11th January - Bicheno - elephant seal - Tasmanian national parks (folly) - happy days

Sunday 11^th January 2015

Just a few more aquatic mammals – dolphins, hunting in Waub’s Bay!

A bit far away but.. dolphins!

And our seal is getting sleeker by the minute.

I think she has rubbed off her moulting fur; she will be ready to slip into the sea any minute now.  Or maybe she will roll off her little ledge and just gently plop into the water?

Zoe and Katy

We had another beautiful Bicheno day yesterday.  It was just a bit warmer, and sunnier.  No need for my big doona/jacket.  The little girls had a very happy hour or so at the school playground.  Zoe, in her rainbow attire, toned in nicely with the colour scheme of the monkey bars…

flowering gum

I visited Richard and Meriloy in the cul de sac – they may be able to join us in Raja Ampat  in a few months.  Lots of diving ahead!  They filled me in with local Tasmanain bureaucratic gossip.

For example, it is now illegal to go out, even just a few metres from shore, on your paddle board without wearing a life jacket.  This is crazy; you can swim or surf much further out to sea, and a life jacket is a most cumbersome thing to water if you are standing and balancing on your board!

But, apparently, the police have quotas to fill and they are very zealous in rushing out to fine paddlers a hefty $250 per infringement.

They also told me of some hapless hitchhikers they picked up recently.  They were from Sarawak and Romania and they were loving Tasmania.  But NOT loving the national parks.  They went to Cradle Mountain and bought a pass to cover them for all of the parks in the state.  Lovely, all should have ben well.  But…they went for a walk on the duckboards around the lake and found, to their considerable cost ($500 EACH) that this part of the park is NOT covered by their pass.  It was possibly written in the fine print, but their English is limited and they assumed that the pass was indeed a … well, a pass!

Then the poor blighters went to Triabunna to catch the ferry to Maria Island ($40 each for the short ferry ride…)  They enquired and yes indeed, their pass would cover them for this visit.  But it would NOT cover them for quite a tidy sum – a camping fee!

Jeff and Eva

Obviously we in Tasmania regard tourists as an endless cash cow.  Not a good look, I think.

In the evening the womenfolk went for a brisk foreshore walk.  (Katy is trying to train us all to say the womenfolk and the menfolk but so far the joke is not catching all that well…

Zoe (nearly 5) has informed us that the masters in each family are…the men, no question about it.  Where does she get these ideas??  The men (I mean the menfolk…) in the family are surely and demonstrably equal not superior to the womenfolk??

Anyway it was perfectly beautiful along the rocks.  We stopped and peered under rocks along the way, looking for penguins.  Katy thinks the Bicheno tourist office should put out a calendar with photos of people doing this:

I agree; it would be a winner!

Nicky wasn’t with us; she had gone back to Hobart to attend a beautiful wedding at Peppermint Bay, where, it seems, most of the beautiful bride’s beautiful friends wore…black! 

Nicky, Clare, Laura, Ruth

So I only had two daughters to torment me… I told them I have to be extra cautious when scrambling over the rocks because I can’t afford to break any limbs.  (Well nobody can, really…but it would certainly put paid to any sailing adventures in the near future.)  So they gleefully stood ready to catch me at the base of the steeper rocks, all the while plotting how to ensure a good break-y fall so that I wouldn’t be able to leave on Saturday.  They are very much looking forward to wheeling me around in my wheelchair and putting me wherever would be convenient.  Maybe outside in the sunshine with a mending basket and a row of small children clustered around needed to have noses wiped and stories read.