The morning dawned overcast but fairly warm so a good day for sightseeing.
We headed for Bonorong through morning rush hour traffic but got there by 9:45am. This is a not a zoo but more a recovery facility for animals rescued or orphaned by car or other incidents. Many of the joeys of the wombats and wallabies have been rescued from the pouches of mums killed by a car. The entry fee includes a 30 minute guided tour with the guide giving us plenty of information about the animals. Some are in the pens but most were not visible because they hadn't actually woken up for the day.
We did get a good look at some Tasmanian Devils and Wombats plus a glimpse of an Spotted Quoll. More of a family thing but we did enjoy it. Except, that is, for the tasteless and inedible Chocolate and Raspberry muffin. It was probably gluten free which explains everything!
Next stop was the Cascade Brewery. We decided to skip the brewery tour and instead had a nice lunch in their café washed down with a tasting paddle of four of their beers. Miriam opted for fish and chips and I was tempted by the famous Aussie Chicken Parmi!
We then popped down the road to the Cascades Female Factory and had a tour of the remains of the prison. This is one of the places female convicts were kept and, in some ways, suffered more than some of the male convicts. Our tour guide was very informative and the stories made it quite hard to understand how the system treated these people so badly. No photos as there wasn't much to see, most of the buildings have been pulled down. It's the stories you hear that are very moving.
Our final tourist thing to do was drive up to the top of Mt Wellington for a view over Hobart from 1200m up. Or so we thought. The drive up the mountain is incredible and, amazingly, is about 15km of winding road with not much room to pass other traffic. And there are a lot of cars (and buses) in both directions. We decided a view of Hobart was not going to happen as we drove through cloud at about the 1000m mark. Miraculously, we came out of the cloud as we neared the top and ended up in sunshine but above the cloud layer. There were many people already there and the top is an amazing huge flat open space, Just a pity we couldn't appreciate the view below.
We now need to prepare ourselves for the trip home tomorrow. Our flight doesn't leave until 12:20 pm so plenty of time in the morning to get out of here.
