Caving

Another tide-dependent destination lead us south from Port Arthur to arrive at Remarkable Cave by mid afternoon. Our lodging host told us that at low tide we could hop the fence and walk through the cave to the beach. It sounded good to us until we saw that “hopping the fence” also including some rock climbing, an activity more suited to younger limbs and those with no fear of heights. I think if one of us was willing the other would have followed, but we decided our lives would still be complete if we didn’t do the hopping and climbing. Still, it was a pretty cool place but hard to photograph.

Our last foray along Tasmania’s Convict Trail was the ruins of the coal mine where the worst of the worst were sent to serve out their sentences doing the hardest of hard labor. At one point the mine provided all of the coal used in Tasmania but it was poor quality coal and eventually the mine was closed and the convicts moved to Hobart.

The shafts are collapsed now. The site is remote and unstaffed but well preserved and interpreted with cleverly placed placards and an online and downloadable brochure for more info. I found the setting ruggedly beautiful in contrast to the brutality that took place here.

The punishment cells were barely large enough to lie down, and were underground and windowless.

We drove a further few kilometers on the unsealed road to the far northwest corner of the Tasman peninsula and Lime Bay, as peaceful and lovely a place as we’ve seen in Tasmania. The boats anchored off in the distance made us almost wish we had sailed EV down here. This truly is a special place. It’s not exotically beautiful like many places we’ve been to and the landscape is so similar to our homeland that we were initially underwhelmed, unfairly so. We were also shocked a few times by overt, unconsciously racist remarks made in casual conversation by some locals, but Under Down Under has grown on us day by day.

At Lime Bay the rains came again but it was only a brief shower and as always, when it stopped we were rewarded with a rainbow.

We only have one more day here and we’re on a mission.