South Bruny National Park

January 10th.

 

Today we drove to the 'bottom' of Bruny Island, along very well maintained dirt road to South Bruny National Park.  Dramatic views of this area as crossed the 571 metre high Mt Mangana.  Our first main stop for the day was at the 1836 convict built lighthouse.

 

 

 

Dramatic coastal views from the lighthouse area, including down into Quiet Bay, Lighthouse Bay and across to the 'Friars' and Tasman Head.

 

 

 

Darrin & Zac took a track towards 'Court Island' a little further than the lighthouse... as you can see it was a little overgrown in places!

 

Once we'd finished at the lighthouse, we drove a couple of km's down a sandy road to Jetty Beach where we had a picnic lunch.  Then we enjoyed another walk along another fabulous Bruny beach.  The sun shone and it was actually quite mild as we enjoyed the walk from the ruins of the old jetty, right around the bay to the rocks. Saw a number of Pied Oystercatcher (birds) with their bright orange beak.

 

 

We also came across some boys who had caught a spider crab they were planning to have for dinner:

 

 

All that exercise and decided a visit to the Bruny Island chocolate and fudge shop on the way back to the caravan was in order.

 

 

The fudge was very tasty, and of course we couldn't leave without a small purchase.  Found out our new caravan park neighbours we'd met at Port Arthur - they have a diabetic boy a couple of years older than Zac.  Were not expecting to catch up with them again!

 

After dinner we went hunting for wallabies - Bruny Island is renowned for its somewhat shy white wallabies and we'd been give some tips about where we could possibly sight some... we did see about  two or three plus some 'regular' wallabies.