03 April 2011
Snug to Adventure Bay, Bruny Island
“Look, they even have a big white rabbit!” Gina said, as she steered our van through the super cute South Bruny Island campground with its cozy cabins, green open spaces, and beachfront views. Giant rabbit? I thought. Hello Alice, welcome to Wonderland. That ain’t no rabbit, I replied, grabbing for the Bruny Island brochure, the Rough Guide, and our camera all at once, craning my neck to look back at this so-called rabbit. That’s the white Bennetts wallaby I was just reading about that’s also gracing the cover of the official welcome guide, a rare, sub-species of wallaby endemic only to this area. And look at the size of that fella. Huh. He really is quite big, isn’t he? I think we’ve been misleading our readers with our past stories of Tasmanian wallaby sightings. Being much smaller, those previous roo-like creatures must have been pademelons. (Consider the record now officially set straight.)
We rode the ferry over to this special place of giant white rabbits, looking forward to the “powder beaches, dolerite cliffs, abundant wildlife, and isolated bushwalks” touted by our guidebook. And at first glance, this Bruny Island is delivering. Within just a few short hours of disembarking, we’ve gone for a jog along a white sand beach, watched wallabies and some sort of chicken-like-hen-looking bird graze around our campsite (along with the Flame Robin, with his burritowagon orange belly), and plotted our cliff-edging Fluted Cape bushwalk for tomorrow.
Why tomorrow and not this afternoon, with the oodles of time we have on our hands? Because it’s now raining. Again. Big-time rain. What-sounds-like-denting-the-top-of-the-van rain. Gusty, blowing, can’t-do-much-of-anything rain. Should-we-go-back-to-Hobart-where-we-have-internet-and-the-possibility-of-going-to-a-movie rain. Will-Gina-survive-another-afternoon-in-the-van rain. That kind of rain. The rain I dread, the rain I wish would go away, the rain that for better or worse gives us the opportunity to catch up on our celebrity gossip, even if half of it is about Australian “stars” I’ve never ever heard of. It’s a good thing one of our new hobbies, something we’ve acquired on this long road trip, is trawling the campground laundry rooms and kitchens for donated trashy magazines. It’s really paid off on these rainy days.
