Tasmania with a toddler: Tasman Peninsula and Port Arthur

You know how you visit a place and then years later still think it was a really gorgeous place and you just have to show it to your loved ones? And how sometimes this can be really disappointing? Well, thank goodness, this was not the case when we returned to the Tasman Peninsula on our recent trip to Tasmania. In particular, I had been telling my husband all year that I loved the Tessellated Pavement and thought he would too. And here 'tis:

The Tessellated Pavement, Tasman Peninsula

Near Marble Arch - no more photos, please!

It may not be the #1 tourist attraction in Tasmania but it's a quiet, seemingly untouched place with some incredible natural formations and it impressed my husband, as well as me (again). And our little boy loved splashing along here, of course. You may note that the weather was not looking too good and it unfortunately did get worse before it got better. We kept driving and saw the Marble Arch and Devil's Kitchen but for some reason our young man once again decided we were being too paparazzi-like and called a halt to photographs.

The following day we headed down to the convict site of Port Arthur, another place I'd really been looking forward to revisiting. The weather didn't exactly cooperate and so we spent much of the day dashing between buildings when the rain was at its lightest (of course these buildings are mostly ruins so even they didn't help much) but we had a few moments of sunshine.

Since I last visited many years ago, the Port Arthur historic site has been further improved and the experience as a tourist (and it receives many of them) is really impressive. My favourite touch was the playing card all visitors received - in the museum space of the visitors' centre, you could search for which convict your Jack of Spades (or whatever!) matched up to and see what kind of experiences they'd had - a great way to personalise a hard-to-imagine experience. For our little boy they gave us a card which matched up to a child "convict", another great touch.

We spent three days exploring the Tasman Peninsula, staying in a cottage along the main road (which is full of accommodation), and dropping into the tiny Federation Chocolate factory and outlet more than once for a supply of local delicacies. It was the kind of area that makes you dream of selling up everything and "retiring" down there ... until we realised how cold it would be in winter!