Day 26: 18 March 2010 She'll be Apples

Loved broccoli

Microscopic mussels close up, Adventure Bay Bruny Island

Early morning beach shadows

Juvenile Pacific gull

New season Huon apples

Mount Field National Park blogspot

We were woken this morning by little scratchy scuffly sounds just outside the tent immediately behind our heads. Any such noise could indicate the attentions of a brushtail possum, such as the one that marauded through our cooking things the night before and smashed a glass into a thousand tiny shards on the ground, so it was action stations. But it turned out to be an innocent troupe of little fairy wrens. No fairy wrens were harmed in the making of this blog.

After a lengthy relaxed breakfast and the longest most relaxed camp pack-up ever achieved in the history of camping, we turned our overly relaxed minds to the question of where we would sleep tonight. And decided that the Styx valley had precedence over Cradle Mountain, not possible to see both in the (only) three days we have left. In turn, that decision pretty much ensures we have to come back to Tasmania some time. She'll be apples, we said. And she was apples because we are in the Huon Valley, and its apple season...

The roadside stall had every variety of early season apple I could think of. We bought Croftons, Cox's Orange Pippins, Golden Delicious, Johnagold and Johnnies. Plus Dutch Cream and new season Pink Eye potatoes. Should keep the wolf from the door while we are in the Styx.

As I write this, we are camped in the Mt Field National park, surrounded by tall, tall, straight trunks. We have eaten our Bruny Island brie, followed by Bruny bratwurst, mashed pink-eye potatoes mixed with home grown garlic and accompanied by a Tamar red. Now we are too full for the Bruny strawberries and cream... Nothing for it but to read our books beside the Tyenna River, gurgling prettily just behind my back. A little pademelon has turned up hopefully several times already, just in case we couldn't read the sign that said "do not feed the wildlife"

Something must go wrong for these people some time, I hear you muttering. All this happy travelling is making you feel sick, did you say? Well, tonight may be the night. There's rain forecast and we are camped on fine black clay soil, under enormous trees, next to a river....