Opium, are you Kidding?

One can not travel to Tasmania without a trip to see Fairy Penguins. Therefore Al and I set out for a 2-hour drive from Orford to a little town called Bicheno located on the East Coast of Tassie. This little town is where we could join a penguin tour, or so we thought.

Enjoying the view

We had thought the drive would only be one-two hours, but there is just too much to see! We followed the coastline dotted with cute little towns and spectacular white sandy beaches, but the draw for us was the boutique wineries along the way.

What are wine barrels for?

The cauldron holds...

We just had to stop and sample the wine. Or, at least I did, poor Al had to drive!
We also came across this funky bridge called “spiky bridge”.

Here's your sign!

It was built by convicts in 1843.

How cool is that bridge!

Some say it was built spiky so that sheep couldn’t jump off, I like to think that the convicts were being “cheeky” and built it that way just to make a statement about having to build a bridge in the middle of nowhere while in chains! Either way, the bridge is beautiful, more like a piece of art than a bridge.
In the small town of Swansea (what a pretty name for a town) I had to stop and take a picture of the logging equipment.

The yard

Machinery

It seemed so out of place, but it really isn’t when in Tasmania. Logging is common and really much of the traffic we passed were loaded logging trucks. Sniff, sniff, makes one homesick!
We stopped at St John the Baptist, Parish of Buckland.

Let me in!

One cute church

I am telling the truth, Al stopped at a church. Okay, this church isn’t just a regular church, it is made from local sandstone, features the oldest stain glass window in Australia and is believed to date back to the 14th century. The cool thing about this church (other than the graveyard surrounding it) is that it is unlocked. You can just walk in!

We also saw sheep. Not just a few sheep, but field after field of sheep, unless it was a field of poppies.

Grow opium!

Yes, poppies, many poppies! Why poppies? Because Tasmania is the worlds largest producer of opium alkaloids for the pharmaceutical market. Welcome to Tasmania, isn’t it quaint?