The tour was, as I suspect all tours are, a whirlwind exposure to a few of the tourist highlights in that part of the state. We boarded the bus, hopped off at a couple stops, boarded the bus again, stopped at a hostel, slept, boarded the bus, and so on. It was a good choice for our transportation dilemma, but defiantly reinforced the fact that if you want to make the most of Tasmania, you really do need your own vehicle.
On the first day we made a very brief stop over at the town of Ross. Ross is one of those nauseatingly picturesque towns that you would see in postcards and visit on long weekends for the sole purpose of staying at that adorable little bed-and-breakfast where they have a blind dog and two goats. It was more of a pit-stop than anything else, but oddly enough Ross has a bakery, cleverly known as the Ross Bakery Inn in which most Japanese tourists have a keen interest, as it is one of the sites in the anime movie Kiki’s Delivery Service. I had no idea it was an actual place, but apparently the oven in the bakery is quite a feature in the anime movie.
The exterior of the building in question:
And the interior, including the famous oven. It's difficult to see the workers, but most of the women were wearing what I can only describe as a Scottish tartan "Miss Muffet" costume:
Glen and I indulged in a couple of desserts while we were in the bakery, and shared a Lamington (I think that’s what they call it), which is a sponge cake sort of confection with jam and coconut shavings around the outside, and an absolutely heavenly vanilla slice – perfectly flakey pastry, excellent custard. I shall have to attempt to recreate the vanilla slice when we get back home.
Next we found ourselves heading to Wineglass Bay, a lovely white-sanded, blue-watered bay nestled among a whole pile of other smaller bays. The tour group did a hike up to the main bay lookout point, and the view is indeed picturesque and spectacular.
Even better than the view, however, are the huge cracks in the cliff face around the lookout point. The tour guide pointed them out, so Glen and I scrambled around them for a while.
Pretty cool, eh?
Possibly the event that gained popular interest among our fellow tour groupies was the appearance of a couple of female wallabies, complete with joeys in their pouches, near the Wineglass Bay parking lot. These suckers were so accustomed to visitors and so very, very good at begging for handouts that they would actually allow people to pet them.
Behold the ferocious beast and its spawn!
We spent that night in Bicheno, a small town on a particularly windy harbour. The hostel was freakishly cold, as the wind kept howling right through the exterior wall of our room. Happily, Glen and I had a dorm room to ourselves, which meant that we could squish onto a single twin-sized bed and huddle together for warmth. All newlywed jokes aside, it was necessary to do so to get any sleep. The wind made a hell of a racket, screaming around the outside of the hostel and wailing through trees and boat masts. I could have sworn that there were banshees outside trying to kill us with their howls.
On to the next stop!
(The chair upon which we are lounging is located on the hiking trail to the Wineglass Bay lookout - it is surprisingly comfortable!)
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