To Port Arthur

Left snug little Snug thus morning and headed for Port Arthur the long way round - south towards Cygnet and Eggs and Bacon Bay. When you come across place names like that, you have to take a look; it's the law.

But that doesn't mean they have to be anything special. Cygnet was a buzzy little place with some nice old buildings - including one called the Telegraph Cottage. It was the Town Hall.

However, Eggs and Bacon Bay was a bit of a loss, a dead end road into farmland. There might have been a dirt track, but by now it was raining and as my rear tyre is getting more like a racing slick with every km, we quit while we were ahead and I was still upright, and tarmaced it onwards. But at least we've been there and got the photo.

The rest of the peninsula was the otherside of the Huon River from where we'd ridden a few days ago. Farmland but fewer villages.

The Tasman Bridge was our way out of Hobart today. It's one of those brontosaurus like bridges that looms out of nowhere and was the bridge that got whacked by a ship back in the 1970s, rendering it temporarily inoperable but gifting the ferry - which before the bridge had been the only way across the river - a heap of lucrative business. 

This river is not that busy a river so it was a definite case for Spec Savers.

In a unassociated but still spookily relevant  fact I discovered today, courtesy of National Grographic that koala bellows ( although there aren't any koalas in Tasmania as mentioned a couple of days ago) are so loud that recordings of them were used by designers to make the roars of T.Rex in Jurassic Park. They have a special roar gland not found in other land mammals. How cool is that?

From the bridge, we ride up to Richmond on the Coal River. It has the oldest bridge in Australia, a rural stone arched affair, built with convict labour in 1823. People might moan about the harsh sentences convicts got and there is no doubt that they were exceptionally badly treated by today's standards, but they certainly left some legacy stuff behind. The town was nice too, mostly Georgian buildings set back from the road and well cared for.

And there were some weirdo geese grazing by the bridge, including this one with a funny mask thing. Looks a bit like spider goose.

We had parked our bikes opposite a pub, and when we returned, got chatting to Merinder, Sharon and Teresa who were sitting outside in the sun, enjoying a few drinks. 

They had a Blue Cattle dog pup with them, just eleven weeks old. Sweet little fella and still fluffy and new looking. 

They were a good chatty bunch, and we had a good old jaw with them. When we left,  they gave us each a Richmond sticker for our bikes, which now have pride of place on each. 

Heading out towards Sorrell and Eaglehawkneck, we prepared ourselves for a good soaking as the skies looked very heavy and threatening. But amazingly it stayed dry although the temperature dropped considerably. 

Along this coastline is the tessalated pavement, a geological feature that is relatively common on seashores but still impressive especially when you understand what it is. Essentially, it's sea erosion that wears the strata as the water retreats. Salt lies on the rock until it's washed away by the next tide and in doing so, eats into the rock causing a flat then concave pan shape. 

However, nearer the shore, it drains away but gets stuck in the grooves, eating them away and creating convex loaf shapes. Nerdy but true, and the Giants Causeway in Northern Ireland is a famous example of rock tessellation.

So we had a look at the pavement and the various creatures now living on and around it before heading off to find a place to camp.

It's dark and dry tonight so I've been getting to grips with the stars. However I've binned my star chart because it was too complicated and I couldn't read it in the dark and am now using an app on my phone. It's really very cool and it moves as you turn. However it did fail to point out that the very bright light through the trees was in fact a street lamp and not Venus, so I had to realign myself. 

But the light did light up a bilby for me which I  would otherwise have missed. A little rat thing with long ears and a long rail, the size if a guinea pig, just sniffing about getting his evening meal.  It's amazing how unconcerned they are by humans and how close they let you get. I only had my phone though so the picture is rubbish and too dreadful to post.