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| Tasmania is an island state of Australia, located 150 miles (240 kilometers) to the south of the Australian mainland. It's one of the six states (New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia, and Tasmania) and two territories (the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory) that make up Australia. I included it in this page's title to make it easy to remember so we can say "We've been to Tasmania!" (I mean, saying we've been to Queensland is OK, but not as cool as saying we've been to Tasmania!) |
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 Here we are about 5:30 AM approaching the port of Hobart in Tasmania. We decided to go up to the Horizon Bistro for an early breakfast (mine and Mei-O's, though we both may have had some more stuff), then got back to our room as we were docking. We got a good view of all the houses built on the hills. |
 At 8:00, we went down to the Princess Theater to meet up with all the others who would be going on our "Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary & Historic Richmond" shore excursion and get organized into groups before we could board our buses. By 8:20, we were headed out through the casino to the gangway to exit the ship and get on our way. |
 So we started our drive to "historic" Richmond about 15 miles northeast of Hobart. Here are some pictures as we drove there and of that rather uninteresting place. (Several people I talked to, just like myself, were wondering why we were even brought here. I suppose it's for the tourist dollars. There's a story about the famous Richmond "gaol" (jail), but it's really not that interesting.) |
 Back on our bus, heading to our next stop, we passed fields of sheep and some vineyards. Sheep and wool production are a significant proportion of Tasmania's agricultural income, while the state enjoys a global reputation as a leading producer of premium cool climate wines. |
 We got to the Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary with hopes of seeing kangaroos, koala bears, a Tasmanian devil, an emu, and some other indigenous wildlife (a wombat, for me), and were not disappointed (except for the koala bears; there were none). We got to... |
 ...get up close with some lazy kangaroos, which was kinda fun. (The ones we could pet seemed like they may have been drugged to keep them so stoic around us visitors, but maybe they were just used to being around people). There were quite a few in a fenced off area, but, as I said, they were pretty unexciting (0:12). Can you find the emu and the bunnies in this picture? |
 What's this? This is the well-known and feared by all Tasmanian Devil! About the size of a big house cat, he too, like the 'roos, was pretty lazy, just lying around not providing any good photo ops for us (what did he care? I guess that's life in captivity.) But, at least we did get to see a Tasmanian Devil....in Tasmania! |
 The sanctuary was pretty expansive and on several levels which required a lot of walking on dirt trails up and down hills. As we walked around, we got to see all kinds of animals and birds that we weren't familiar with, like this and this and this and this white wombat! |
 And then we came across the emus, Australia's largest native bird. As time was running short, we had to start back to the bus, and on our way, we saw this guy with something yummy (I assume) in his beak, and these short-beak echidnas. And then, as we were nearing the exit, we saw... |
 ...this! A handler had a six-month-old wombat out, the cutest little thing ever! (Stopping to see it and talking to the handler made Mei-O and me the last ones to return to the bus.) Next Top |
