral cats and dogs wouldn't be such a problem. You can't really get feral wallabies running around.

 Tawny Frogmouth

Another Tasmanian devil (I went a bit crazy on devil photo's, they were just hilarious animals)

Box fish - We went for an obligatory scuba dive with eaglehawk dive centre, I'm liking scuba diving less and less every time I go out.

Leafy sea dragon with a bunch of eggs - I think the female keeps the eggs, but then the male keeps the kids maybe? something like that

Southern rock lobster (they are still called crayfish in Tasmania) - some would argue the best tasting lobster in the world

Spotted quolls at the tasmanian devil park - very funny animals, the keeper guy went in to feed them and one jumped right up to his hand and bit him. He was not impressed.

Pirate Bay on the Tasman Peninsula

Pirate skull - I'm not sure if this is why pirate bay is called pirate bay, the scuba guy had never heard of this, but the rocks in the cliff look just like a giant skull.

If you went in, there was a bit of a blowhole under the chin which would probably be pretty cool in a big swell.

Fur seal showing off off of fortesque bay, There were some scuba jerks swimming around at the seal colony and the seals were doing laps around them, they were so slow in all their scuba gear. It was a good feeling swimming around them just snorkeling.

 Freediving is definitely the way to see seals, they are really fast and there is no way you could keep up with all the gear you have to wear to scuba dive.

Sea cliffs - At the end of the cliffs you can see two small rocks out at sea, in between the last two rocks is where the seal colony is.

Kayaking out to the fur seal colony

Southern Stargazer - apparently we were lucky to see this fish when we went scuba diving, I'm very glad we got to see one, you don't get them up north. Weird looking fish.

 

 

 

 Fur seal scratching
 

Thats everything so far, as far as the lemon is concerned we haven't had any new problems, I don't want to say it, but maybe the old girl has stopped breaking down (famous last words there...) Tasmania is pretty hilly and winding so we've been going really slowly, and really pissing off the locals...

 Otherwise everything is going fine, we're parked at the local boat club at the moment, it's an interesting place, full of a lot of interesting salty characters. They are all happy for us to park here as long as we want so we'll probably park here for a while as a base while we see the rest of Tasmania.