Best day so far (apart from turtle island). I have absolutely loved everything about today. We woke up to a lovely home cooked breakfast at our B&B. The owner spoilt Edd with a full English, sausage, black pudding the works. She gave us some tips on things to stop for and we set off fairly soon after.
We had to cover a fairly long distance today, our next hotel was about 3 and a half hours drive away but we also wanted to do some detours so again we were against the clock a bit.Edd drove first and we had a stunning route up the Tamar Valley, famous for its wine. The views over the water were breathtaking and the weather was absolutely prefect, pretty cold, but crisp and sunny.
We were cruising along in the sun when Edd jumped into panic! We were running out of fuel and of course hadn't taken into account that Tas isn't a busy as England. From the looks of google map on Edd's phone the next station was 50 minutes drive away and we weren't going to make it. Edd pulled over, I looked for a break down number to call and ask for advice while he played with his phone.
Turns out Google had been starred or something so was only showing attractions in the town we were aiming for. Panic over, the petrol station was two minutes away in the small town we were passing through. It's funny how you take those things for granted, we're going to have to be very on the ball in NZ with petrol and closing times.
We stopped in the other city of Tas called Launceston, hoping to explore an interesting town. It was fine, a few nice(ish) shops and we found a good coffee shop and shared a raspberry tart. There was nothing worth hanging around for and we had for more exciting goals ... We had a tour of a seahorse centre waiting for us so we didn't waste any more time to make sure we didn't miss the next tour! I was excited to go but I hadn't planned it (unlike the dolphins, turtles etc) so it was a pleasant surprise to discover this centre almost on route.
The centre was way cooler than I had anticipated. They are the worlds first and only seahorse breeding centre that supply seahorses to the rest of the world for aquariums! There are a few farms now in the US that bread them for eating (a Chinese thing) and medication (again Chinese!)
The tour guide was brilliant, he was really funny and kept a huge bunch of kids (and myself!) calm and engaged even with lots of exciting distractions! Did you know there are 56 species of seahorses in the world, 23 'have an Aussie accent'. Not many but some can change colour, myth is that they do this for camouflage but they can't change to blue or green so it is not known why they change. They have no eyelids and their eyes are independent from each other.
The farm breed about 8 different species for sale but the Tasmanian pot belly is the most popular because it's relatively disease resistant, big and has a long is life expectancy (4-6 years in the wild, up to 13 in their farm). We were shown a small collection of different breads and then shown to the harvesting tanks. Firstly tanks of mating adults, then tanks of tiny babies, primary school and teenagers. 
There were so many fascinating facts about them; the babies eat tiny shrimps (we know them as sea monkeys that we had as pets as kids!), they suck their food through their straw like face and the excess water comes out the back of their head and they can't mate in shallow water because they need space to do a dance around each other before mating. 
The male is the pregnant one, it makes them unique from any other animal on earth, he carries the eggs in his pouch but the reason we consider the other sex the females is that she produces the eggs and gives them to him to fertilise in his pouch. They produce about 180 babies every 3 weeks and in the wild the survival rate is 2%, in the farm it's 98%. I couldn't believe that there was enough demand for that many babies, if you think, one seahorse produces 180 babies, 16 times a year that's 2,880 babies per year and there were hundreds of adults! The guide told us they have to produce ten's of thousands to keep up with demands!
I really want to go on about sea horses but I feel like there may be an overload of facts here!! The exciting part was that they can survive out of water for up to 4 hours so we got to hold one!! He asked for a volunteer and my hand shot up over all the kids in the group, I had the honour of being his assistant and helping everyone else handle them. I was being a big kid but was in my element and wasn't going to let 'playing it cool' stand in the way of an opportunity like that!!
I feel so guilty for poor Edd, every time we hold cool wildlife I get amazing photos of me and said animal, then Edd passes me the camera and he's lucky if we can see what he's holding, I am trying but the lighting was really bad! Luckily he has pretty good editing skills!!
We left that stunning stop on the water and drove to the most idyllic place I think I've ever been. A vineyard, in the countryside overlooking rolling hills, with sheep in the distance, with a small wine cellar and a few benches out the front.
We sat in the sun watching the clouds float by with a beautiful plate of cheese and a very good, full bodied glass of wine (and a ginger beer) and I felt totally at peace, it was perfect in every way. I said to Edd if we weren't married and he hadn't already proposed, I'd have asked him to marry me right there!! I like to think that Grandpa was looking down on us because I know he would have appreciated that spot as much as we did. I could have sat there all day.
We drove on to a beautiful raspberry farm! We stopped off to eat raspberries covered in chocolate, raspberry cake, scones with raspberry jam and even raspberry ice tea and raspberry beer.
It is advised not to drive in the dark (this may sound ridiculous but there is roadkill everywhere here!) so I drove the last hour and a half cautiously up winding forest roads with the sun setting. Our hotel is a mountain hotel with wood burning fires and views into the mountain woods, it's beautiful and so peaceful. We got to our room in almost darkness and sat at our window watching a pademelon (small wallaby) scuffling around outside our room.
We rested for a while, made the most of the massive bubble bath and did some washing before dinner in the hotel restaurant. Dinner was very good, Edd had raw meat (kangaroo included) that he then cooked himself on a hot stone.I know lots of people think paradise is tropical islands and beaches but this scenery is what I think of when I think of paradise, it's stunning and everyone should come to Tasmania (for more than 4 days!!)
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