My views do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer.
Our stop in Hobart (Tasmania) ended up being canceled because of weather, but luckily I’d been there before (for one day on the Golden Princess) and we still had another stop in Tasmania – Burnie! It was a short day so we woke up early to head out. After doing some research, our plan was to find prizes for the prize table (I’ll explain about that in a minute), there was a penguin sanctuary (we wanted to see those since we’d missed them on Penguin Island) and there was also a platypus sanctuary. I was excited about seeing the platypi (even though we saw them at the Lone Pine Sanctuary in Brisbane) because I’d told a story about a pod of platypi (we looked up the real plural of platypi but I decided I liked platypi better) in one of my Liar’s Club stories. I also would have been pleased to see a Tasmanian Devil in Tasmania, but after not seeing kangaroos on Kangaroo Island (other people did, but I only had an hour so I found wifi), or penguins on Penguin Island, I had low expectations. So that was our plan: prizes, penguins, and platypi.
The Prize Table. On the ship we have about five or so different prizes for the winners of trivia and gameshows. I always start out the cruise by saying, if you’re playing for the prizes, whether you win or you lose, you’re going to be disappointed. Now if the same group keeps winning over and over, these prizes get old pretty quickly. When we did the crossing on the Golden Princess, in lieu of prizes we gave out Prize tickets and then every couple of days or so we would have a prize table where people could exchange the tickets for prizes (that weren’t that much better than the ones we had). They could get our regular prizes, or there were limited amounts of things we got from the gift shop or things that were donated from other departments. Well, it was my idea so it became my project on the Coral Princess. Unfortunately, post-pandemic there was a supply chain issue, and the shops were even having trouble finding stuff to sell. So any time I had a chance, I would go in search of things for the prize table. This turned out to be a lot harder than I realized! I was looking for things that were cheap, where I could get a lot of little things (for not a lot of money) and things adults would like. I found myself in the kids section a lot, and then reminding myself that I wasn’t shopping for party favors for kids. Anyway, I didn’t really know what I was looking for but I hoped I would know it when I found it.
As we climbed aboard the shuttle that would take us into town, we asked the local guy handing out maps where we could find the best coffee/breakfast, and the place he recommended turned out to be a chain restaurant. It was very good and hit the spot, but I laughed at the recommendation. I like to find and recommend places that you can’t find anywhere else! We wandered through the shops looking for prizes and found a little luck at a Kmart and a thrift store.
With the shopping done, we looked up the Platypus Sanctuary and it was a 50 minute walk, 30 minutes by public transport, or an 11-minute drive. We decided to hire a cab, but there were no Ubers available in Burnie and there were no taxis to be found. We decided to walk along the boardwalk instead. We ran into some other crew members and they said there was a penguin in the rocks!
We found the little guy!
A little further down the beach was the sanctuary, which was just some walls put up with peep holes to protect the penguins from the people. The walls said that the best time to see penguins was when the sun was setting. Well that wasn’t going to happen – we’d be back on the ship by then! So the only reason we saw this poor penguin in it’s natural habitat was because it got stuck in the wrong place at the wrong time! It kept peeking its head out to see if the coast was clear, but there were always a bunch of people pointing their cameras at it.
We left the penguin alone and went to find lunch. There was a brewery nearby that sounded like just what we were in the mood for! And it was. So once again, we went in search of adventure and ended up shopping, eating and drinking our way through Australia. Burnie definitely had a quirky quality to it (I liked that everything seemed a little used and run down in a homey sort of way) and I enjoyed exploring it.