Discovering Tassie...

In Hobart (the capital of Tasmania) next to colourful old buildings and the boats of the Sydney-Hobart race we enjoyed the "Taste Tasmania" festival (the best part was cheese/cider/wine-tasting). The harbour waters were filled with a huge amount of jelly fishes (white and brown ones).

The trip continued with a visit to the Mt Field National Parc and its famous Russell Falls. In the great wildlife sactuarity "Something wild" we met Woki, a 6-month old baby wombat (taken care of here after a car hit his mum), and plenty of Tasmanian devils (most of the animals here are orphans or animals with health problems). Down at the river some platypuses were swimming and relaxing in the sun. Once again we had to realise that driving here takes more time (than usual), so even though driving on highways it took us some 4 hours to get to the Southwest coast and the village Strahan (about 200 km further away). Australian higways are actually normal roads, which in Tansmania become mountain roads... The weather was extremely chilly and on the way to our destination at around 1000 m altitude we saw mountain tops covered with snow!!!

On Saturday (the day after) while travelling to the next National
Parc, Cradle Mountain (Tasmania has 18 national parcs in total) we had
a lovely encounter with Royce, a very friendly Tasmanian
woodcraftsman. In his wonderful wood shop we had a very interesting
lesson about the trees to be found only in Tasmania: the huon pine and
the sassafras. Once in Cradle Mountain the wildlife was just one hand
away: fluffy wombats (eating grass), hungry echidnas (looking for ants
in the ground with their long nose), jumping wallabys (moving their
ears), curious pademelons and colourful parrots are just running
around (if not hiding in the bush) and in most of the time not too
afraid of humans...