Beauty and the Beast

Beauty=view of last night's sunset from our balcony...

Beast=jellyfish found on the beach while walking the neighbor's dog this morning...

Have a good day!

Rottnest Island

On Valentine's Day, we took a ferry over to Rottnest Island. It took about half an hour to get there from Fremantle, and it was beautiful! Cars aren't allowed on the island, so we rented bikes and took our snorkeling gear to a place called Parker Point. On the way, we saw some of the native quokkas, marsupials that are only found in certain areas of Western Australia.

Once again, we were quite impressed by the snorkeling. My little camera with its plastic waterproof case doesn't take the best of pictures, but hopefully you can get the idea of some of the fish we saw (more are posted on my Shutterfly site). The farther out we went, the better the coral got, the bigger the fish got (we saw some huge ones), and the more scared we got about encountering a shark!

Zack relaxes at Parker Point.

Covered in the white powdery sand!

Now this is the way to spend Valentine's Day!

A small bluebottle jellyfish on shore.

After hanging out at Parker Point for awhile, we headed to Little Salmon Bay, because I had heard the snorkeling there was good too. We saw a few bluebottle jellyfish on shore, but we took our chances and headed out anyway. By the way, blue bottle jellyfish are called Portuguese man o'wars in other parts of the world. Anyway, we both felt a few small stings on our legs while we were in the water, but the fish and coral were awesome, so we kept swimming. Zack headed back into shore after a bit, but I stayed out there and swam out in the deeper water.

As I was coming back into shore, I saw a jellyfish in the shallow water and swam away from it. Apparently I swam right into one, because suddenly my neck was burning! I stood up and started throwing everything off...the camera that was hanging around my neck, my snorkeling gear, etc. Luckily, Zack was standing on shore watching me (because he was afraid I was going to get attacked by a shark in the deep water!), so he ran out when he saw me sort of freaking out. "My neck!" I yelled, and he saw a jellyfish wrapped around my neck, tangled in my braids and swimsuit! He had to pull it off of me. It must have been around my right shoulder and upper arm, because that was burning as well. After he got it off of me, I ran up on shore and held a towel around me saying "ow, ow, ow" for about five minutes. The pain felt like when you have a really bad sunburn and somebody touches it. Imagine that but constant! The next five minutes felt more like a bee sting, and then it started itching. The next day, it still itched and hurt again when I took a shower. A week later, I still have red marks on the back of my neck and wound around my upper right arm. Fun stuff!

Zack washes off my snorkel equipment at Little Salmon Bay after my jellyfish attack.

Luckily, we needed to return the bikes and catch our ferry back to Perth soon after our time at Little Salmon Bay anyway, so we left after my jellyfish stings. I guess I learned my lesson about going in the water if you see those darn bluebottles on the beach!

Rottnest Island was a beautiful tropical paradise (minus the jellyfish) and a great place to spend Valentine's Day. We had a leisurely ferry ride back to Perth, where we had a nice Italian dinner and walked around the city a bit before heading to the airport for our overnight flight home. A long weekend in Western Australia was a wonderful break in the middle of February!

A view of Perth from our ferry back from Rottnest Island.

A Day in Tasmania

On the first day of 2012, we caught the shuttle from the Falls Fest back to the Hobart Airport in the morning. We had a rental car booked for the day (not cheap!), and our flight back to Melbourne wasn't until 9pm, so we had a full day to explore Tasmania. I knew we wouldn't have time to make it over to Cradle Mountain (where most tourists go), but I wanted to see something Tasmania was known for. So after a huge buffet breakfast at a casino in the town of Hobart (to wait out the rain), we headed out to Freycinet National Park. The first thing I noticed was that Tasmania only has a few main highways that run through the country, and the roads are extremely windy with very narrow lanes. It made for kind of scary driving, but the land was pretty. There were lots of sheep in green pastures and beautiful, remote beaches. 

On the way, we pulled off the road to stop at a little winery. It happened to be Freycinet Vineyard, and they've won some pretty major awards for their wine. We enjoyed a tasting; their 2010 Pinot Noir was especially good.

After about two and a half hours, we finally made it to Cole's Bay at Freycinet National Park. Our mission was to walk to Wineglass Bay, and that's what we did. This bay is considered one of the top ten beaches in the world. It's supposedly shaped like a wine glass, though I don't really see it. I think it's a gem because it's so remote; you can't drive to it. This picture is from one of the lookout points. 

Other than the water, the hike was rather Colorado-ish with big boulders and such. Of course, we were surrounded by eucalyptus trees instead of aspens!









We walked down to the beach to get a closer look. The orange on the rocks reminded me a lot of Squeaky Beach at Wilson's Promontory. The water was a beautiful shade of blue, but when I saw hundreds of little blue bottle jellyfish (and some big clear ones) washed up on shore, I had no desire to swim at this beach!

This wallaby was hanging out on the beach. It was very friendly; I think tourists feed it. We saw another one on the trail right before the beach as well. Overall, it was a decent hike, and it was cool to see Wineglass Bay and say we were on one of the top ten beaches in the world.

On the drive back to the airport, Zack spotted an emu in the field on the side of the road, so I finally got to see one in the wild. They are such strange, big birds! We stopped in a little town for some fish and chips (for me) and fresh oysters (for Zack) and talked about how Tasmania is basically a miniature version of Australia with a nautical feel. In fact, Hobart reminded me a little bit of Seattle.

Originally we thought we'd have to make another trip back to Tasmania sometime to really see the state and get the Tasmanian experience, but we both felt satisfied with our short trip. Yes, it would have been cool to visit Cradle Mountain or tour the Cadbury Chocolate Factory (they weren't open on New Year's Day), but there are so many other places we'd like to see in Australia and beyond, so I think we've crossed Tasmania off our list.

Everyone wants to know if we saw a Tasmanian devil. The short answer is no. The long answer is that they are extremely rare to see in the wild because a facial tumor disease that has been spreading and decreasing their population. You can go to wildlife centers and such and see them there, but we'd already seen them at the zoo and Maru Animal Park with my family, so we didn't take the time to see them in Tassie. So yeah, that was our day in Tasmania and our start to 2012!