Narawntapu

May 9
We left Launceston with the plan to make a leisurely wide loop to our next destination Port Sorell on the Bass Strait,  right  across the Rubicon River from Narawntapu National Park. We had read on Trip Advisor about people walking with wombats there.

Westbury church.

The countryside was beautiful, rolling green hills, lots of sheep and cows grazing, very bucolic. The town names all sounded like they could be somewhere in the British countryside: Westbury, Deloraine, Chudleigh, Sheffield...We saw charming old churches, one town boasted many murals, another was "known" for it's topiary and a third had a gentleman sitting on the main street with his alpaca on a leash ( he charged $2 to take his photo so Bob just chatted with him a bit).

One of many murals in Sheffield.

We had breakfast on the road at Deloraine, I had the best BLT I have ever had, sigh. Bob was pleased with a real cup of coffee after suffering with the instant offered at all of our lodging so far.

We eventually headed north through thick ferny forests of spruce and eucalyptus, over the Gog Range to more fields of fat sheep, vineyards, hay fields, and orchards of apples and pears.

Once we got to Port Sorell, we realized we had not written down the address of our lodging, it was stored on the computer which didn't do us much good at this point. Luckily every little town in Tassie has an information center, prominently marked with a large yellow "I". They are often in some kind of business establishment and usually have lots of free brochures, souvenirs for sale and a volunteer who will help you out. We found the "I" which seemed to be in the police station...turns out it was next door but the Tassie policeman wanted to help us himself. He got on the computer and found the address to our lodging. He assured us we would see plenty of wombats in the national park.

Sails on Point Sorell is a cute " boutique apartment" with a kitchenette/dining room and bedroom. The owners were very friendly and chatty. The provisions made Bob happy, real coffee with a french press and homemade welcome cookies.
But we didn't dally for long. We were on a mission to see those wombats before it got dark. We drove the 30 minutes to the Narawntapu through light rain showers. Sure enough as we drove up to the visitor center, there were the wombats grazing on the huge meadows, with grass so short  they resembled putting greens.

We were finally walking with wombats !!! They seemed not to care too much that we were there, if you moved too quickly they did startle. We took a path into the swampy paperwood forest, and soon began to see many small marsupials called pademelons.They were doing their best to get out of our way on the trail along with an occasional wombat.  Some were jumping on each other, vocalizing and running in circles chasing one another when they deemed us harmless. One sat close by us and studied us in detail before going to "play" with it's mates. We saw wallabies , too they were more skittish of us than the wombats and pademelons.  They would freeze in the brush except for their ears which were listening in different directions as they "froze".
With darkness upon us we headed very carefully back down the road as all these critters are nocturnal and not very smart , evident by all the marsupial roadkill we had witnessed.
Back in Port Sorell we had our first Tassie IGA ( grocery store) experience. We were pleased to see so many products that were made in Tasmania. We bought provisions for breakfast: local yogurt, honey and hearty bread for toast and lunch: more local cheese, smoked salmon and Turkish flatbread, again all form this island.
Dinner was nothing to write home about so I won't. Our one complaint of this town it that there are no decent restaurant.


May 10
This morning we breakfasted on the local fare purchased the night before, then headed out for a full day at Narawntapu Nartional Park.The day was a beauty, clear skies and sunshine !!
As we drove into the park we heard loud squawking and saw very large black birds in the nearby trees. They were a large flock of Yellow Tailed Black Cockatoos. We have noticed that all the birds in Oz and Tassie are loud and noisy.
 Once inside the park we began by exploring the various roads and camping areas by the ocean. We walked out to Griffin Point where the view of the vast empty beaches and coastline was breathtaking. It was low tide so we enjoyed the rocks and tide pools full of crabs, mussels and other sea life.
Next we decided to hike up to Archer's Knob as the park brochure assured us the view would be amazing. The hike lead us through paperwood forests, ferny brush and obvious animal trails everywhere. They were right, the view was spectacular and well worth the effort. Our hike back was along Baker's Beach, with lots of fun shells to collect, dead things to inspect and more amazing views of the ocean.

We concluded our day back at the visitor's center for another chance to walk with wombats. Actually we had a our picnic lunch,  while watching the wombats graze.We were delighted to find a mother and her young grazing side by side, so cute.

 After lunch we walked across a vast meadow to see a herd of Forester Kangaroos. They are quite large and were not very pleased to see us coming toward them. They were amazing to watch as they hopped away, most of the animals here hop ;-)
We took one last short hike to see more pademelons and wallabies, we added another animal to our list, the water rat, it is cooler than it sounds. Bob was very clear he wanted to drive back in the daylight, so off we went.

Grazing pademelon.

Tomorrow we head for Hobart, and the next chapter for our journey.