Day Four - Saturday 16th July

Once again, we had a lovely night's sleep and awakened to another lovely clear sunny day. We thoroughly enjoyed our breakfast at the "Links" restaurant and waddled out to our car and drove to Cataract Gorge for some morning exercise of walking and for Nick and Jonathan to go on the Basin Chairlift. There were great views from the chairlift, the many walking tracks and the suspension bridge.

 We walked off our huge breakfast! Next, a 20km drive north to the Platypus House at Beauty Point where we watched an informative video about a platypus and its "puggles" in the wild. We then had a guided tour informing us about the four resident platypi (named Jupiter and Porky - boys, Dusk and Piccolo - girls) and their two echidnas (Eddie - girl, Edwina - boy). Eddie was in hiding under a huge muddy/leafy messy nest in semi-hibernation but hopefully giving birth, so we didn't see her. But Edwina was a fascinating little creature who gave us a wonderful show of eating his lunch which consisted of termites, ants, farex, fly larvae, olive oil and water. A delicious meal for an echidna with a long tongue!

Once again we were on the road but this time heading through the picturesque countryside for our next stop at Elizabeth Town. We pulled into the Christmas Hills Raspberry Farm to stock up on raspberry jam.  We also sampled their delicious chocolate covered raspberries - a real delight!  We then pushed on and our next stop was the "House of Anvers" chocolate shop/factory where we stopped for a hot chocolate and to buy some "goodies". We then drove onto to Sheffield to buy some special apple cakes that we had eaten on a previous visit to Tasmania and we were bitterly disappointed that the bakery has closed for the day! We then travelled in a northerly direction towards Devonport passing through the quaint little townships of Railton and La Trobe and amazing countryside to view. We passed through Burnie and Penguin and decided to stay the night in Wynyard at a very nice B & B called Alexandria B & B.  We went to the local pub called The Wharf Hotel for dinner - excellent food once again and then baack to the B & B for port and chocolates!

Tip of the day - if you ever need to catch a platypus in the wild, always hold the platypus by the tail for two resasons.  Firstly, if you hold a platypus around its body you could crush its thin bones and seondly, if the platypus is a male, it could seriously harm (or kill you) with its very poisonous back spur. 

Second tip of the day - never ever take Green Tree Frogs into Tasmania because for some unknown reason they poison the local Platypi in the wild.