EC-Rider Travels

On Sunday Alice and I headed to Bruny Island, about an hour and a half drive, including a short ferry ride over to the most idyllic island off the South Eastern coast of Tasmania. It is separated from the mainland by the D’Entrecasteaux Channel named, as is the island, after the French explorer, Antoine Bruni d’Entrecasteaux who discovered them. It is once again bigger than I imagined, about the size of the Isle of Wight but long and thin, divided by a narrow, sandy isthmus known as ‘The Neck’.

We headed to the northern part of the island to Dennes Point, where Alice’s mother has what they term, a ‘shack’. This is a lovely beach house overlooking a long sandy beach and crystal clear turquoise blue sea. When we arrived there was not a soul in sight…. Heaven. It is simple living (with an outside ‘dunny’!) but perfect and Alicia and I had the happiest evening drinking bubbles, watching the sun go down and chatting on the ‘dick’.

On Monday, we woke to the most idyllic morning and went for a walk along the empty beach. The rock formations at the end of the beach are quite extraordinary and utterly beautiful. There are oysters and muscles everywhere and the most amazing shells I had ever seen. I saw my first kookaburra in the wild and, as we came back along the water, there were several stingrays swimming along the shore-line.

Justin and Sophia arrived at lunch-time along with quite a few others so suddenly the beach was not totally our own, but not far off. We spent a happy day swimming and kayaking and in the evening Justin took me on a ‘night safari’. I at last saw my first ‘live’ possum, in fact, several and also a number of very cute fury people called spotted quoll on the side of the road. As we learnt from Tomás Saraceno at MONA, there is virtually no air pollution in Tassie, which is rewarded with the most extravagant display of stars you have ever seen. None of us really knew what we were looking at but agreed we were very lucky!

Tuesday was another beautiful and very hot day which we spent in the sea and on the beach before we said a sad farewell to gorgeous Bruny Island to head back to Hobart. Alice kindly detoured via the isthmus which was amazing to see, particularly as it is home to thousands of fairy penguins. 5km of beach with cliffs full of their burrows surrounded by little penguin footprints in the sand – sadly, being the middle of the day, they were all out shopping and not due back till dusk, but there were some beautiful black swans on the water. We also quickly dropped in to the Bruny Island Cheese Co for a quick glass of cider and cheese tasting before we caught the ferry back to the mainland.

We scooped up Cecilia who was at the beach following an eight hour rehearsal for her first semi-professional musical production, ‘Grease’ – much excitement. We then headed down to the water-front for my last Tassie meal, at the Blue Eye Seafood Restaurant. Very delicious.