Travel Guides and Stories

I’d been planning a little trip to Bruny Island with friends for ages—always drooling over the gorgeous photos brought back by others who’d visited and raving about the famous oysters everywhere. Oysters are a pricey delicacy even in Australia! After many attempts to coordinate everyone’s schedules and overcome all sorts of hurdles, we finally set off on a beautiful, sunny morning. Bruny Island is a secluded island off Tasmania, about an hour’s drive from Hobart, the capital of Tasmania. We drove to a small port, where a ferry (running about every two hours) carried both us and our car across the sea to our destination—Bruny Island.

On the ferry—the weather was clear, the wind strong but still pleasantly warm. It was such a comfortable day.

Photo from the ferry—this is the opposite shore, with deep blue waves like leaping Smurfs. Once we landed and drove about twenty minutes, we arrived at the highlight of the trip, what I think is Bruny Island’s most stunning spot—Neck Bay. The name really fits—just look at the photo!

As the name suggests, both sides of this boardwalk are flanked by sea. The view on the left is especially breathtaking—the wind was incredibly strong!

The boardwalk is beautiful—maybe because it’s right in the path of the wind, which was so strong it almost blew us away! Climbing up wasn’t exactly easy. As I was about to start, a friendly elderly man smiled and cheered me on: “Go for it, young people!” I counted—there are 200 steps! At the top is the lookout.

This is that particularly beautiful stretch of sea I mentioned earlier.

The view from the lookout is truly stunning—what you see is what you get, but the real thing is even better than the photos. It’s like stepping into a painting. Bruny Island in the sunshine is absolutely gorgeous! Now, we’re getting ready to head down to the beach.

We happened to catch an elementary school field trip here. The little boy on the left insisted on having us take a group photo with our camera—but didn’t want a copy for himself… Such a quirky kid! Anyway, we headed down to the beach for a closer look at the beautiful ocean.

The moment these two hit the beach, they couldn’t wait to kick off their shoes and hunt for shells in the water. I was stuck in my UGGs and could only watch—major regret!

You can actually see three different shades of blue in the water here.

I was reminded of a slogan from back home: “Cranes dancing on white sands, my heart soars.” We had a blast on the beach but eventually had to leave. I’d never been to Bruny Island before, so I thought it was just a small island, but it turned out to be much bigger with so many more sights than I expected. I really regretted not booking a hotel there, so we decided to just drive according to the map and stop wherever looked pretty. Most importantly, we were determined to find a spot to dig for oysters! Sadly, we didn’t find any oysters, but we did stumble upon a bay full of little abalones, which made up for it!

This is Coal Bay. I have no idea why it’s called that—there’s no coal here, just heaps of little abalones. We got so excited that even I couldn’t resist taking my UGGs off to play in the water!

Coincidentally, we ran into another group of Chinese students on holiday from Melbourne—and one of them was even from my hometown in Hunan! When we arrived, they’d already dug up loads of abalone. Here’s everyone hard at work collecting abalone.

These beautiful little abalones actually require some skill to collect. The Melbourne gang used knives, but we had no tools—so we got creative! One friend just kicked them off with his foot, while us girls used rocks. As long as you get the right angle and force, you can get them pretty easily. Keep in mind: catching the large restaurant-size abalone in Australia requires a permit, but these little ones on the rocks are fine. The water here is unbelievably clear—just look at the pictures! (Please ignore my “duck feet”—I can’t swim, but I just had to wade in such clear water )

After everyone collected a huge pile of abalone, it finally started to rain—even though it had been sunny just before. The weather here is always changing! But the rainy scenery had its own special charm.

And so, it was time to head home. We didn’t get to see every sight on the island—not even the lighthouse at the far end (the last ferry is at 5:30 p.m.), nor did we find the oysters we were hoping for (we even planned to grill some that night!). Still, we came back with wonderful memories. Besides, you can’t be greedy and expect to enjoy all this beauty in just one go! I’m already looking forward to my next trip to Bruny Island—it’s sure to be even better! Lastly, a bit of thanks: this is my first travel blog post since joining Mafengwo, and I’m grateful to my dear friend for recommending such a great place to share my travel stories. I hope more fellow travelers will find and enjoy it! If you see anything I could improve, please let me know—thanks so much, everyone!