Freycinet

There's not a lot of accommodation around Freycinet NP, some boring luxury lodges and the rest is mainly through AirBnB. Which I don't like but beggars can't be choosers so, after avoiding a rip off attempt by one strange person to upsell I found us a nice place in Swannick. Spacious, clean, comfortable. The problem with Tasmania is that you have to pre book all accommodation between Xmas and end of January, so not much room for improvisation unfortunately, unless you want to throw money away. Because they have zero tolerance cancellation policies, all of them. Which doesn't make the place to appealing to me, I must say. And I also don't think that it will be economically healthy and sustainable if mainland Aussies buy up the juicy real estate and then rent it out via tax dodging platforms like AirBnB. But who am I.

Freycinet NP is beautiful, no doubt. We took a walk along the aptly named Friendly Beaches, the first time the tanmaster showed his exquisite body to the Tasmanian public in all its glory. What can I say, I'll need weeks to work through all the letters and facebook friendship requests and telephone numbers. 😁

Another beautiful sight is Wineglass Bay, although I must admit that the whole naming scheme is getting on my nerves and probably suggests more than it actually is. Yes, it's beautiful, but it's also a trap to lure snobbish wine fascists to the lodge, I think. On the other hand, as long as they are stupid enough to pay these prices, fuck them.

New year's eve was wonderful, we had a great dinner with friends at Tombolo and nothing happened, no fireworks, no drunkards getting on my nerves, no nothing. Beautiful, wonderful, peaceful. Fuck Germany, fuck Berlin. Fuck all you people who buy fireworks and set them off around others and fuck all of you Berliners especially. Each year I actively hope that all this shit blows off your fucking hands and faces. Fuck you. I hope you fucking drown in your fucking rubbish you fucking alcohol consuming pieces of shit.

Wow, where did that come from? Back to sunshine, it was super nice to walk around on January 1st on the beach, no rubbish, just chilling out.

We had great Devonshire tea at the Pondering Frog, a really nice, old school tea room place at the turn off from the highway. Twas so nice we went there twice. ☺ They also do home made ice cream, which is very nice, too. A bit too sweet for my taste, so I'd rate the one on the Tasman Peninsula better, but still worth stopping for.

On our last evening we went sea kayaking. Unfortunately, you cannot rent kayaks on your own, you have to join a guided tour. Which was ok, but not great, because all the others couldn't paddle which kind of limited the distance we could cover, the things we could see. But still lovely to see everything from the sea side instead of from land. This was also the first time the Reisebegleitung was exposed to the exquisite Aussie humour. One of the two guides was wise cracking all the time, and I mean it, three hours of incessant Kalauer Karl. "You know why this rock is called granite? Because you're taking it for granted." Funny in the first couple of minutes, but really painful afterwards. Luckily, we could just paddle away.
Einen hab ich aber noch, der ist wirklich toll:

Why do cows have hooves?
Because they lactose.

Next stop, Bay of Fires, Binalong Bay.