Day 57: 20231119 Sunday November 19, 2023- Burnie, Tasmania Australia
Our Burnie “Nature Lovers” excursion didn’t meet until 11am so we were able to do the morning trivia before leaving but we got beat out of a bag of goodies by one point. In the afternoon, we got back in time for the 4pm trivia which we won by one point over the team that had won the morning trivia so we have been trading off wins.
We almost didn’t end up with a Burnie excursion because when the cruise started it was listed as sold out. We signed up for the waiting list, which worked out to our advantage because they ended up chartering a second bus for a second batch of the same tour. The first bus was completely full with 44 passengers, while our overflow bus only had 13 passengers, so we could spread out, and our smaller bus was more agile in getting from one site to the other.
Our Burnie excursion started with a nature walk along Fern Glen, which is in a nature reserve. There are platypus in the creek but although we saw what were probably platypus dens on the opposite shore in a couple of places we never saw a platypus on the water or shore. There were large tree ferns which made parts of the trail seem very prehistoric. We also saw trees with cedar like bark but they were eucalyptus trees, which can have rough or smooth bark. There are no koalas native to Tasmania though. Apparently it’s too cold for them during the winters. We did see some birds and it was a pleasant enough walk with no big elevations to climb.
The second stop was called the Emu Valley Rhododendron Gardens. We started off with tea featuring some fancy teas and scones in their tea house which overlooked the gardens. The gardens were like a miniature version of Buchart Gardens on Vancouver Island featuring hundreds of Rhododendron varieties and hybrids. There were three ponds in the gardens.
The highlight for us was the discovery of an active platypus in one of the ponds who we got to watch for quite some time. The platypus was smaller than we had imagined, not much bigger than a large grey squirrel, but it was fascinating to watch it swim along the bottom of the pond working the sediments with it’s platypus bill, and then periodically surfacing to swallow it’s prey (worms and other critters living and hiding in the sediments), and then diving back down for another go. There was a bit of a ledge under the edge of the ponds that the platypus would work around, and at one point, he flushed out a large (2.5’ long) eel, which we saw swam into the deeper waters. Janet was fortunate to be standing in exactly the right spot with her iPhone when the platypus surfaced right under her nose. That was really a highlight since in all our excursions to wildlife parks in Australia to date, we had not seen a single platypus.
After dinner we saw another stand up comedian, Chris Rayburn, in the Universe lounge who was kind of similar to Bella Hull, whose show had bombed in the Princess Theater. The Universe lounge is a more intimate setting, so the show worked better, although it was still nearly impossible to hear most of the interactions he was having with the audience. He had walked on stage carrying a Ukulele, so we thought that would be worked into his act, but he just set it down on the floor of the stage and 2/3rds of the way through his act, he picked it up and solicited suggestions for what to play. But then he just said he couldn’t play the ukulele and had just spotted it in a box back stage and thought it would be funny to bring it on stage and not play it. Well, it wasn’t that funny. He also had 3 men from the audience get up on stage to do an impromptu dance off, but that also didn’t turn out that funny.
We finished off the evening with a Vocalist Paul Tabone “The Best of the West End”, who had finished an 1800 show run with the cast of Phantom of the Opera in the West End of London. He was backed by the Princess band, and a very talented singer who did several show tunes from shows including Oklahoma, Phantom of the Opera, Les Miserables and Chess. Like with Jed’s show, it was a bit odd hearing “Oh What a Beautiful Morning” sung with a British accent, but Paul’s talent was quite apparent in the quality of his performances.
Tomorrow we arrive in Hobart, Tasmania. We will be rendezvousing with a couple we had met on the Viking Star, who we did trivia with and who we exchange Christmas letters with every year. It will be the only one of three planned rendezvous on this trip that we were able to keep due to missed ports of call.
