Day 22 - Convicts and Devils

My day began in the small village of Swansea (Google) located across the Great Oyster Bay from Freycinet National Park (day 21 blog).  After breakfast I headed south along the coast heading toward Port Arthur on the Tasmanian Peninsula (Wiki).  During breakfast my host mentioned a "short cut" through the mountains.....

....but she said it's not always well maintained so she could not speak to the condition of the road or whether it was even passable without a 4 wheel drive (which I do not have). Of course I didn't hear anything she said after "mountains" so away I went. :-)

It was very remote, with of course no cell coverage and I only passed 2 cars (4 wheel drives) in the 25 miles or so between the highways, but I was really cool getting off the beaten path and seeing some country that few get to see.  The only time I got a little concerned was when I came to this after about 15 miles.....

Fortunately there was a temporary bridge a little further down so I was able to continue and after 25 more minutes or so I was back on the highway and on to Port Arthur.

The next stop was a place called Tessellated Pavement near Eaglehawk Neck.  The Tessellated Pavement (Wiki, Images) is a very interesting nature rock formation that looks like individual blocks or pavers.  

As I walked along and looked at each "individual" block I couldn't help but think that millennium before EP Henry came along God was already using "pavers" in His creation.  :-)

After stopping in Port Arthur for a quick lunch I dropped by the most famous site in the area called Port Arthur Historic Site (Google, Web Site).  

This site was built in 1830 as a prison to house many of the worst convicts that were transported to Australia from the UK.  It was chosen because of it's remote location and was considered inescapable. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough time to do the tour so I looked around, read the information and moved on.  

From there I continued on a loop toward White Beach and Nubeena through Koonya and back to Eaglehawk Neck.  I made several stops along the way to view beautiful beaches and small village harbors...

On the way back to Eaglehawk Neck I stopped at a place call the Tasmanian Devil Unzoo (Web Site).  After getting grief from not yet having seen a Tasmanian Devil and giving up on seeing them in the wild I decided to stop and check it out.  It was a nice little "unzoo" and I watched the devil feeding (they are nasty little devils when it comes to food...hence the name :-). I would definitely have preferred to see them in the wild but this was nice and informative and part of the money goes to their preservation which I like to support as they are getting more and more rare with the devil cancer killing large numbers. Anyway, although they can be nasty little creatures I think they are cute in their own way....

I left the Unzoo in a pouring rain and then briefly stopped at the Tasman Arch, The Devil's Kitchen and The Blowhole (Tasman Peninsula).  They were each pretty cool in their own way....

I then drove for about an hour to just outside of Hobart where I will be staying for the next 3 nights. When I arrived my host Sommai made an awesome dinner for me and the young couple from Melbourne who were also staying.  We had a wonderful conversation over dinner and it turns out that he is a professional musician (guitar).  Pretty cool huh?

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