Along the East Coast of Tasmania!

It’s time to leave the southern part of Tasmania and head north east!

The morning we were leaving Hobart for our journey north along the east coast of Tasmania we woke up to an overcast sky and lots of rain… Normally this isn’t a problem, but our plan was to stop along the way and have Xander experience some fruit picking. Too hot one day, too wet the next… we will just have to find another place along the way!

After a few hours on the road, and a quick stop-over in Swansea for lunch, we reached our destination for the day, Coles Bay and Freycinet National Park. No sooner had we arrived in the area when I wanted to hike to the viewpoint overlooking Wineglass Bay. The plan was for all three of us to do the hike, with Xander sitting on a hiking backpack. Because of the rain however, we decided that we wouldn’t take Xander up to the top, so Suz took him to our accommodation while I did the hike on my own.

The hike was great and it was good to be back walking in nature again. The rain didn’t really bother me and I reached the top of the viewpoint in no time. The viewpoint looks over the so called Wineglass Bay, named this way because it’s in the shape of a wineglass (Duh…). The view was great, yes it was cloudy and overcast but still great!

The next morning we woke up to clear blue skies and went back to the start of the hike once again… Xander loved being able to walk on his own at the start of the hike and was actually able to keep a good pace. It all got a bit too difficult after a while though so we placed him in the hike backpack. He was resisting it at first but loved it as soon as he realised he had the best view in town =)

Shortly thereafter we reached the top and were able to soak in the view over Wineglass Bay… unfortunately by the time we made it there, the clouds had moved in once again and therefore we didn’t get to see the bay under full sunlight. It was still a great hike with a spectacular view.

Our next destination was the Bay of Fires on the north east coast of Tasmania. We made our way north to St Helens were we were going to spend the night. After checking in to our hotel we drove to Binalong Bay for lunch where we had some spectacular views over a white sandy beach, and this time under full sunlight… absolutely outstanding! After lunch we made it down to the beach and let Xander run on his own to start with. Soon we had to stop him as he kept running into the water. As he was doing this we stripped him down to his nappies so that his clothes wouldn’t get wet.

Normally Xander usually just runs along the beach, not really venturing into the water. On this beach he couldn’t wait to get in the water… we had to run after him on several occasions. He eventually got into the water so many times that we had to remove the nappy as it had soaked up half the ocean already. No sooner had we let go of him before he once again ran off into the water again…. naked this time!

Once he had enough, we drove up along the coast for some amazing coastal and beach views… the entire area is just amazingly beautiful!

The next morning we made our way to Launceston, the second biggest city in Tasmania. It’s a very cute and beautiful place with old heritage type of buildings everywhere.

We spent a few hours at Cataract Gorge enjoying the sights and doing a few small hikes, we explored the city and also had time to stop at the local beer brewery James Boags. We could not do the factory tour as the minimum age is 5, but were able to sit in their cafe/bar and sample some versions of their beer not available anywhere else… quite happy with that!

The next morning we explored Tamar Valley, located to the north of Launceston, and managed to finally find a berry farm where we could pick our own berries. They only had Strawberries in season when we visited which was perfect, that’s what we wanted anyway. We were the only people there at the time and just let Xander run loose. At first he wasn’t sure of what we were doing, but as soon as we gave him a fresh, tasty and sweet Strawberry he could not get enough.

We showed him where to get them from and he tried hard to get them loose himself without success so we had to get them for him. All the time he kept asking for “more” and “more”. In the end we all had our good share of Strawberries and even ended up bringing some with us (which we finished off later that night with some cream and melted chocolate).

We did a loop of the Tamar Valley and managed to pay a quick visit to Beaconsfield to see the mine, Grindelwald to see a Swiss style village (weird but cute) and even had time to squeeze in some wine sampling…

The next morning we left Launceston early as we wanted to make it back to Hobart for the Salamanca Markets (which we obviously did).

We had an amazing trip travelling along the east coast of Tasmania and the only regret was that we didn’t have more time to see more, do more and longer hikes and just spend more time at some places. We know that we’ll be back later though… both to Tasmania and to the east coast!