Port Arthur

Hello, and welcome to another post! Yesterday I and a few fellow exchange students took a trip to the Port Arthur historic site, a big tourist grab in these parts. It's an old prison site from the 1800's and you have to go because Autralia loves it's prisons. (or they used to anyways)

Here's the crew from left to right: Jason from the states, Rory (Raurie?) a native Australian and our guide/driver, Venita from TRU and myself. Naemi from Sweden is taking the picture, which is at a place called Eaglehawk Neck. Basically this place is a bottle neck before the Tasman Peninsula which is where the prison is located. the two beaches here are only about a city block apart from each other, and back in the day they strung surly gaurd dogs across here and baited meat in the water to attract great white sharks to deter the inmates.

 Besides the history, there isn't much to see at Eaglehawk Neck but the beaches and this dog statue. There's a creepy old gaurd house which is really falling apart, tho they like to let you know that it has been 'restored'.

This here ^^ is called the Blowhole. It's a cave which goes out into the ocean and water is supposed to shoot out. It really blows! Well sort of, the water just kind of went in and out... anyways... moving on.

Past the hole that blows are some pretty awesome cliffs to check out. And further down the road you drive to....

...the Tasman Arch! There's one of these things in Yoho national park near Banff which I thought was pretty cool, but you could fit like ten of those in this thing. The fence on the top gives you a good scale reference here. I wanted to pee off it but there were people around. Shoot.

Finally got to see some wildlife at the Tasmania Devil Conservation Park. That's a Tasmanian devil, the source of the cartoon character and thousands of subsequent terrible 'Taz' tattoos. You want to pet them, but then they make this snarling aweful noise at you and you don't want to do that anymore.

Tasmanian Devil fact #1 - they have the second strongest jaws of any animal, behind the shark. (Probably true)

A parrot of some sort and a Quoll. Quoll's look cute but they will rip your fingers off if given the chance. Cute.

Tasmanian Devil Fact #2 - They're scavengers and will eat anything, including anything dropped in their cage at the Conservation park. Camera cases, cameras, sunglasses, smalll children. Especially small children I am sure.

A sweet bird and some tasty roos! Kangaroo fact: those toenails will fuck you up.

Some more Devils, and a Patamelon? Pokemon? A rabbit kangaroo love child.

Tasmanian Devil Fact #3 - Over 90% of the wild devils are now dead, and in ten years there won't be any left. This is because of a contagious facial cancer (the worst kind of cancer ever), which is running rampant in their population. The stupid things like biting each other a lot and so the face cancer is killing them all and they're now on the endangered species list. Sad.

"But when is he going to post Port Arthur pictures?" After I eat dinner, or maybe in a few days. Blogs take too long.