Hopscotch

Monday, December 09, 2019

Tasmania - day 3

9 December 2019

Xena woke up, ready to feed the animals again! Was it the 4th time we were going to feed them? 5th? (If only she agreed to be fed the number of times she wanted to feed the animals.)

But this morning was different. We were going to feed the animals for the last time as we were leaving our beautiful farmstay that morning to head to Port Arthur.

And while we were packing our luggage and loading it into the car, Xena was busy writing...


... a thank you note to our kind hostess!

We picked up the bag of the remaining carrots and headed towards the horses first.


Xena had named this horse Pepper. Its companion (see behind) was Mint. Same name format as Lolly and Pop. Pepper was friendlier (and closer to where we stood) so he ended up with the lion's share of the carrots. Mint was hungrier and came bounding whenever he saw us, but he looked kinda aggressive so we would just toss the carrots with all our might to wherever he stood so he couldn't have a reason to come too close to us.


Baby farmer feeds and bids goodbye to Pepper. Pepper didn't look too happy at the thought of his source of food and entertainment leaving the premises.


Then we grabbed some bird food...


... fed the geese and bade them goodbye too. They honked their goodbyes in unison.

On the way to Port Arthur, we made several stops. The first one was Viv's colleague's parents' place, two of the warmest and most hospitable people we had ever met. It was hard to believe that we were total strangers to them.


We were also given a rather royal treatment of homemade almond fruit cake and the freshest and sweetest strawberries one can imagine. They also gave us lots of tips on what to see and do around Tasmania.


Xena quickly became friends with their cat, who had decided to spend the day in the comfort of the bed. The cat only turned its head once to express disapproval when Xena rubbed it the wrong way — quite literally so — but once she corrected herself, the cat went back to its placid state.

Next, we headed for a quick walkabout in Nutgrove beach, which was nearby according to GPS.



When we got out of our car to go to the beach, we saw this really cool automated garbage collection system.


The beach was totally deserted.


We saw some very pretty flowers at the beach.


It as fascinating to see flowers of varying shades on the same bush.


We stopped for a leisurely waterside lunch at Old Wharf Restaurant. Though it's famous mainly for seafood, we were able to find decent vegetarian food for Viv. Though we remembered to take the camera from the car, we forgot to take photos of the food! Sheesh.

After lunch, Viv wanted to pop by the Greg Chappell cricket centre to buy a new bat. Xena and I stayed in the car. After approximately 3947032874 hours, it hit us that we had sent a cricket fan into a cricket black hole. So we got out, locked the car and went in search of him.


The man with his newly acquired assets — a bat and gloves


We drove off towards the historic village of Richmond, home to many of "Australia's oldest" landmarks — the oldest bridge, the oldest church, the oldest gaol and many more. Many of the old buildings have been restored and turned into cafes, restaurants and galleries.


Richmond bridge, Richmond's most photographed landmark, was built by convicts in the 1820a and is the oldest bridge in Australia that is still in use.


The grassy banks of the Coal River offer a gorgeous picnic spot, full of birds of all kinds.


We hung out for a while, and Xena had fun running down the grassy hills.


We saw many many mallard ducks at close quarters.


We walked up the road from the bridge to St. John the Evangelist Roman Catholic Church. Built in 1836, it's Australia's oldest still-functioning Roman Catholic Church.


Close-up of the church


We spotted this curious-looking tree that looked full-grown, yet quite short. Xena tip-toed to reach its leaves.

We also passed by the Richmond gaol, the oldest gaol in Australia. It is a tourist attraction now, but we decided not to go in.


We made a pit stop at 'Sweets and Treats', a very popular traditional candy shop in Richmond. We got ourselves some ice-cream.


The inside of the shop looked like it was straight out of an old fairy tale.


And this reminded me of the trolley lady in Hogwarts Express! We bought some strawberry yoghurt and chocolate frogs.

The weather was nice and we walked around the place, finding curious little things...


...such as this metal kangaroo that Xena found extremely intriguing.

Once we had our fill of the sights, sounds and tastes of Richmond, we headed off towards the famous Tessellated Pavement at Pirates Bay in EagleHawk Neck.


It was a short walk from the carpark down to the pavement.

So a tessellated pavement basically refers to a flat rock that has been divided into regular shapes, resembling tiles of a mosaic floor. Tessellated pavements are extremely rare and there are only a few of them in the world.


Viv and Xena posing on the Tessellated Pavement


It was fascinating to think that the "tiles" had been naturally formed due to erosion over millions of years. There are two types of formations — "pans" and "loaves". The ones here are the flat "pans"...


...while, these raised ones, are called "loaves" due to their resemblance to bread.

We had an early dinner at the nearby Lufra restaurant.


The food was not fantastic, but I really liked this drink.

We drove off towards our accommodation at Port Arthur.


View from our room

It was still early for bed, so all of us snuggled under the blanket and watched 'We bought a zoo' on TV before calling it a day. We had walked A LOT, so it wasn't too long before we were all fast asleep.

Watch this space for Tasmania day 4!






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