Bruny Island Cruise

The plan for today was to take the Bruny Island Cruise, This cruise is world famous and has won many Australian Tourism awards. The boats are large inflatables with 3 large outboard engines that gives them speed and manoeuvrability. The one we were on had 3 Yamaha 250 HP 4 stroke Outboard engines. They are changing from Mercury 300 HP Engines to Yamaha as they give them less trouble and longer hours between servicing. The crew gave us an entertaining brifing and a short practice run to make sure everyone was ok. The seats toward the front have seat belts and you are warned not to travel there if you have any back, neck etc injuries.
The trip was great with plenty of stops to take photos, including rotating the boat so both sides could get close up pictures, The trip out closely followed the cliffs with close up views of the rock structures and caves. The crew gave plenty of explanation to keep us informed of the local details.
At one stage we passed at speed through a very narrow opening between the coast cliffs and some rocks just offshore. We were that close to both sides that it felt as if you could reach out and touch the rocks. Lots of calls to do it again as people didn’t have cameras ready so the driver did it again. We did it on the return journey in the opposite direction.
As well as the cliff and rock structures plus a number of caves we saw a large number of sea birds including Sea Eagles and Albatross.
The furthest area we went to was the “Friars”. This is a collection of rocks where a large population of male Australian Fur seals gather. The females stay further north from Flinders island to the mainland. The males travel to the females at breeding time.
We then ravelled back further out to sea in the hope of seeing, whales or dolphins but unfortunately none were found. We did come across large groups of Albatross feeding where seals were chasing fish to the surface enabling the birds to catch them.
On return we had lunch and then visited the Chocolate Factory to sample some of the local chocolates and the then the “Blyth” Museum. In the museum there is a large number of documents and maps dating back to the early explorers of the area.