After a couple days of antiobiotics, I am slowly regaining my desire to eat, and not just plain food. I didn’t realize before researching Tasmania what a foodie mecca it is, as it is famous for its great variety of fish, high quality oysters, leatherwood honey (among other varieties), all things dairy, particularly cheese and milk, and endless different fruit orchards. We had Tasmanian oysters last night just with a drizzle of lemon, and they were by far some of the creamiest and sweetest ones I’ve ever had. We tried trevalley fish, which is a local type of white fish, and its flesh was very firm and meaty — perfect for a good searing or being coated in batter or breadcrumbs for fish and chips. We had them in both preparations and were stunned by how satisfying it was. In just one day, we visited a honey farm (and saw all the honey bees at work, along with a great education on the different roles of bees. Who would have thought that the youngest bees of the hive actually act as real “under takers,” sweeping out any and all dead bodies to keep the hive clean!); a salmon and ginseng farm (tried hot smoked salmon for the first time, as usually smoked salmon back home is raw smoked, and even had a salad dressing with ginseng spice in it, which we ended up purchasing because of how unique it was); a raspberry farm (I was ignorant of the fact that there are many varieties of raspberries, and not just due to color); an ice cream factory, and a whisky (yes, they spell it without the “e” here) distillery (wow, is hard liquor expensive in Australia!). I lamented at the end of the day that we only have less than a day left here before returning to Melbourne and realized that you could easily spend weeks exploring Tasmania (or Tassie, as everyone colloquially calls it) and still not get through everything. And that was after everyone told us how “small” Tassie was! There are wine trails, endless foodie tour routes you can take, and of course, lots of hiking with incredible bays and scenic trails you can take by car or by foot.

This is the closest we have come to Antarctica or the bottom of the earth, and who knew how overwhelming from a food perspective it would all be?