Freycinet National Park & Wineglass Bay
On Saturday we set off from Swansea and drove up the East Coast of Tasmania toward St Helens where we would be spending the night. On the way we stopped at the Freycinet National Park and took a short (but very steep) walk to a lookout over Wineglass Bay. This is one of the big tourist attractions of Tasmania but it was surprisingly quiet (an annual triathlon was taking place in the Freycinet Peninsula over the weekend so maybe everyone was watching that instead). The lookout is very impressive as you’re pretty high up and it was a bright clear day so we had great views.
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Today we left Port Arthur and drove back through the Tasman Peninsula toward Hobart and then turned North to head up the east coast of Tasmania. We stopped at Eagleshawk Neck where there’s a few formations in the rocks caused by sea erosion. The Blowhole is an area where the ocean has eroded a cave but the roof of the cave has collapsed so the water comes in through a tunnel and then fires up in the air where the cave roof would have been. There’s also the Tasman Arch, the Devil’s Kitchen and the Tessellated Pavement (which gets bonus points from me for use of the word “tessellated”)
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Yesterday we took a hop-on, hop-off bus tour around Sydney, changed buses at Central Station and got another bus to Bondi Beach. The weather was pretty good all day. Bondi is a nice beach, but smaller than we both expected. We has a walk around Bondi and sat on the beach for a while listening to a group of people on a surfing lesson (gonna have to try surfing before we leave!).
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Thunderstorms were forecast for today but it looked reasonably bright when we drew back the curtains so we headed out to Circular Quay and took the 30min ferry ride to Manly. As it’s the bank holiday weekend there’s a Jazz Festival and lots of different music stages dotted around Manly today. We walked through the main shopping area and sat and watched people learning to surf for a while. After a very light rain shower, we went to 4 Pines which is a microbrewery bar/cafe opposite the ferry port that only opened in August/September last year. They do 6 different beers (we tried 4 of them) – much more like proper English ales than the usual lager that everywhere here tends to serve. All the beers were great (though maybe slightly too chilled for my liking) and the food was awesome (we had fish & chips but it all looked really good). This place is my highlight of Sydney so far!
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