Voyagers @ Sea: (Backup) Day 40, MARDI GRAS-Tuesday, February 13, 2018 Hobart, Tasmania Australia

We woke up to cloudy and gray clouds, and from our side of the ship, Port side, there wasn’t much to see. But we had an early morning tour, we had to be in the Queens Lounge by 8:30, so we had to get going. No time to have breakfast, so off we went, to get coffee down there. I had not had a good night, so not at my best, but it improved as the day went on.

We were on a seven and a half hour tour.. The capital of Tasmania, Hobart lies along the Derwent River and is dominated by the breathtaking Mt Wellington. We boarded the bus on time and headed to Richmond, Tasmania, how about that? All this way and we go to Richmond,,,, richmond is billed as one of the most beautiful places to visit. It was pretty and I can see how it would be a charming place to go for a weekend, but we really didn’t have time to explore, so we went to the bakery Ed had a huge jelly roll and I had a scone and we both had tea, as remember, we didn’t have breakfast.

The oldest bridge in Tasmania is here and so is the oldest church, we were too far away from it to go inside. So we went to the tasting room to check out the gin, woooo was it strong, 90 proof. Needless to say we didn’t buy any. LOL

Now it was time to go to the next stop, the Puddleduck Vineyards to tast wine, and it wasn’t even 11 o’clock, going to be a good day, and the sun was coming out. After tasting four wines and one non alcoholic wine called Puddleduck Verjuice, which was quite good, but not good enough to pay $22 for it.

Next was on to Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary, here we saw koalas, Tasmanian devils, wombats, kangaroos and wallabies. This was really fun, we had a great guide who showed us the anamils, and we were able to touch and feed a lot of them, minus the devils as they would probably feed on us. LOL

The devils, and the baby wombat, cute at this age, but not cute when they get older, in fact mean buggers, and they said you don’t want one, borrowing under your house, as it will take it down.

So now we were off to the historic Sheen Estate, as we approached it, it looked like something out of Giant! You could almost here the music. It was quite the place, and had a lot of history. It was built as an ostentatious monument to early colonialists Gamaaliel Butler’s wealth and position within the colony. It is a large sheep farm today, it’s colorful past has direct links with King George III and Governor Lachlan Macquarie. We had some nice sandwiches and homemade cake and tea. The family today is trying to develope a whisky and now are one of only two leagel distlerys in Tasmania. They still have a was to go, before able to sell to the public, but they too make gin, as it is much faster.