After an overnight trip we arrived in Tasmania early in the morning.  We headed for the main city, Hobart, so we could find a campsite and set up as we planned on spending a few days in this area before visiting other parts of Tasmania.  On the way to Hobart we noticed many people along the side of the "highway" trying to collect money.  We could not believe they were doing this on the highway and had to stop.  It turned out to be the Tasmania Fire Service.  We gave money and then got a phone number of the firefighter so we could stop by and visit.  We had developed an interest in meeting the various fire fighting services as Rick, Jr. is a paramedic/firefighter.  We would try and get shirts and patches to send home.

We enjoyed our visit and tour and especially the patches and other items they gave us for Rick, Jr.  

We now headed off to tour various parts of Tasmania.  We planned on camping or if weather was bad, we would use the campsite housing, which is like dorm type rooms and you  share the common kitchen, laundry, TV room and shower facilities.  We got to meet lots of interesting people this way, backpackers from around the world and locals who just enjoyed camping.

An area we especially wanted to visit was Port Arthur.  This was were the original English prisoners were taken when they were first sent to Australia.  Remember Australia was a penal colony for the Brits.  Most of the prisoners were imprisoned for minor offences like stealing bread.  Of course there were some "real bad guys", but percentages were in favor of the minor criminals.

What is interesting is you talk to people here and they will tell you they are either descendents from the prisoners or original Australians.  I am not sure which is better, but after looking that these prison facilities you felt bad for people that were minor criminals.

As we drove around to various locations we tried local cheeses and local wines.  Visited veggie markets and arts and craft fairs.  Check out the local sailing boats and actually got reacquainted with a cruiser we originally met in Bermuda.  He was returning home to Tassie at the time.  We stopped by the boat forcoffee with him and his partner.  They were preparing to leave on another cruising adventure up to the Pacific islands, i.e., New Caledonia, Tonga and Fiji.

As we traveled we saw these pipelines running for some time and, of course, Rick has to find the finish and investigate the use.  It was probably more impressive in person, however, Rick really enjoyed checking this out.

As we went walking in one of the wilderness area, Rick almost stepped on this little guy.  It was probably the closest we got to these guys in the wild.  We had seen them from the car and in the Australia Zoo, however, this was "up close and personal" in the wild.

One of the things we found as we traveled around New Zealand and Australia is that lunch is not always available when you are hungry or not the in remote locations we were visiting.  So we always made sure we had the cooler and lunch-type stuff and when we found a locations that was nice we would take a lunch break.

 One of the boat rides we took intrigued us mostly because of the name.  It is called "Hell's Gate".  Jim and Dorrie our friends from New York took us through the New York version of "Hell's Gate" in their boat so we wanted to do a comparison.  As it turned out, on this particular day the gate was pretty calm, but I am sure it can live up to its name.

We spent a few weeks in Tasmania.  Not enough, but the weather was getting colder and we need to head back to warmer weather.  We still had to see Sydney before getting back to the boat.