Stormwater Thom, the Billabong Bloke: Kara sees Tassie

With my program officially over on the 3rd, Kara arrived on the morning of the 5th so we could spend two weeks together traveling about Australia! In spectacular timing, I came down hard very suddenly with an Australian flu or strep throat. Real-deal sickness, but I rested HARD the day before she got here and pulled myself together enough to go get her at the airport. We spent a relaxing day recovering (me from flu, her from jetlag), heading to the market downtown, seeing the flying foxes at the park nearby, and eating some Thai takeaway in my little shack,

We turned it around quickly and headed back to the airport in the morning to fly down to Tasmania for a few nights. After hearing of my time there, Kara REALLY wanted to go and fulfill her childhood love of the Tasmanian Devil from the Looney Tunes cartoons, so we headed there and retraced my steps from Hobart to Freycinet to Bonorong and back. We were very relaxed, both still recovering, and it was great to just spend some time together. We rented small comfy apartments from Airbnb, with the first night in Coles Bay just nearby Freycinet National Park and the second in the hills of Hobart. The first night we basically just drove up to Coles Bay, rounded up some dinner at a local market, and retired to the room to watch Olympic coverage and keep warm and SLEEP!

Kara, freshly arrived, in the Shack.

View of Freycinet mountains nearby our place for the first night.

Kara and the mountains from Coles Bay at sunrise.

A shark-like fish we spotted in the waters of the harbor.

These MASSIVE yucca-type plants were in the backyard of our place in Coles Bay.

We got up early and caught the sunrise over the mountains of Freycinet before breakfasting on leftovers and packing it up. We had to retrace our steps from the day before to get to Bonorong so Kara could see some Aussie wildlife, and we stopped at a beach outside of the town of Orford to walk a bit, check out shells and rocks, and take in the views. Perfect stop here with gorgeous scenery and LOADS of awesome shells. Kara found some awesome ones, including some MASSIVE scallop shells.

Cool coastal rocks.

Crazy intricate shell patterns.

Pretty ocean views.

We made it to Bonorong and this time around, it was beautiful and sunny. We were there after lunch and it seemed like ALL of the animals were happy and active and as excited about the beautiful sunny day as us! It was a really awesome visit and we just took our time taking all of these cool critters in.

Parrot in the trees that was talking to Kara, bonding over love of tie-dye and bright colors.

These adorable orphaned wombats are good buddies. Both were discovered by Tassie citizens, alive in the pouches of their dead mothers, and brought to Bonorong where they are growing up together and will be released once mature.

The devils were super active, out and about, sniffing the breeze to catch the scent of a meal nearby!

This devil wanted Kara to know not to mess with him.

They bare their mouths as if yawning quite often to let anything around them know what they are capable of!

We saw them climb these narrow tree trunks to get higher and catch a better whiff of whatever was around.

Greetings, earthlings!

Randall, the rescued echidna! The other egg-laying marsupial of Australia.

Beautiful view on a beautiful day from Bonorong to neighboring hills.

Kara feeding a momma kangaroo.

After taking in Bonorong, we cruised into Hobart and had a few beers at a local craft brewery. Shambles Brewing had some delicious options, but Kara and I started and settled on a couple of the Porter and Double IPAs for our stay there. We then walked downtown and split a sampling of different seafoods at one of the floating fish and chipperies on the harbor. I think we had Flake (fish), calamari (the big Australian style rings), scallop, and garlic prawns. All was really good and decently priced!

Comfy stay in Hobart in a basement apartment at a house with chickens and fresh eggs provided for breakfast!

Decorations at our apartment for the night.

In the morning we decided to drive up Mt. Wellington, the highest peak overlooking Hobart and all of the bays and coastline surrounding it. The drive up was pretty steep in places, as Mt. Wellington sits high atop a sharp rocky dropoff. There were times in the drive when I could not fathom how we would end up on top of it, but we did, and there was even a bit of snow up there as high as it was (about 3000 ft. I believe). The views were AMAZING! It was CHILLY up there and windy, but man, such an awesome experience to take in the whole area and the rugged nature of Tassie where mountains meet the sea. A really good last stop before we headed to the airport and back to Melbourne soon after,