What a difference a day makes

At least- with the weather! Today we were basking in 32 degrees C, yesterday 8!

We left Dover early to catch the ferry over to Bruny Island, same latitude, in fact our campsite is probably only five miles across the water from yesterday. From the west coast we can clearly see Mount Hartz, where we were yesterday.

The island is named after Bruny D’Entrecasteux, who avid readers of our blog will remember sailed along the south coast of Oz and has bays, forests and peninsulas named after him all along from W.A. to Victoria. The passage to the West of the island is called D’Entrecasteux Channel too. Loved himself that guy!

Adventure Bay, in the centre of the island, is huge, maybe ten miles from tip to tip, and takes in the isthmus between the north and south of the island. Just 100 mtrs wide at it's narrowest, there is a penguin rookery in the centre of it

Fairy Penguins live here, they are the same as the ones we saw south of Melbourne when we were there a couple of years ago, they go out to fish in the early morning and return to feed their young in the evening. When we were there they were out for lunch, but we did manage to spot one on the nest presumably hatching eggs.

Ours is a bush camp, no frills, just a long drop toilet and dirty brown water from the tap. But no problem – we carry our own. We were lucky, we arrived this morning just as a family was packing up to go back over the water, and we claimed one of the best pitches on the site. And it has a great beach too, miles long and not a lot of people on it. Just one problem, the water is very cold! It has come straight from Antarctica, via nowhere!

We took a drive down the island to Cape Bruny lighthouse, in the extreme south of the island, some marvellous views on the way, and from the lighthouse itself we could spot mainland Tasmania on the one side, and Cloudy head on the other.

The beaches around Cloudy Bay are superb, and almost completely deserted, and there are a number of bush camps down there. The bulk of the south of the island is National Park, much with no motorized access, very hilly and forested. Most of the roads that there is are gravel or sand, some quite narrow.

Captain Cook landed here too, and tomorrow we will investigate his landing place, as well as the Bligh museum, he of Bounty fame. Should be interesting.