Tasmania day 5 - Tamar Valley wineries

In the morning we had a long drive ahead of us; We had to drive from the east coast all the way to the west. Cradle Mountain is the ‘must see’ tourist attraction in Tasmania, so we didn’t want to skip it. Tasmania is small and the distances are not long, but the roads are really winding and hilly, and that makes the drive much longer. Once we got to Launceston, the second biggest city in Tasmania, we drove the Tamar Valley Wine Route for awhile. Tamar Valley is really famous for its wines and on the wine route there are at least 23 wineries, I counted. We only visited two because of the time restrictions, but still we tasted at least more than 12 different wines :) 

We finally got to Cradle Mountain after 7 pm. There was just one campground, and it was quite expensive, 27 dollars for a night, but it was definitely the best campground I’ve ever stayed at. After not having showered in two days, a nice hot shower felt pretty good! The facilities were really nice, and there were even two fireplaces in the camp kitchen. We had dinner with some wine and cheese and after that we went for a walk in the dark with the torch, to look for night animals :)

And after a short walk, what do we see! A Tasmanian Devil right in front of us! I had some bread with me so I tried to lure it to come closer. And it did, almost so close that I would have been able to pat it, but then it got scared and disappeared in the bushes. Anthony was holding the camera, that’s why we don’t have a photo of it. So we kept walking and ran into a strange little creature:

It looked like a big fat rat with a possum’s head but it was jumping like a kangaroo. If anyone knows what it is, let me know :) Tasmania has a lot of native animals so it was probably one of them.

The stars were amazing once again here in Australia; You never see that many stars in the northern hemisphere. The sky was FULL of stars. You really have to see it for yourself, it’s so amazing… I don’t think you can really say you’ve seen anything until you’ve seen what the night sky looks like down under!