Australia - From Tasmania to Kangaroo Island (With Wine!)

After a 12-night cruise around New Zealand and over to Australia, the Boss decided since we had come all the way "down under," that we should take advantage and spend another 11 days seeing more of the continent.  We left the group of 40 people on our cruise in Melbourne and flew on our own to Hobart, Tasmania. 

Tasmania is an island state of Australia, located 150 miles south of the eastern end of the mainland.  The state capital and largest city is Hobart, a port city that sits in the shadow of Mount Wellington.  Its harbor forms the second-deepest natural port in the world.

We were picked up at the airport and transferred to our hotel, the Lenna of Hobart.  After checking in, we walked around the waterfront, had a beer and some fish and chips, and made our way to the Hobart Travel Centre to meet our guide for our Old Hobart Pub Tour.

The Lenna Hotel was beautiful, and is listed on the Tasmanian Heritage register 
as a superb example of early colonial architecture.  It was also located within walking 
distance of the waterfront and Salamanca Place, home of many restaurants and 
an outdoor market.

The first stop on our pub tour - the Hope and Anchor Tavern, which claims to be
the oldest Australian pub continually operating until today.

Drinks weren't included so we had to buy our own, but naturally we had to have a pint!

We got a tour of the upstairs too. During its long history, the tavern also served as a hotel.

During our walk, we passed this statue of King Edward VII, and I felt like this 
bird didn't show much respect for His Majesty.

Our tour ended at The Whaler, a pub on Salamanca Place that also dates back to the 1800s.

We ate dinner in the hotel dining room and went to bed early to be ready for our full-day tour to Mt. Field National Park, the Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary, and Mount Wellington. 

Mt. Field National Park was founded in 1916, making it Tasmania's oldest national park.  Our visit included a hike at Lake Dobson, the Tall Trees Walk, and a hike to see the famous waterfalls in the park.

To be honest, Lake Dobson was not the most scenic lake we've seen.

There were pencil pine trees around the lake. The pencil pine is endemic to Tasmania,
and they can live for over 1,000 years.

The reason we had never heard of pandini is because this subalpine plant is only 
found in Tasmania and nowhere else on earth.

Look who we encountered on the trail.  I believe these are wallabies.  By the end 
of this blog, you will realize that kangaroos and wallabies are plentiful in 
Australia, to put it mildly.

The Tasmanian swamp gum is the tallest hardwood and 
flowering plant in the world.  Only California redwoods, 
 which are softwoods, are taller.  The tallest swamp gum 
recorded in Tasmania was over 300 feet tall. 

You get a better idea of the size of these trees with a person for scale. 

Horseshoe Falls.  Apparently when there is more water flowing, the entire curve has
falls.

Russell Falls is a three-tiered waterfall, and we started at the top and took a long wooden
stairway to the bottom.

We had a nice picnic lunch near the Visitor Centre before heading to the Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary.  It was established in 1981 as a sanctuary for injured and orphaned wildlife, who are nursed back to health and released when possible.

There are a lot of kangaroos at the sanctuary!

The echidna, along with the platypus, is one of the only two mammals that lay eggs.

A Tasmanian devil at feeding time, so you can get a look at its teeth. They are 
carnivorous marsupials.

A ranger gives a talk about the wombat, another marsupial native to Australia.
Wombats dig extensive burrow systems and have backward-facing pouches.

We got to see a tiger snake eat a mouse - yuck!

No wildlife park in Australia is complete without a koala.  He looks so depressed.

From the sanctuary, we headed to Mt. Wellington, which rises over 4,000 feet above Hobart. 

The top of the mountain is called the Pinnacle Area.

The mountain offers spectacular views of Hobart and surrounding areas.

We were surprised to see a wallaby at the top of the mountain, but like I said,
they are everywhere!

The next day, we explored on our own.  First, we took the 25-minute ferry ride from Hobart to MONA, the Museum of Old and New Art. It is the largest privately funded museum in the southern hemisphere.  

The architecture and landscaping of the outside grounds is just as interesting as the exhibits
inside the museum.

The Boss and I need a mirror like this at home!

Wikipedia says "Noted for its central themes of sex and death, the museum has been described...as a subversive adult Disneyland."  We just know there was some weird shit inside.  

This lady wasn't too weird.

Some beautiful stuff too.

Even on the ferry to and from MONA, we saw some unique things.

When we got back to Hobart, we decided to catch the Hop On Hop Off bus, and we took it all the way to the Cascade Brewery, where we had lunch.  We also stopped in at the Cascades Female Factory, which is not a place where women are made, but was a workhouse for female convicts in the penal colony.

Additional photos on the way back:

 

Interesting architecture.

This museum duplicates the huts used by the men who went on the 
Australian Antarctic Expedition of 1911-1914.

Historic Post Office building.

We left Hobart the next day and flew to Adelaide, from where we transferred to our next destination, the Barossa Valley.  We stayed at The Louise, a luxurious property with private villas and a world-class restaurant on site.  

