I’d totally want a seal if I thought it wouldn’t eat me

Kaitlyn and I went on our last Tasmanian adventure, a boat trip around Bruny Island. Bruny is a big island off the coast of Hobart.

When we arrived at0 Adventure Bay, our departure point, we were given our morning tea (this country is so British) before leaving. The skies had opened up during our drive down, so the prospect of going on a boat in that weather was not exactly thrilling. While the clouds loomed ominously (above), we were protected from the elements with these extremely fashionable raincoats that were longer than our feet (Kaitlyn models, above). Luckily a roof covered the seating area on the boat, so we were protected from most of the weather.

First, the boat took us next to these spectacular sea cliffs. Most of the rock is made out of dolerite (above), and the power of the ocean eroded them into arches (above), caves, and free-standing columns (above). The boat driver added some excitement by zooming though narrow openings in the rock (above).

One highlight was seeing the 2nd highest sea cliff in Australia (above), which only missed being the highest by a few meters. Also really awesome was the “breathing rock.” It was an underwater cave that had a very very small opening above water. As the waves would roll in and out, the rock would “exhale” and shoot water several meters into the air (above). Pretty cool stuff. Even the boring parts of the rock were pretty spectacular. It was really cool to see the bright green of the trees (above) contrasted against the rock contrasted against the turquoise water (above).

There were lots of cool living things to see as well. Attached to the side of the rocks were bull kelp (above), which is giant seaweed that is ground up and used to hold chocolate in suspension in milkshakes. Yep, you are eating seaweed every time you eat a Frosty. We saw ospreys hunting on the water, and lots of cormorant birds (above) which look like penguins but are not. But the best part of the entire trip was seeing these massive sea lions.

There were tons of bitty islands off the coast of Bruny called The Friars. On these islands, there were dozens of seals (above). They looked positively cuddly (above) and some of them had a great deal of blubber on them (above). One of them even looked like he was motioning “come here Ashley, play with me” (above). However, I caught one of them bearing his teeth at me (above). Not so cuddly. Another one actually swam up to our boat and was jumping out of the water like a dolphin would. That reminded me of how powerful they really are. This was especially sobering considering that this week a girl was attacked by a sea lion while surfing at Lancelin, the beach where I took my surfing lessons. So I think I’ll stick to coveting a koala.

After we saw the seals, the boat took us further into the ocean which was a blast. The boat would hit a wave, go up really high in the air, and then crash back down. It was like a super awesome rollercoaster. In the shuttle on the way back, we saw a wild white wallaby (above), which is pretty much just a small kangaroo.

It was an awesome day!