Tasmania: Bicheno

Bicheno

Bicheno was our destination for Sunday night. Primarily a fishing town, it's getting a little bit of a reputation as a tourist destination. It's also known for the colony of Little Penguins that breeds there, which you can only see in the mornings and evenings as they go back and forth to the sea. But don't let that fool you into thinking it's a tourist town. Or even a town that runs on anything besides its own schedule! But more on that later.

The town itself is right on the coast, nice and cute. It reminded me of Lorne in size and layout. Later in the day, we climbed up a hill called Whale Watcher's Lookout where you could see the town from end to end.

Bicheno seaside

The Bicheno seaside and penguin tours were tied for our favorite activities. We headed out to explore the town and seaside first after arriving in the town. It was breathtaking.

There's red lichen on the rocks along the east coast of Tasmania, which makes the rocks an amazing orange color. That lichen is only found in Tasmania, South Africa, and Antarctica.

We also went to the edge of town and checked out the Bicheno blowhole. It was pretty amazing: water shot out of it about 20 or 30 feet at an angle on the big ones. And it was thunderingly loud. I didn't get a great picture. Holly tried to take a video of it, which turned out to be in slow motion.

And finally, to kill a little time before our penguin tour, we drove out to Governor Island to check it out. We got there right in time for a rain shower, but that was OK because a double rainbow followed!

Bicheno penguins

After a full day in Bicheno, it was time to see the penguins! There is a colony of Little Penguins (also called Blue Penguins and Fairy Penguins) that nest and breed in Bicheno, and a couple of the local guys run nightly tours to see them. The penguins come ashore at night right after it gets dark and then go back to the sea in the morning before it gets light.

Since the tours just go out at night and visit the areas where penguins are likely to be, it wasn't guaranteed that we'd see any penguins. But there was a penguin scout along with the tour, so he radioed to our guide and told him which spots we should visit. So the first spot we went to, we saw four little penguins coming up the hill!

We couldn't take any pictures since the flash can scare them away, but the tour sent us some later. It's hard to tell from the picture, but the penguins only get about a foot tall.

Aren't they so cute!?

All in all, we saw about 15 or 20 penguins in different spots and in various stages of coming ashore.

The penguin tour also sent us a link to this video, which is just so weird and funny.

Wintersun Gardens

We had booked rooms at the Wintersun Gardens motel for the night. Although I honestly probably wouldn't have considered staying in a place that looked this small and horror movie-ish usually, it was cute as a button!

The older couple behind the front desk only added to the charm. They quickly informed us that they were just "watching the motel" while their friends were on holiday, but that they'd do their best. Then they asked if we felt like a glass of fresh milk. Between the non-sequitur and their strong accents, it took us a few seconds to process what they'd asked. We all graciously declined on reflex, but looking back on it, I wish I'd said yes!

Next up was business. After they asked if we'd booked the room "on the computer," we marveled together about the computer and all that you could do with it. They also asked us about where we were from, and were so excited that we were from Tennessee. They'd actually been to Chattanooga to visit friends there, but it sounded like the highlight of their Tennessee trip was Graceland. Since none of us Tennessee people had actually been to Graceland (we could tell this was pretty unfathomable to them), we didn't get too much conversation on this point. They wrote my credit card number on the back of a piece of paper, "just in case!" and we were all set!

The man walked us to our room - which just like Lorne - was "airing out" in the 40 degree weather. This must be an Australian thing. The "airing out" of the room came back to bite us. Hard. Since this room had been refurbished with a key that only allows power to come on when the key card is in the wall reader, the heat was off the whole day after we checked in and went exploring. So it was slightly warmer than the frigid outside when we returned from the penguin tour that night.

By the time our penguin tour ended at 7:00, Bicheno was shut down for the night. It was eerily dark, and not a store was open. (We'd been warned that the grocery store closed at 5:30.) We were really lucky to find a little cafe still open, even though we had backup crackers in the motel, as we'd sensed there wouldn't be a lot of late night options. The cafe was, bizarrely, called "Gangsters," and run by two little old hippies. There wasn't another soul besides us anywhere in sight of it. In fact, they had some of the dining room lights off, so we just stood there in the semi-darkness while we waited for our food.

We didn't mind though - it was warm! We took our warm food back to Wintersun Gardens, huddled around the heater in our coats, and enjoyed our dinner in Bicheno!

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