Huon valley

As we drove from the Bruny Island ferry to Huonville, stopping in Cygnet for lunch, Ben's mild cold started to get worse. So we took it fairly easy in Huonville, especially when Garry and I also came down with it.  But there were things we wanted to see, so we carried on, albeit slowly.

The caravan park in Huonville is gorgeous.  Huge grassy sites, a lovely river with platypus, and a very classy ensuite - not to mention the friendly chickens wandering about.  Garry joked that specific chickens were allocated to each site, as there were definitely some grey chickens and frizzles that never came near us.  Our allocation seemed to be barnevelders, black australorps and Isa browns.  I wish I'd taken a photo on the sunny days at the beginning of our stay as the clouds cover up the view of forested hills behind.

We spent an hour at the Franklin Wooden Boat Centre, on a very good tour.  You can do an eight week course there to build a clinker boat out of huon pine and other lovely timbers - $4000 for the course and another $8000 if you want to own the boat.  Garry is very tempted - he loves wooden boats.  Not too sure about the logistics of that one.

They also do shorter courses to build canoes - made of strips of wood fibreglassed to a frame.

Nothing is wasted, with this lovely man turning the off-cuts into little boats that they sell.  As we were leaving our tour he rushed up and gave Ben a little boat, made of huon pine, King Billy pine and red cedar. It is a lovely little boat and Ben was really touched, especially as he was feeling so sick.

The next day we drove down to the end of the world - or at least, the bottom of Australia. South-east Cape and Recherche Bay.  Such a glorious spot.  I've become quite fond of Bruni D'Entrecasteax and his scientific mission.  He named Recherche Bay after his ship and spent some weeks here doing repairs.

There is a lovely full size statue of a Southern Right Whale calf here, marking the whaling industry that flourished here to the extent that the right whales were nearly wiped out.  The idiots killed the calves first to ensure the adults stayed in the area.  Sigh.  What a mess we humans made - are still making - hopefully we've still got a chance to fix it. 

Naturally we also went to the Tarhune Air Walk. Ben was feeling a bit better but Garry was really feeling the effects of his cold. Sadly the clouds and rain had returned but we managed to do the treetops walk and the two bridges walk before the rain set in.  Ben absolutely loved the swinging bridges, going over each one several times.