The wild west

---

Our arrival in Tasmania's capital city, Hobart, was a subdued affair... it was late afternoon, the sky was grey and we'd had a bit of trouble finding a parking space close to the hostel to leave our car. But we had a wander round the town centre and waterfront before finding some food. It's a small city, just 200,000 inhabitants, with some lovely old buildings and an attractive setting.

But I wasn't really on Tassie to see cities, so I booked onto a trip out to Bruny Island, about an hour south of Hobart, for the following day. Nick decided to stay in Hobart for the day, so I set off in the car to have breakfast overlooking the marina at Kettering, the launching point for the Bruny Island ferry. Bruny Island is actually two islands connected by a narrow isthmus, known as the Neck. The north is relatively dry and used for sheep farming, while the southern part is more temperate, with dense eucalypt forests (close to rainforest) and a wind-battered southern coast. Our guide told us that the Tasmanian Government allows sub-contractors to log trees beyond their self-imposed quotas, which sounds tragic considering the beauty and richness of the forests here. We were lucky enough to take a detour through a forest in searchy of the island's white wallabies, and I'd hate to see it cut down when there must surely be far more sustainable sources of timber in Tas.

Our boat cruise left from Adventure Bay, close to the point where Captain James Cook landed on the island, which was used as a re-fuelling point, and headed around the southern coast to a group of rocky islands called The Friars. On the way we saw blowholes and caves, as well as the stark and remote forests, which were still recovering from devastating fires in 1967. This was a starkly beautiful place, perched atop the Great Southern Ocean, with no land to the south except the Antartic. We'd come to see (and smell!) a colony of fur seals, but we also saw crested terns, cormorants and a number of majestic albatross, including a yellow-beaked albatross who let us get surprisingly close before taking off. The crew's humour enhanced the trip, and I'd happily recommend using the yellow boats if ever you find yourself at Bruny. Back in Hobart, it happened to be St. Patrick's Day, so in time-honoured tradition we grabbed a Guiness and burger at the city's Irish bar and continued the celebrations until 2am, after which we overslept and I got us a parking ticket by mis-reading the signs... whoops.

We drove out of Hobart to the north, first stopping off at the Mount Wellington lookout for some sweeping views of the southern part of Tasmania. On our way back to Launceston, we planned to sample some of the wilderness of western Tasmania at the Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park, known for its famous 5-day Overland Track. Not having that much time, we did a short walk at Lake St Clair, known as the larmairrenemer tabelti, which highlights the culture of the native aborriginals whose land the walk goes across. It's a striking landscape with bright, contrasting colours... red trees, bright green grass, silver bushes, and an upper canopy of broad, tall trees. We were also lucky enough to see an echidna nosing around next to the restaurant... the first we'd actually seen that was alive! We spent the rest of the day doing a bit of a whistlestop tour of the Franklin-Gordon Wild Rivers National Park, with short walks to Nelson Falls, the Franklin River and Donaghy's Hill for a view towards Frenchman's Cap, a bold mountain framed by eucalypt trees and forrested valleys.

The first part of our drive through the wild west was Queenstown, an ex-mining town which had clearly seen more prosperous days and now functioned solely as a terminus for the West Coast Wilderness Railway. We booked into the grand Empire Hotel ('we call our rooms "heritage", but our food is the best in town'), where hung a motheaten painting of Her Majesty at the top of a grand staircase, and where my search at the bar carrying my backpack to find someone to check us in was met with typical Auzzie humour ('so what's the deal mate... if I pull a chord do you take off?').

Our final day on Tas started with grey drizzle in Queenstown, brightened by a champion egg and bacon sarnie. We reached Cradle Mountain at lunch time, and timed a walk along the extensive boardwalk (possibly the longest in the world... it was massive) to coincide perfectly with a short break in the rain. Thankfully the clouds parted just long enough to show us Cradle Mountain, but the scenery was beautiful anyway, and we saw a mother pademelon and her joey (?) bounding through the bush just a few metres from us. Our route back east took us tempting close to a little town called Sheffield, my home town back in God's own county, so we made a detour and I sent the obligatory postcard to Mum and Dad in Sheffield from Sheffield (according to the lady at the post office, this happens all the time!). The town is filled with very good murals, which adorn the sides of most buildings as part of an initiative to attract tourists. It was notably more successful than the neighbouring 'town of topiary', whose randomly cut hedges merely distracted us enough to miss the turning to Highway 1. After that it was time to head back to Launceston, where we stuffed ourself full of pizza and could only manage one beer before bedtime. Nick said his goodbyes and left for the airport at 5am to fly north to Cairns, and I spent a productive day in town paying my parking fine and planning my onward journey, before boarding a plane back to Melbourne and vowing to return to the Apple Isle as soon as I could.

---

Photos

Photo 10
A fur seal relaxing on Friars Rocks

Photo 11
Cormorants crowd the rocks off South Bruny Island

Photo 15
The Mount Wellington lookout

Photo 20
The Nelson Falls

Photo 21
Ex-mining Queenstown

Comments

[AnnaAdventuring]

Amazing wildlife photography as always!