Coles Bay to Pt Arthur

Another day of hills and bendy road driving. Headed to the Tasman Peninsula, stopping at Eaglehawk Neck for lunch.
Loved the Tessellated Pavement. This incredible natural rock formation looks like pavers with its very straight lines and flat surfaces. We spent a lot of time looking at the incredible life in the tiny rock pools and watery crevices. The dark cherry shaped “squishy things” were a mystery to us, so I reached out to the travellers in Tas FB group I joined, and discovered that they are in fact beautiful anemones that were shut up tight, waiting for the tide to come back in.
Wandered along to Tasman’s Arch and Devils kitchen rock formations which are very tall and dramatic, with fabulous colours in the rocks and all the while the waves keep on pounding far below.

Port Arthur

We arrived just in time to join the 3pm cruise, which is a great way to start exploring as it gives a recorded commentary of various aspects of the convict days. We looked at Port Puer, which was basically a very early children’s prison, with kids as young as 9 having been transported to Australia, often for pickpocketing charges. They were put to work as stone masons among other things. Mia was quite horrified that kids were convicts. She does not think she would have been a very good convict as she does not like to be told what to do!
We spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the penitentiary, the convict church and the guard towers, when they closed for the afternoon, we got kicked out.
As it was our last night in Tassie, we lashed out and had tea at the Port Arthur Motor Inn restaurant which overlooks the convict settlement. Stunning backdrop.

White Beach

We stayed in an Airbnb at White Beach, which is about 10minutes away. This little cottage was cute and quirky. Lots of weird and wonderful things like an umbrella cupboard – about 20cm wide and a metre tall – stuffed full of umbrellas. The kitchen floor was painted magenta, and the fridge was bright red! The ceiling in some places barely high enough for Sutts to stand tall. However, it was cosy and had everything we needed and the kids were pleased to have a room each.

We went for a walk to see White Beach and there was an old bloke on the jetty, he says “I’ve got a tuna in my boat if you want to see”, as he headed off to collect his vehicle and boat trailer. So, we had a look and there was a huge tuna in the boat! He was an older gentleman, probably in his 70s. We got chatting to him, he said he had gone out a couple hours earlier, had hooked the tuna almost immediately, then spent 1.5 hours fighting it before finally managing to get it in the boat. Mia was fascinated at the whole loading a boat onto a trailer manoeuvre, apparently, we had skipped this part of her life education, so we hung about and watched him load his boat full of tuna.