Tasmania has great wide cloudscapes, and because of all the mountain ranges, it gathers lots of clouds. Most mornings seem to begin with cloud.
From almost anywhere you can see mountains.
The bleached colour of the fields is also common, with or without sheep, shorn white or unshorn dirty grey.
I had aimed for the top of the island, and did reach Musselroe Bay but it was so windy I didn’t stay.
Mt William National Park is in my sights before I head south along the east coast.
I drive through hectares of low coastal plants like this.
I climb rocky Mt William, although the sandy walk to its top was more interesting to me than the view.
This white lichen seemed to echo the sand colour.
I stop in the car park afterwards to make a coffee.
Whence I leave the induction cooktop on the bench to cool… and forget about it as I drive off.
I remember it only as it crashes to the floor at the first bump.
Disaster, discovered later. Cold dinner that night.
I camp along this east coast, so very different from the wild west coast’s Southern Ocean.
At a place north of Binalong Bay, called The Gardens, I first see the astonishing clear blue-green of the sea here. I will find it all along the east coast. I think of a postcard I once saw of the Isle of Capri.
The white sands are typical. This is part of the Bay of Fires, a most beautiful stretch of coast north of St Helens.
I had thought this Bay was so called because of the vivid orange-lichened rocks, Caloplaca marina, but no, it was due to the fires of the local Kinnara Kuna tribe seen along this north-east coast by Captain Furneaux in 1773.
The tea-coloured lagoon behind this beach is also eye-catching, as are its shapely dolerite rocks.
The ubiquitous black swans like this lagoon too, cruising about in their stately manner.
Not knowing what is to come, I take far too many photos of orange rocks…