Travelling MoyJos

Our Maria Island Cruise was due to depart at 9:00 and we needed to be in Triabunna around 8:00 – 8:30am.

The drive from Bicheno is approximately 90mins, so the alarm was set for 5:15am 🤨 (aren’t we on holidays)

Shower, breakfast, final packing and on the road.

Luckily there was not much traffic at all.  On the way, I noticed the turnoff to the “Spiky Bridge”

The bridge was built by convicts in the 1840’s and is a quirky reminder of the past.

We got to the cafe and cruise check-in in plenty of time.  There is car parking at the cafe and it is a very short   Walk down to the marina to board the boat.

The Maria Island cruise often manages to circumnavigate the island, but today the same wind the battered Sydney to Hobart yachts was against us and Michael, our skipper said we were not able to go all the way around.

We made our way out of Spring Bay and across to Maria Island.

With Michael, expertly navigating the boat, we made our way up the north side of the island and around the northern tip.  Michael did warn us that heading down. The southside may get a bit bumpy.

It certainly was bumpy, but nobody on board got sick😀

The commentary on the tour was excellent and we learned about many different topics, from marine life to geology to history.

Michael and the crew bought the boat to anchor twice through the day for meal breaks.  We had a lovely morning tea of little pieces of cake and either hot drink drinks or alcoholic beverages. (we had tea and coffee.😀)

Lunch was chicken salad served with a small quiche. This time, I had a wine while M had a Coke.

After lunch, Michael stayed at the boat around to the old township of Darlington. Today there is a jetty that allows both the ferry and cruise boats to dock.

We disembarked the boat and had two hours on the Island.  We chose to do a guided walk.

Our guide, Ruby was very knowledgeable about the history of the island and also the wildlife.

We did manage to see two wombats. One of them did not care at all that 10 or so of us were there, I just merrily wounded along as we followed, taking photos🤣🤣

Back on the boat and it was again a slightly bumpy trip back to the marina at Triabunna.

Walking back to the car, we decided we were not very hungry and bought a small “Lean Cuisine” style frozen dinner from the IGA.

We checked into our park cabin at the Triabunna Caravan Park.

We had showers to wash of the salt of the day and laid down for an hour.

After a nap, we thought a cuppa might be nice.  We found the kettle easily,  but cups???
None  in the cupboard under the bench or under the sink. Where could they be?  Finally I noticed a cupboard door at the end of the bench behind a stool.  Success!!

A bit of TV and it was an early night.

Our adventuring today took us to the East Coast Nature World . We have been here before, but it is always nice to have a look around and learn about the Tasmanian devils.

I bought a little bag of pellets to feed the kangaroos as well. We had half an hour before the keepers talk about Tasmanian devils was due to start, and we spent that time hanging out with the kangaroos of course being first thing in the morning they were quite hungry so clamoured for the food quite readily. 😀

We made our way to the Tassie Devil enclosure in time for the keepers talk?  The talk was very informative, and while he was explaining about them, the Devils were fed a small wallaby leg.

Between the four of them, they polished it off pretty quickly .

After the Devils, we walked around, looking at the other animals and came across the Eastern Quoll enclosure .   He was having a great time polishing off a rat for his breakfast.🐀

After a pleasant morning at the zoo, it was lunchtime😀. We were hoping to go to the seafood restaurant we had stopped at to see the yachts, but they were closed today.

We ended up at the Long Beach Tavern for huge burgers with a view which was a bit overcast and not the greatest for photos.

Back to the unit we packed up ready for an early morning checkout in the morning.

Today we planned a very quiet day.

After a little breakfast, we headed to Devil’s Corner winery.  Although neither of us drink much at all any more, Devils Corner Pinot Noir is one of my favourites.

The cellar door and café was not open until 10 o’clock and it was just a short 20 minute drive.

I was really impressed with the architecture and layout of the whole place. It really is very pretty.

From the car park, you are directed to a tower that takes in the view of the vineyard

We had a tasting of a couple of wines and did buy a bottle to take home 🙂

Surprisingly, the price at the winery was the same price as the bottle shops, which is quite unusual.  We find it is often more expensive at the source.

The café was closed today and we did not feel like a full restaurant lunch so we just got a bowl of chips and enjoyed the scenery and the sunshine.

Driving back into Bicheno we stopped at the IGA and picked up a hot chicken and a Caesar Salad bowl for our lunch.

We did a lot of nothing for the rest of the day, before making dinner, watching TV and had an early night.

After a comfortable nights sleep, we woke and made breakfast before getting ready to go exploring.

All was well until, I was getting ready to have a shower and turned on the “tastic” heat light in the bathroom.  The power tripped 🙁

We needed to call the owner, Glen,  and find out where the switch box was.  He asked us to try it again, and sure enough it tripped again :(.   Glen said it sometimes done this if there is a bit of lint in the fan, and he would fix it later in the morning when he got home.   No huge drama, I had my shower without the heat function on.  It was not that cold 🙂

Watching “Sunrise” while having breakfast, the news mentioned that the Sydney to Hobart yachts had a rough night and were now off Bicheno!!

