Tasman Island Cruise up the Tasman Peninsular

We departed the caravan park around 0830 to meet up at the Office for the Cruise near Port Arthur. After a briefing about safety and other issues like warm clothes the group was broken into 2 groups. One group were taken down to the boat at Stewarts Bay just below the office. The rest of us boarded a bus to take us to Eaglehawk Neck. One boat was going to travel from Port Arthur to Eaglehawk neck and ours was to travel in the reverse direction. The crew were good offering lots of information and are really passionate about the flora and fauna of the area. We had previously taken the trip with the same company at Bruny Island and the 2 trips are similar, but different. The coastline on this trip had more caves and probably due to the weather on the day was rougher. We diverted a number of times when the crew saw birds feeding on the sea and we were fortunate to see seals and dolphins herding fish which we didn't see at Bruny. As the trips are into open sea and the animals and birds aren't tame it is really a matter of luck in what you see. We saw a number of types of sea birds from Albatross to eagles.



After the trip we had lunch and then stopped off at the Blowhole and Tasman's Arch to look at it from the land side. Next stop was the dog line area where they had a station for soldiers and dogs to stop convicts escaping via Eaglehawk Neck. A stop at another Chocolate Factory to stock up on supplies. Followed by the Tasmanian Devil Conservation Park. This park has a number of Tasmanian Devils in different types of enclosures. One of which has a tunnel that you can crawl through and you come up in a Perspex dome and the devils wander around quite near you. Other encloses are open and you can get quite close to the devils if you want to. There are a number of older style enclosures with wire netting fronts that are slowly being replaced with the more open types. As well as devils there are Quolls, owls, eagles, kangaroos.