The Ferry docked at 6am this morning so we set the alarm for stupid o’clock (or 5.30 as it is actually known) and had a shower, I slept remarkably well and considering how choppy the sea looked last night I certainly wasn’t disturbed by the motion at all – maybe I could survive a cruise around Alaska after all! We were allowed to disembark about 6.30 and had time to pick up the hire car before we collected our luggage and loaded it all into the boot. We then set off for our first port of call in Tasmania which was Ulverstone where we stopped for breakfast and picked up some supplies for the drive. The we set off for Penguin – which is actually the name of the town and home to the smallest Penguins in the world. We looked for these in New Zealand without any luck and we didn’t see any today but then again we didn’t expect to as they only come out in the evening, however the town has definitely made a living out of the fact they nest there as they have Penguins everywhere, a massive statue outside visitor information and all the bins have them on, they also have some smaller models dotted around the town one was even dressed as Santa but I think the funniest thing was the ‘Penguin Police’ unfortunately we couldn’t get a picture of the sign! After this we drove to the north of Tasmania and the town of Stanley which was the first European Settlement on Tasmania and we visited Highfield Historic Site which is called the birthplace of European Settlement in Tasmania’s north west. It is a wonderful house on top of a hill with a great view over the bay and the town of Stanley. Unfortunately this wasn’t a pleasant period in European / Australian history as not only did they use prisoners to build the house and town they also had indebted labourers who basically were slaves, they basically got cheep passage to Australia but then had to work off the full price of the passage, many tried to escape but were re-captured and forced to work for ‘the company’ finally it was also a time where the local aboriginal people weren’t really classed as human and one of the beaches is called ‘suicide beach’ which is a strange name considering it was the site of a massacre of aboriginals but no one knows quite how many were killed as they didn’t bother to count them and they just ‘disposed’ of the bodies. The house however was really nice, they are in the process of restoring parts of it and will leave others as they are currently because they want to show what damage can be done if houses are not looked after. We spent a while walking round the house then we got back in the car and continued our journey. We stopped in Wynyard for lunch then went to Hellyer Gorge and the town of Warathah which was once the richest tin mine in the world. The town has a gorge and waterfall right in the middle of the town they used the waterfall to create power for the tin mines and you can still see one of the waterwheel’s just above the waterfall. Finally we arrived at Cradle Mountain National Park and walked up to the lookout but using their directional compass plaque we couldn’t work out which one was Cradle Mountain but it could have been in the cloud so we carried on to the lodge. We checked in and went round to the room which is amazing, they have left us a bottle of champagne for my birthday tomorrow but we have a wood burning fire with lots of logs, a hot tub on the deck which is constantly running with hot water and we even had a couple of what looked like rock wallaby’s come and visit as we were sitting having a drink how fantastic and what a great way to spend my birthday eve.
