A weekend at The Bay of Fires

The Bay of Fires with it's beautiful, lichen-covered shoreline.

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To start out our christmas holiday, we drove to the northeast corner of Tasmania to an area known as The Bay of Fires in and around St. Helens. The coastline here is very rocky and pelted by the strong waves of the Tasman Sea. The orange lichen that we had seen in Bicheno flourish in this region of Tasmania, covering nearly all of the coastal boulders and coloring the whole coastline a bright orange, which contrasts beautifully with the crystal blue waters. We had hoped it would be a christmas "beach holiday" given that it is summertime. Unfortunately it is Tassie so the weather changes quickly and often, and we missed out on any major sun. We still enjoyed some nice coastal walks, and had an early christmas dinner with our british friends from Hobart (Dev, Helen, Rohan & Arjin) who were also vacationing for the week.

Even though it was cloudy, the beaches were still beautiful.

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Avani ended up getting Hand, Foot & Mouth disease, but fortunately was only unwell for a day.

We left the Bay of Fires early in the morning (a strong effort for this Ryan group) to visit Mt. William National Park, the only location in Tassie of wild Forrester Kangaroos. It was amazing! We saw heaps of Kangaroos, as well as wallabies and pademelons, all bouncing about independently, free of gates or cages. We ate breakfast at a coastal campground in the park (a nice place to stay for our next visit someday) before continuing our drive to the middle of the state, Cradle Mountain National Park.