Tasmania to Tokyo – Hobart / Freycinet National Park – Day 9 can be found here.
A leisurely wake-up this morning – up around 8 am, and then off for breakfast at Freycinet Lodge. They have both an a la carte menu and a continental breakfast.
We all order various forms of eggs and toast:
Tasty, though the fried eggs are firmer than I’d like. I’ll get poached next time, as my wife’s seem properly runny.
We then help ourselves to the granola, yoghurt and berries from the continental breakfast, which is quite good:
I also try a raspberry danish. It’s fine, but nothing to write home about. I’ll save those calories for when we board the Silver Moon.
We’re going to try our hand at snorkelling this morning, so we return to Honeymoon Bay.
The water is cooler than it was yesterday afternoon – not suprising, considering it tends to cool down at night. Our 3/4 3mm wetsuits are not really up to the task. We manage perhaps 25 to 30 minutes in the water before the cold gets to us. Kudos to the Tasmanian snorkellers! We Canadians salute your cold-weather fortitude.
But we do manage to spot a few urchins, as well as some starfish:
No weedy seadragons, unfortunately! Ah well, never hurts to have a reason to come back…
Back to the room to shower and change, then off to the main lodge for a bit of reading / writing / homework, followed by lunch.
My son and I get the chicken burger:
Our daughter has the hamburger:
And my wife has a lobster roll:
It’s all good, though expensive – AUD$28 for a burger, AUD$36 for a lobster roll. But it’s beach pricing, so it is what it is.
With homework and the blog wrapped for the day, we head off for an extended walk through Honeymoon Bay:
And then on to Richardsons Beach on the other side of the resort:
Freycinet Lodge in the background
Our daughter finds some lovely shells – which we photograph, then return to the beach:
And what a beautiful beach it is:
Back to the room for a bit of downtime, then off for dinner at Diamond Island Resort in Bicheno.
(We had previously tried to book in with Bicheno Penguin Tours, but unfortunately they were full up by the time we looked to book the tour. The colony they visit is actually located at the Diamond Island Resort, so we’re hopeful that – if we book in for a nice dinner – the resort might be willing to let us join their penguin tour.)
Diamond Island Resort is a beautiful spot, roughly 30 minutes away from Freycinet Lodge:
For dinner we start with some garlic bread:
And we share up their Korean Fried Chicken:
And the salt and pepper squid:
While our son has the pumpkin soup as his starter:
On to the mains – my wife and our daughter have the spicy chilli prawn pasta:
Very tasty – but extremely spicy!
Our son has the chicken schnitzel:
And I have the fish and chips:
The fish again is much meatier than what I’m used to back home. Delicious!
Then on to dessert. I order the raspberry cheesecake:
My wife has the chocolate brownie:
And the kids each order the rockie road – which is essentially a heap of chocolate and marshmallows:
Sometime during dinner, I go up and chat with the owner – who very kindly agrees to let us join the penguin tour! Not sure this approach would work for everyone, so definitely recommend either pre-booking a tour with Bicheno Penguin Tours well in advance, staying at the Diamond Island Resort, or having agreement with the hotel in advance.
The downside? The penguin tour isn’t until 9:40 pm and it’s only just after 8 pm, so we have quite a bit of time to kill.
We wander the resort for a while, and come across some wild wallabies:
We also attempt to wander down by the beach, but this area has already been cordoned off by Bicheno Penguin Tours. I ask whether they might have room on their tour, but they do not. She says that she’s sure the resort tour will be lovely, but in the kind of voice that sounds more pitying than reassuring. Hmm.
She does mention that there is another beach access point further down the road. We wander down a bit, but realize it’s much further than we first expected. Ah, well. Back to the Resort to carry on with our original plan.
There are around 25 people waiting to go on the tour. One of the resort staff members gives an initial briefing, explaining that the little blue penguins (also known as fairy penguins) come in to specially-bulit penguin homes on the resort every night.
The tour leader reminds everyone that they cannot use white light or flash photography and that they need to keep their distance. No hugging the penguins! (This seems to be a recurrent theme when it comes to Australian wildlife.) This is also the end of the breeding season, so we are unlikely to see more than a handful of penguins as they no longer have chicks to feed.
We head down to the special penguin viewing platform, and several of the special penguin flashlights are distributed amongst the guests. We have our red light headlamps, but they’re rather underpowered. Good thing we’ve joined an organized tour!
It isn’t long before the first penguins appear at the edge of the beach:
The red light and the penguins’ furtive movements lend the whole experience a sense of tension – like its some sort special forces operation, or a prison break.
They start to make a break for it:
But – in a surprise twist – a wallaby gets in the way!
“Foxtrot Niner, this is Papa two-seven – the wallaby is in the rookery! I say again, the wallaby is in the rookery!”
The penguins briefly halt in fear:
Until the wallaby bounds away:
Now or never – they dash across the open ground:
But wait – they aren’t going for their pre-built penguin homes. They’re heading for the resort!
“You mugs’ll never take us alive, see!”
The great escape is on:
But where on earth are they headed?
Apparently they prefer the gazebo to the penguin huts:
You can see by the shadow – the rabbits are not amused
Wallabies and bunnies and penguins – oh, my!
And with the penguins safely ensconced for the night, it’s time for us to do the same. Despite my earlier FOMO, I’m really glad that we did the Diamond Island Resort’s tour – we might have seen more penguins with Bicheno Penguin Tours but I doubt we would have gotten the chance to see the penguins next to wallabies and bunnies, or making the mad dash up to the gazebo.
If we were to do this tour again, we would likely stay at the Diamond Island Resort for 2 or 3 nights as part of our tours in this area – but given our limited schedule this time around, it made perfect sense to make the trip out from Freycinet Lodge.
And for those of you wondering whether you need a fancy camera for this kind of tour, here’s an example of one of the photos taken by my wife’s iPhone 17 Pro:
While it lacks some of the finer detail of my best photos, I think it does a very good job compared to my “fastest” (lowest light) lens – the 50 mm f1.8 S.
It’s a longer drive back to the resort – most of Tasmania’s wildlife is active at night, so they recommend staying under 65 km per hour lest one add to the already significant amount of roadkill. We pass wallabies, wombats, and some other waddling four-legged creature – possum or echidna? We’re just glad to be driving a reasonable speed.
We’re not back til after 11 pm, which is way past our bedtime – but we can’t sleep too late tomorrow, as we’ll be off on a hike to Wineglass Bay.