Heading for Freycinet

Today we rose to a beautiful morning, ate breakfast in the beautiful surrounds of the caravan park and then packed up the van ready for another day of exploring. We have noticed one of the benefits of the van is it only take about ten minutes to be ready for the road.

We decided to explore the area a little more and headed for the Historical Coal Mine site on Norfolk Bay. This is a lesser-known penal settlement and it’s free to enter. This is all ruins but the tracks are really well maintained with lots of information boards. Again, this is another stunning site and is the closet point to Hobart

Again, they had the horrible single cell confinement, but the one was built underground. I can’t imagine any crime that would deserve to be treated like this.

This was another sad and brutal prison when the convicts were worked in extremely harsh and dangerous conditions down in the coal mine. We spent about two hours walking the tracks to the various parts of the camp. The hardest bit was walking up the steep hill to the location of the signal station. It was from here they could communicate with Hobart

The.view were stunning!

On our way out with stopped at sweet little property at that was right on the bay to have a Devonshire tea. It is run by a young couple who have moved from the Gold Coast to set up this business. They were both lovely and served us delicious scones in gorgeous cups and saucers. The scones were huge and we decided this would be our lunch.

From here we started our journey to Freycinet. We thought the best way was back through Sorrell as this was a good opportunity to restock our food for the next few days.

The drive was lovely from here but not a lot to stop and have a look at until we reached the Spikey Bridge. This is a quirky bridge that was made by the convicts and it is unsure why it was built with the spikes.

Next stop was Triabunna. This was a short one to make a cup of tea to drink along the foreshore dock. This is where the ferry for Maria Island departs from and its home to a lot of beautiful boats.

With the stopover we headed to the final destination for the day. We reached the caravan park after I decided to take us the scenic tour to get, meaning I missed the turnoff off and we had to drive right into the National Park to turn around.

After finally reaching the caravan park we set up to cook dinner. Unfortunately, even though it was lovely outside, the mossies were horrendous. Stupidly, we left our van door open and the van was filled with them. At one point I thought there were so many the van was going to lift off the ground.

First thing on the agenda tomorrow is to buy flyspray and bug repellent.

You live and learn!