Ok, so. Where did I leave you guys? Ah yes, that was it, the bay of fires.
So my little jaunt from st Helens to the bay of fires was wonderful. The blue water, white beaches and lichen covered granite rocks were all absolutely beautiful. Captain Tobias Furneaux named the bay of fires as his ship sailed in in 1773 and he saw all the aboriginal fires burning.
From St Helens, I slowly but surely made my way south along the coast to a little seaside town called Bicheno for more blue sea, more white beaches and more orange rocks. The most important discovery in Bicheno however, was made in the bicheno backpackers. Matt and Hanna of the Bicheno backpackers are some of the world's most special people and an absolutely awesome team together. They looked after me, got me a bit drunk on alcoholic ginger beer (yummy), and generally made my stay in Bicheno one squillion times better than it would've been otherwise. Thankyou guys!
From Bicheno, I took a day to ride to the Freycinet national park to walk through the eucalypt forests, over pink granite mountains and to enjoy the peaceful and beautiful wineglass bay. I did all of that, then got lost, ran out of water and got very frightened. Still, I'm safe now and made it out of there, so all's well that ends well.
From Bicheno, I continued south and stopped off in a little port town called Triabunna, where I ate almost everything that ever lived in the sea battered and fried and yummy, right next to the boat that it had come in on that very same afternoon. Sorry, little fishies.
The next couple of days took me on a rather bold detour to a historical (ahem..anything pre dating the mobile phone is of historical interest to a white person from Australia) place called Port Arthur.
After a boneshaking day of riding over unsealed roads, I arrived at Port Arthur which was used as a prison from 1830-1877. In that time 12,500 convicts served sentences, 1 out of 7 prisoners died. Pretty gruesome place.
The grounds were pretty and I took lots of pictures to make sure I got my 28 dollars worth. That was the first financial tourist burn situation of the trip so far, but after over 100kms of riding there, only to have to backtrack up to Hobart on the following day, there was no way I was going to not go in.
Anyway, now I'm in Hobart feeling a bit hassled by the hustle and bustle and looking forward to getting back out into the countryside again in a couple of days.
