Day 12 – Tasmania

Today, we had no agenda really, so we slept in a bit, had breakfast, then set out in the car with the Lonely Planet guide to Tasmania and only a vague notion of where we’d end up. First stop Marakoopa caves, which featured perhaps the most odd/surreal moment of the trip; our tour guide, Richard, lead us up to a place in the cave called the “great cathedral.” He told us the spot was given the name because of its acoustics, then he said that if anyone felt like singing and trying it out, they should go ahead and do so. Kristin said, “No, we’ll leave the singing to you.” Richard said, “Ok,” then thought for a bit, said, “This is a good one,” then belted out several bars of some Gregorian chant in Latin. It sounded amazing. Way to go, Richard. Then he took us to some secret glow worm chambers, including some places where we could see their webs.

Afterwards, we went to a raspberry farm. Rasberries are Kristin’s favorite, and the café at the raspberry farm had all kinds of things made of raspberries; we got a raspberry drink, chocolate covered raspberries, and a raspberry sundae. Kristin nearly started an international incident when she tried to settle up with New Zealand dollars.

Having eaten, we decided we should walk off a few of the raspberry calories, so we headed out to Liffey Falls for a quick 45 minute hike. It was a great walk, but there were highlights in the car as well. We saw our second echidna of the trip, and drove down 6 km of some pretty scary one lane dirt roads to one of the most remote and secluded places either of us have ever been.

Also, no platypuses were spotted. It looks like we’ll leave Tasmania having seen everything but platypuses.

Liffey Falls

Raspberry Sundae
Our cave pictures really aren't that great...