Thursday 27th December

We’d paid our hotel bill the night before and booked a taxi for 6:45am so we could get away on time to Tullamarine airport for our flight to Launceston. We had breakfast in the Qantas lounge at the airport.

Steph was staying in Melbourne and flying out at 6pm. She was still in bed when we left.

We’d booked a Corolla as our hire car with Avis at Launceston but they upgraded us to a Mitsubishi Magna. It’s almost new and drives very smoothly.

From the airport, we headed north east on the road that leads to Scottsdale, Derby and St Helens.

Our first stop along the way was a lavender farm at Nabowla. There we admired the fields of lavender, had a cup of coffee and visited the craft shop that was full of lavender-related knick-knacks.

The next stop was a cheese factory at Pyengana. Suzy bought some cheese and we had lunch at the Holy Cow Cafe.

A few km down the road we visited the Columbia waterfall which cascades 90m over rocks down the cliff. It was a 10 minute walk off the road.

From St Helens, we drove north to see the Bay of Fires. It gets it name from the red rocks along the edge of the beach. The other remarkable thing about the bay is the sand – it is very white fine sand.

After getting lost trying to find the road south out of St Helens, we headed for Bicheno. We arrived at the B&B (Ocean View Retreat) at about 5pm.

The B&B is on the side of the hill overlooking the ocean. It consists of two houses up the hill - one with four self-contained units and the other with tewo B&B units. Ours was described as a spa room because it has a large bathroom with a spa. It would probably be better if the bathroom was a little smaller and the bedroom was a little bigger.

Debbie, our hostess, recommended a few restaurants for dinner and so we headed off to check them out. We eventually returned to the Sealife Restaurant for dinner (which was the first one we checked out) and booked for tomorrow night at the Seasons Restaurant.

As you would expect, we had seafood for dinner – Suzy had lobster. The food was good, the view was great but the service was slow. After 8pm, a live entertainer provided pleasant music as background for our dinner.

We’d heard that fairy penguins come ashore at dusk. In this part of the world, it doesn’t get dark until after 9pm. So our timing was perfect. We strolled down the path in front of the restaurant just in time to see a couple of penguins heading up the path from the sea. They scampered off down the hill again when they saw us.

A few minutes later, about a dozen penguins appeared on the rock near the sea and stood there in a single-file line staring at us. By that time, other people had come to have a look. It ended up being a stand-off – they wouldn’t move while we were there.

All the time, we could hear little noises in the bushes around us. We assumed these noises were coming from their young.

It had been cool all evening and now it was very cool. By Sydney standards, this was winter not summer.