Travelling around Tasmania

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Tasmania was amazing, it has beautiful scenery absolutely everywhere. We were there for a week in total. We hired a car in Launceston and drove down the whole of the east coast, right down to the south east peninsular. From there we headed back up to Launceston via Cradle Mountain. We covered 845 miles in total and thankfully managed to get the car back in one piece.

Tasmania is much like the Lake District but on a grand scale. Some of the scenery really has been breath taking. Rich has even said that some of the views are nearly as amazing as Ferryside...so they must be good! Along our journey we've seen waterfalls, caves, blow holes, the vast outback, beautiful white sand beaches, mountains, bizarre rock formations, forests and a gorge. It's coming up to the end of autumn there, so it was pretty chilly and pitch black by 17.30. But we were lucky enough to have sunshine everyday.

Some of the towns we drove through were like barren old fasioned ghost towns and at times we could drive for over an hour without seeing a single car on the road. After getting used to Melbourne where most things are open 24 hours a day seven days a week, it was hard to adjust to everything closing early. In Tasmania the pubs close at 21.00 week days.... this probably saved us money!!! Outside of Launceston the accommodation has been very basic but at eight pounds a night you can't really complain. Most hostels don't even give you a key for the dorms as they don't lock their doors. One hostel we stayed in resembled something the Addams Family might live in. To make matters worse Rich found a dead Huntsman spider (thank god it wasn't alive) and the lady who owned the hostel told me there was a ghost there (a little girl called Alice). Needless to say we both didn't sleep much that night and were very glad to leave the next morning.

The locals we've met have been very friendly and laid back. In the pubs we did go to, without fail the local alcoholic has always come over to introduce themselves. One told us that all the locals had "a kangaroo loose in the top paddock" in the nicest way possible, I think we might have to agree. Another man we met called Rich a "pom" which only I found amusing.

Thankfully unlike Melbourne the Tassies don't seem very keen on their sport which meant we had plenty of time to experience the wildlife side of Tasmania. We visited a wildlife park where we got to feed the kangaroos and wallabies. We also got to meet a few Tassie devils and watched them being fed. In a tiny fishing village we went down to the beach one evening to see hundreds of tiny penguins returning to their nests from the sea. But best of all at cradle mountian we were lucky enough to see a wild platypus feeding in a billabong.

We're back in Melbourne for three weeks now. Esther and Chris are coming down to visit, think we're going to do the Great Ocean Road together. Then on June the 19th We fly to New Zealand. Will send another journal about Melbourne soon.

Photos will be updated soon at:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/richandlaura

Love Rich and Laura

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