The Australian Bucket List (1) - Tasmania

I was trying to explain the concept of bucket list to my French teacher the other day. She was confused, she said the closest thing was La liste des dernières volontés - the list of last wishes - but I'm not dying! Just moving to Canada for a year... 

Have you ever tried making a bucket list? If you close your eyes and imagine that you won't get to visit somewhere ever again, where would you want to go? Most of the things on my list are nature spots or food things... 

So the first stop on my Great Australian Bucket List is Tasmania. Mainly because I've been wanting to go to MONA since it opened. I recruited my neurologist friend to come along for our 5 day trip. 

Hobart

Autumn colours at King Edward Park on the way to Salamanca markets 

Wonderful berries from the Westerway berry farm. These were small, sweet and intensely strawberry. Nothing like the supermarkets!

On the ferry to MONA (Museum of Old & New Art) - actually a very rich guy's private art collection. 

I adore the autumn colours 

The art at MONA was actually pretty bizarre, but an impressive collection nonetheless. This gallery had thousands of the same motif done in different colours, and it was cool they had live music in several corners. 

View from MONA, a beautiful peaceful day

Hobart waterfront at sunset

A beautiful autumn leaf, near our accommodation in Sandy Bay 

On the way to Bruny Island we stopped at Willie Smith's apple museum, where we had this extraordinary apple pie. The shortcrust pastry was really solid and satisfying, the pie was utterly stuffed with cinnamony apple and the scoop of vanilla bean icecream was a perfect accompaniment. 

 

The Apple Museum!

Bruny Island

The best, freshest, plumpest oysters I've ever had at Get Shucked on Bruny Island

A beautiful double rainbow as we arrived at our accommodation - Bruny Island Bungalow, one of the nicest airbnbs I've ever stayed in. 

Sunrise from the Bungalow - this is literally the view from bed!

The Bruny Island Baker who drops off sourdough in these old school fridges everyday 

As a sourdough baker, I appreciate other people's excellent sourdoughs. This was a dark dark loaf (maybe 20% rye?) studded with sultanas. 

We went for a hike on Bruny Island to the Fluted Cape. Here the rocks are vertically oriented like the flutes of an organ - quite an extraordinary walk, though a little challenging for us city-dwellers who are not used to walking!  

Hello little one!

This was our reward for the hike, a wonderful ploughman's platter from the Bruny Island Cheese company. The three cheeses were ODO (One Day Old) bottom left, a soft young cheese in a herby olive oil; Tom top right, a friendly cheese that's like a half-matured cheddar; and a mature stinky-as French cheese bottom right. The woodfired bread here was also excellent. 

We went up to the Neck lookout for the view of the narrow passage way between North & South Bruny Island. What a view!

Sunset from the Neck 

Our last sunrise from the Bungalow 

Does anybody know why time goes faster on holidays? Felt like we were away for just an instant but it was a really fun- food- and friendship- filled long weekend to Tasmania. The nature of Australia is stunning, everywhere we turned were just so many gum trees typical of the bush here. We also saw heaps of kangaroos and possums, sadly some of which were dead... that's also very Australian!