When we left the unit heading into Bicheno, we got a good view over the ocean and sure enough there were yachts in the distance.

I had a look at the yacht tracker online from my phone and could see that we were looking at the leading boats.

To see the yachts, we had stopped in the car park of a restaurant/cafe.  It looked like it had a good view, so we thought we would have a cup of tea.

It was very nice and enjoyable in the sun.  We heard people saying that it is quite rare to have the yachts in so close to the shore.

We continued into the township and had a walk looking around at the shops.  Bicheno is known for its penguins and they are celebrated in many ways, including a  festive flock in the council park in the centre of town 🙂

Behind the “festive flock” is a builiding that houses public toilets and has lookout over the bay. This is the view from the top.

Driving around the Espanade, we came across the Blowhole.  It was not very windy today, and I did not expect the blowhole to be blowing very much, but is was!  It much really get high in wild weather.

Back into town and we decided on pies at the bakery for lunch.  We also bought a cheese and bacon pull apart loaf to have later.

Listening to the news later in the evening, I was suprised to hear the yachts we had seen at 10:00am had not reached Hobart until just before 7:00pm.  It is only 180 kilometers from Bicheno to Hobart by car and certainly not 9 hours!!!

We had packed the majority our things last night, so there was just breakfast to be had and some final packing before we checked out.

From the directly outside the hotel, we caught the SkyBus back to the airport to collect our hire car.

We were given s Subaru CrossTrek car for the next week. Plenty of room for our suitcases and bags.

Heading north to Bicheno, we stopped off at Triabunna to see where we are staying in a few days.

We are booked on a day tour to Maria Island and we need to arrive by 8:30 ish.  Triabunna is about 100kms south of Bicheno, and I wanted to know exactly where to come.

We have booked to stay at Triabunna after the cruise, and I wanted to let the accommodation know they we would be checking in late.

As I expected, the accommodation has this scenario happen often, and reception is open until 7:00pm.  Plenty of time to check-in

Leaving Triabunna, we found a tavern for lunch.

The BarkMill Tavern has an interesting history…

The Bark Mill was built in the 1880s as a portable plant to crush black wattle bark by William Morey in the seaside town of Swansea.

The bark chips and dust were sent to tanneries in different parts of the world, as well as other Australian states. The tannery would extract tannic acid from the bark by a soaking process. It was often then used to tan hides to make leather. During the Depression years, the Swansea bark mill kept the town alive when the bottom fell out of the wool market. Many locals still remember going wattle bark stripping and earning sixpence a bundle.

The mill was made permanent on the site in 1918 and continued crushing bark until the 1960s. The mill was considered unique because most of the mill’s operation came from the inventive genius of William’s son Frank, using anything he could lay his hands on such as jam tins, old timber, metal and packing cases to refine the mill into what stands today. In 1960 the bark mill stopped work and fell into disrepair.

In 1981 the mill was purchased from Rex Morey, who was the grandson of the original builder William, and he decided to restore the mill and turned it into a large historical museum. After more than 1800 hours of hard work, the mill was ready to open to the public on 2 April 1982.

During the early 2000s it was expanded and became a coffee shop containing a local wool shop where our current restaurant stands today. The museum is currently not open to the public as it is under renovation to be reopened at a later date.

In 2004 the only pub in town burnt down and after two years of no public bar in this east coast community, the bark mill was renovated and once again the town of Swansea had a gathering place, giving the town heart and vibrancy. This is when the tavern, restaurant and bottle shop were established. At this time it was a new fresh bar for the east coast, hosting live music events with national acts, fantastic hearty meals and an overall exciting atmosphere for the coast.

We had HUGE meals and did not need dinner.

After lunch we made our way to our accomodation just out of the town of Bicheno.

We are in a cute little cabin on a large country block.  We have all we need for the next four days.

Bicheno itself is a short 5 minute drive, and after unpacking we went for a drive for a quick look around, dropped into the IGA to collect some groceries and settled in for a quiet night

Wandering around, we decided to have a look in at the museum. We had seen mention that the museum is where the remains of the last Tasmanian tiger is displayed.

One surprise we did get was seeing a display of a sugar glider eating a swift parrot 😱.  I was aware that swift parrots were endangered but did not know why.  I certainly had no idea that is because sugar gliders were introduced and eat them!!! (The things you learn)

Read more here   and here

Around the corner from the museum is Mawson’s Hut.  This is a full size replica of the hut on Antartica that the early explorers used.

It was very interesting walking through and reading the stories of the men and the dogs. One thing that struck us was how young the men were. The average age was only around 23 or so even Douglas Mawson himself was only 30.

Read more about the team here

Later in the afternoon, we took a one hour Harbour cruise with Hobart Historic Cruises .   We had a voucher in the book from the red decker bus and this tour was only $10 each absolute bargain.

Back at the hotel, we packed our bags ready to check out in the morning, then enjoyed dinner in the restaurant.