Bay of Fires and Lonnie

The Bay of Fires was magnificent, even though the weather was crap.  Its actually 5 bays that stretch for a good 30 miles up the coast, not one bay.  We just drove around for a few hours, getting out now and again to scramble out on the rocks and whatnot.  We also mistakenly took our poor car on what ended up being a pretty bad unsealed road for an hour before we realized that we were going to slow to get anywhere in a reasonable amount of time.  If you wanted to do Tas right you would definitely need a four wheel- high off the ground - good suspension car, none of which we had.  

We had an awesome lunch at a restaurant jake had recommended to us ( he used to be the chef) and I can solidly say it was one of the best meals of my life.  This was the view from our table: 

Delish bay of fires wine..

Porccini Riosotto..yummm

Other Pictures from the BOF:

LONNIE:

Lonnie is just a cute little town, not really much going on; the town revolves around the Boags Brewery.. which is aaaa-mazing.  They have a house as part of the brewery that is called : "Boags Center For Beer Lovers" - basically the coolest name ever.   I did a tour of the brewery.. which was magnificent - you actually get to see the process in action unlike on tours for any of the big brewers such as Heineken.   It was probably the bet 40 minutes of my life - we got to wear yellow vests that said VIP Beer Lover on the back, I tried to by one but they wouldn't let me. 

Boags Center for Beer Lovers

My idea of heaven... look at all that beer..

Walabys, Didge and Dinner Parties

From Hobart we got in our trusty car Tessie (we're so clever) and drove up the coast to Coles Bay stopping along the way for Jam and dessert at a berry farm..yummm.   There luckily was vacancy in the ONE hostel in Coles bay, its not a very big  place, so we were able to stay for two nights. 

Coles Bay

While exploring the town (it was too late to go hiking by the time we got there) we heard a band playing in a garage and so, not ones to be shy, we poked our head in the window to check it out since it was literally the ONLY noise in the town.   Turned out to be only one guy, playing the guitar, harmonica, didge, and keeping time on the drums with his feet. Impressive.   Without knowing us at all he invited us to come grill with him and his friends, rob and dan the fisherman, for dinner (love the tassie hospitality), .. so we chilled with them, grilled some snags, had some beers, and heard about the crazy party they threw the night before on their boat.. too bad we got there a day too late!

Wineglass Bay

The next day we hiked to wineglass bay which is pretty much the main attraction in tassie.  It was be-ea-uutiful, but I actually liked the beech on the other side of the bay better: 

V. Pretty water; we went swimming, everyone thought we were crazy..but it was pretty warm

Rob and Dan had been out fishing all day and had brought back a big haul of abalone and some sort of whitefish, so we were invited to help them eat all of it! 

         Abalone grilled with garlic, lemon and butter. Yummmy (thats for you alice)

               Master Chiefs Rob and Dan the Fishermen prepare the abalone for us

Cooking up a storm in the kitchen

Our finished product: fish boulibaisse, cous couse, two salads, abalone, and stuffed        potatoes...and the fish had been caught less than four hours before...love life

After dinner music Sesh

Friendly Wallaby

TasCOLD

Arrived in tasmania to find myself in a freezer locker. Thats a huge exaggeration, but it was pretty cold, even after I had been freezing in melbourne for a week.  of course, a week later when I was back in the actually miserable whether of seattle I was thinking of my time in tassie as 'mild' as well. 

I ended up staying with the Italian girl, Alice, who saved my ass on the plane, at the hostel she was at, the something frog, which was a pretty good hostel. We ended up renting a car for the next week and driving around, so it was very opportune for both of us that we met someone to split car rental fees with..  the more time I spent in tassie the more I realized that you need to have a car, otherwise you're pretty screwed and would miss some of the main attraction, such as the winerys, and the Bar in the Paddock, which has a beer-drinking pig, a definite highlight of anyones time.  

Our route was: Hobart for one night, then a drive up to Coles Bay (Red) to go to the famous wineglass bay beach, along with the 20 other tourists in tassie.  Next stop was Bay of Fires (Green), which was increible, then on to lonnie (Magenta), the real name of which I could never pronounce, and finally back to Hobart (Blue).   Tassie is so small none of these drives took more than 2 hours!

 The things that amazed me about tassie were:

A. The quality of the food, wine and beer (I LOVE Boags)

B. How green it was / the amount and quality of the national parks and hikes

C. The friendly-nes of the people

Hobart was cool, a very small seaside port town, kind of reminding me of a much less touristy Victoria with better food (although victoria has some badass food..tea at the Empress anyone?). Being the first settlement in Australia, it has the most well preserved victorian era architecture

Salamanca Street, theres a v famous market here every saturday

Old shipping buildings on the waterfront

We randomly wandered into a parking lot full of bagpipers, just a typical day...

Dan the Fisherman randomly pulls a shark head our of their freezer...lots of shark stories in Tassie. they showed me a picture of a HUGE shark that was caught by two boys with a gill net right outside their house..where they regularly surf and dive for Abalone....

On our way back from Lonnie Dan and Rob put us up at their place and showed us around the town... I would have to say, for a small town we had a pretty good night, and some delicious Souvalaki at the end of it! Everyone was going to a big party out at the oyster farm on Bruny but I had to go home :(  Alice told me it was awesome though...

Steve Irwin!! Haha.. thats for you Ali!