The Tasman Peninsula is on the southeast corner of Tasmania. It has 300 meter high cliffs, beautiful beaches, and a lot of history. During the 1800s, a place called Port Arthur was where convicts who had committed additional crimes after being transported to Australia were kept. The southern part of the peninsula was considered a natural penitentiary because its northern tip squeezes down to 100 meters at a place called Eaglehawk Neck, which was guarded by a line of chained dogs.
The place I ended up booking a hotel room was at Eaglehawk Neck, and when I drove around a corner and came to the overlook that looks down on the area, I was most impressed. Beautiful sunny day, huge half moon bay, white sands, tall cliffs. The hotel is right on the bay, and I can hear the surf pound all night long.
The day after I arrived I was quite tired. It felt like it did when I was rowing and had overtrained. Just going up a flight of stairs was tiring. So the first day here turned into a pure tourist day.
First stop was at the Tasmanian Devil Conservation Park. Tasmanian Devils are little black marsupials (maybe 2-3 feet long?). They’re slow and don’t see well and can’t hunt, but what they do very well is scavenge. They go after any dead meat they can come across. Their jaws are the strongest in the world for their size, and they eat anything they find, bones and all. They also love to fight, and they growl at each other ferociously. If one of them finds a lovely piece of road kill, the others will come up and try to take it away.
Unfortunately, the devils are being hit hard by a contagious cancerous disease that causes tumors to grow on their faces. Because they are always fighting, it seems to be spreading by the wounds they inflict on each other. Eventually the tumors get so big that they can’t eat and they end up starving to death. The conservation park is trying to keep a healthy breeding population alive, as well as assisting with efforts to find a cure.
In addition to the devils, the park had a variety of other birds and animals it has rescued, including kangaroos and wallabies and (hooray!) a 10 month old wombat.
After spending time at the park, I headed for Port Arthur, a former convict settlement, where I took the walking tour and the boat tour and later on the ghost tour. Interesting place, when you think of the lives that were spent there. The prison had some good intentions (teaching the convicts a trade, switching from corporal punishment to solitary confinement, caring for released prisoners who couldn’t function in the outer world and for people with mental illness.) But not all of its good intentions were achieved, and it was a harsh and sad place.
Next day my legs were back to normal, so I did a couple of hikes. The first was along the coast looking at arches and sea caves and waterfalls. After lunch, I headed for a cape walk. The first part of the hike was mostly climbing along the cliffs. Alas, just about the time I could see the tip of the cape I was heading to, I decided that it would be wise to turn back -- it was about 4:15 in the afternoon, it was my second hike of the day over rough ground, and although the guidebook said this was a heavily used trail, I had only seen one other person, and that had been quite a while ago. As a result, all I have is a picture of the final part of the hike.
Tomorrow, though, I’m taking a cruise out to the same cape, so will at least see it from the water. And after the cruise it’s on to Hobart.
Pictures from today and tomorrow are here.
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