Finally! A Devil

Another day off, and after racing yesterday, a long slow ride: 82 km.

Stopped at a wild animal park. Pretty low budget, seemed to be run by environmentalist/hippie types. The guide was exceedingly knowledgeable about Tasmanian flora and fauna, and especially the Tasmanian Devils. 85% of the Devils have dies of an infectious/transmissible facial tumor disease and the park now has about 40 disease-free Devils and is putting up high tech double fencing to keep out and wild (therefore, potentially infected) Devils and earn their certification as disease free. There are now a number of such facilities on the Island, as well as on the mainland. The nature populations seem to also be starting to come back with animals returning to areas where the disease first arose and totally wiped out the population.

I've got a video that I'll post later - internet is too slow out here in back of beyond.

The park also does "rescue" and rehabilitation of injured and orphaned other animals and birds.

Anyway, it was a cute little place with kangaroos, wombats, Devils, Quolls, as well as a variety of birds including three wedge tailed eagles - big enough that they prey on baby sheep.

Rode on to Mole Creek - entryway to an area of karst/limestone (most of the island is igneous, so it's very different) with many caves. Just missed the guided tour of one of the bigger caves, and didn't have time to wait around for the next tour - so took a short walk through the rainforest. Hard to get good pictures of the rainforest - the individual plants aren't that spectacular, but the overall effect is rather amazing: moss, giant ferns, lots of other low stuff, and then a canopy of huge eucalypts.

Tomorrow I head over the ridge to the west side where I hear that it's much, much wetter and more lush.

The eucalyptus are amazingly diverse - some tall and slender, others skinny and packed together, others gigantic with rounded tops, all different sorts of different barks - but still recognizable as eucalypts. Sort of like all the different varieties of pines back home.

For dinner had a pumpkin strudel on a bed of couscous. Never had (or even heard of) anything like it. It was good enough that I'll drive 100 km to come back and have it again.