Our private patio overlooked neighboring vineyards.

Indoor and outdoor showers!

Esther's blanket Frank felt right at home.

We had to get up super early the next morning for our next adventure - a hot air balloon ride over the Barossa Valley.

With the basket on its side, hot air begins to inflate the balloon.

The first balloon rises into the air as we wait for ours to fill.

Airborne over the valley, with the other balloon in sight.

The valley is filled with vineyards.

Floating over the Penfolds winery, one of the most famous in Australia.

The first balloon lands by the ground tracking vehicle.

Our balloon starts to deflate after our safe landing.

It's amazing how that huge balloon carrying 10 people folds up into this small bundle.

The Boss with the balloon company boss.

We did a winery tour after our balloon ride, followed by dinner at Appellation, the famous on-site restaurant at the Louise.  The wine pairing dinner had some unusual wine choices (orange wine?), but the food was excellent.  

A casual breakfast with kangaroos was on the agenda for the next day.  Our guide walked us through Kaiserstuhl Conservation Park, where we saw about 17 million kangaroos before and after we ate our boxed breakfast.  I took over 30 pictures but am only showing 3 here.  You're welcome.

Don't worry, you haven't seen your last kangaroo/wallaby picture.  Our next stop was Adelaide for two nights.  On our first night in Adelaide we had dinner at Penfolds Magill Estate restaurant.  Penfolds is world famous for its wine called Grange, made predominantly from Shiraz grapes with a touch of Cabernet Sauvignon.  Dinner with a wine pairing was $500 per person, or $750 per person if you wanted Grange as one of your pairings.  The  waiter told us a single glass of Grange would cost over $100.  We figured you only live once and spent more than we ever had before for a single dinner!

The next morning we got up early for a flight to Kangaroo Island.  Kangaroo Island is Australia's 3rd largest island, and we were originally intending to stay at the Southern Ocean Lodge, an ultra luxurious hotel.  However, in January of 2020, bush fires on the island destroyed the hotel.   So we just flew over for the day from Adelaide.

The effects of the fires were still obvious, as we were there only a couple of months after the fires.  We visited Seal Bay Conservation Park, the Flinders Chase National Park, and the Raptor Domain.  We saw a lot of animals and birds.

We started at the eucalyptus distillery.  Shopping opportunity.

A rare albino wallaby.

These are cassowaries, the third tallest and second heaviest living bird,
behind the ostrich and the emu.  Cassowaries are flightless.

Some kinda lizard.

A beautiful white barn owl.

A laughing kookaburra.

A wedge-tailed eagle, the largest bird of prey in Australia.

We flew back to Adelaide and packed up to head off to Melbourne the next day.  Our hotel was the Sofitel in the center of the city.  On our first full day in Melbourne, we did a wine tour in the Yarra Valley, visiting DeBortoli, St. Huberts and Tokar wineries.  Always a fun time.

Set up for the tasting at DeBortoli.

A nice view of the vineyard.

Tokar Winery, where we also had lunch. 

Beautiful scenery in the Yarra Valley.

We flew back to Adelaide and packed up to head off to Melbourne the next day.  

On our last full day, we took a tour to the Moonlit Sanctuary, Woolamai Beach, and Cowes and Phillip Island.  Moonlit Sanctuary is a wildlife conservation park about 50 miles from Melbourne.  The highlight was koala bears, but there were lots of other animals as well.  

A koala bear on a tree branch.

This is Australia, so another wallaby.

From Moonlit Sanctuary, we headed to Woolamai Beach, one of Victoria's most beautiful and rugged beaches, also known for its big surf. 

Woolamai Beach. 

Then it was on to Phillip Island, starting with a stop in Cowes, the island's most populated town.  We were on our own for lunch here. 

The beachfront road in Cowes.

Cowes Main Beach.

Next we headed to the Nobbies Ocean Discovery Centre.  The Nobbies Centre is an ecotourism destination at the western tip of Phillip Island.  A series of walkways allow visitors to view the vocanic rocks along the shore and the largest fur seal colony in Australia.  A main attraction at the Centre is to watch the penguins return to shore after sunset.  

Volcanic rocks form the coastline and host the seal colony.

The Discovery Centre and wooden walkways.  

You can spot penguins in holes near the walkways.

The penguins come ashore every night, in large numbers, and are a great attraction.

This is the beach where the penguins come ashore.

The tourists arrive well before sunset to get a good seat.

Hard to get good photos after sunset, but here is a sampling of the returning penguins.

All in all, we thoroughly enjoyed our 11 days in Australia, and would love to go back.  Australia is like the US in that it is such a big country with so much to see and do.   

We flew out of Melbourne to return home on March 11, 2020.   Little did we know that the world would shut down one week letter with the arrival of Covid.  Covid essentially put an end to our travels for almost a year and a half.  Our next big trip would be in September of 2021 for a National Parks tour.