This morning the kids and I went for a walk before breakfast. We visited the chickens and the horse again. We held out our hands for the horse to sniff, and Nathan accidentally touched the electric tape and got a shock. He was a bit upset, but for some reason he wouldn’t admit that he had had a shock, but I had heard it so I knew that he had.
We went back to our room and had breakfast and loaded the car. It was getting a bit late so we didn’t really have time to explore the beach, and so we headed straight to Beauty Point where Seahorse World is, stopping at Beaonsfield for some food before finally arriving at Beauty Point.
Seahorse world was really interesting. We had to go on a tour of the premesis which was set up for tourists, with their main operations being in a different building. An effort was made to set up a seahorse farm some 10 years or so ago, with the aim of supplying sea horses for the Chinese market. There were problems that had to be overcome like how to feed the seahorses. They had to grow live food for them, and that had its own problems. They worked out how to feed the older sea horses dried food, since prior to that they had to grow life food for them as well. In the end, they were unable to provide the Chinese market with 50 kg of sea horses a month, and changed to supplying the aquarium market with live sea horses. It was very interesting seeing how they went about it all, and seeing the size of baby sea horses.
When we left Seahorse world we drove most of the way to Launceston to have a look at the Tamar wetlands. There was a long board walk onto an island in the Tamar river, and a bird hide, and I’m sure it would be a great place to look for birds if…..you didn’t take two small children along, you had more time, it didn’t rain and you could get up high enough to see into the long reeds and grasses. Certainly an interesting place.
From there we drove to Devonport where the kids had a play on a pretty cool playground and we had some dinner before getting onto the boat. Our room this time didn’t have a window, and it vibrated a lot! Still, it was a place to lie down and sleep. Toby is getting a cold, and his coughing woke him and me up at 3:30 am, with his coughing waking Nathan up at 4:15. We all left the cabin to wander the ship and let Andrew sleep.
The ship docked at about 6:30 am, and it was a quick process to drive off the boat (no quarantine this time) and we were home just after 7 am.
I have enjoyed looking at the maps app on the iPad while we are driving along. The blue dot shows where we were at the time.
Baby sea horses
Hermit crab
Nesting swan
