10/17 and 10/18 - Coles Bay Walk and Quad Bikes to Friendly Beaches

10/17/2012 - We will be leaving Coles Bay in a couple of days so we decided to take a walk around the neighborhood.  The views from the house are fabulous, but the views by the sea are wonderful too.

It was quite cool today and the wind was whipping up the waves... Fabulous!

What a way to remember Coles Bay!

10/18/2012 - All4Adventure...  This was a wonderful action adventure for us.  We'd never done these bikes before so we decided this would be a good thing.  It was overcast and cool, but that worked OK.

Ben Beckham was our guide and gave us the safety talk and the "Do... and Don't Do... this on a Quad bike" with us proving that we heard what he said (20 - 30 minutes).

And we were off - with Di in the lead behind his mini-truck.

NOTE: I think he picked me because he either wanted to keep an eye on me OR he figured I would be slow enough to keep everyone else in check.

The speed is controlled by the right thumb... it definitely got a workout today!

Ben had us give him our cameras and told us to wait until he called us through this little creek... he took this shot on HIS way through.

Di is first... not a bad splash...



... and it caused the engine to steam a bit on the way up the hill.

Lee did better - splash & steaming.

Ben's good with the camera... we were all jazzed by the SPLASH!

We stopped at a place where we took a short hike and went to the north part of the Friendly Beaches... this is the only way to get to these views!!!  Granted the overcast takes a bit away from them.

After some hot coffee or hot chocolate, we got on the bikes (they needed a rest, too) and headed back to the start.


Everyone commented that Di kicked the speed up a number of notches on the return trip... and I had!  Only because Ben had and I was trying to keep up.

But we smiled and were sad that it was over!

WooHOOOOOOOOOO!  We'll do the Quad Bikes again, guaranteed!

10/14 thru 10/16 - Swansea, Coles Bay, and Douglas-Apsley National Park

10/14/2012 - We made a visit to Swansea for one of the walks listed in the 60 Great Short Walks put out by the Tasmanian Parks & Wildlife.  This was #57 called Loontitetermairrelehoiner... the name of a local Aboriginal tribe.

We stopped and had lunch first - it was very good.

This walk starts out in the middle of town and winds around the headland.

See told you the name is Loontitetermairrelehoiner.

Parrots were plentiful

As were the flowers.

Ah, and they have St. Vincent de Paul here... they call it "Vinnies" - Love it.  The commercials on TV all say "Vinnies needs this..."  I'ts so cool!

We never got take away from this place - we jut liked the name.

The walk starts and ends in this lovely Swansea Park.  Good walk, good day!

10/15/2012 - Freycinet National Park has a lot of walks and drives.

This was the Cape Tourville drive with a nice walk at the end.

On the way back down we stopped at another walk to Sleepy Bay.  It was stunning!

We went home and got ready for dinner at the Edge Restaurant.  WOW!

Fabulous views and wonderful food!  The best we had in Coles Bay!

Much better than the Lodge at Freycinet!!!

10/16/2012 - We drove up past Bicheno to do another one of the walks listed in the 60 Great Short Walks put out by the Tasmanian Parks & Wildlife.  This was #52...  the Apsley River Waterhole & Gorge.

We made it to the Waterhole - no problem.

We did the circle and tried to find the Gorge Walk... no luck at all.

The issue was that we couldn't get to the due to the windstorm had blown down so many trees.


Ah well, on the unpaved way back to the Main Road (Tasman Highway),  we saw this long stick like thing - about as long as the car is wide... I braked hard... and the snake slithered off into the brush before Lee could get a picture of it.  Dang!

Big, black Tiger Snake... venomous - of course.  The good thing about venomous snakes in Tassie is that there are 3 types and all of their bites require the same anti-venom.  It's a weird 'good thing', but a good thing nonetheless.