Tasmania 6

We had lots of fun in Mt William NP by doing a lot of almost nothing. The pounding waves are so soothing that it is all too easy to be so relaxed that reading the paper (The Australian) or photographing our wallaby neighbours is almost too much effort, but .....

 

Late in the afternoon, this mother stopped near us to let her joey out for a little exercise. You can see that she leaves the pouch open so that joey can clamber back in easily, and he did exactly that when another wallaby arrived quickly and spooked him. It's hard to imagine how compact he must become to fit back into her!

 

*************************

 

Our biggest challenge on this trip seems to be staying awake until we can go for a night drive in search of animals that are hard to see except in our headlights. We started around 7.30 pm and found these gorgeous jewel beetles on the wax flowers:

 

 

 

 

The Forsters kangaroos were assembled in one mob or another on the far side of the grassy field where they were feeding.

We were delighted to see quite a few live wombats after the dozens of road-killed ones we've seen on Tasmanian roads. This one didn't seem to realize that we were right beside him so we had a great little visit with him, though in fast-disappearing daylight.

 

Almost dark and yet we were able to capture this scene for our memories....

... and this one, both of which remind us of the joy we found in simply watching the interactions among the members of the mob. A few of them were bounding around for reasons we couldn't fathom. Most were silent sentinels in the grass, mulling over our presence but seemingly not really bothered by us - as long as we stayed in the car!