Bass-hopping

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Bass Strait, as I touched on in earlier entries, is a particularly nasty piece of work. Australia's southern coastline is a treacherous place at the best of times, but the Strait's tally of sunken ships is, perhaps, second to none in this part of the world. The first European to lay eyes on this stretch of water was Matthew Flinders (him again... - he appears to have given his name to most places in Australia) in 1798. He named the Strait after the ship's doctor aboard his vessel, one George Bass. The Strait owes its troublesome disposition to its position, bang in the so-called "Roaring Forties", the band around 40 degrees of latitude where vicious southwesterlies blow endlessly from the South Pole. Powerful currents circulate between the Southern Ocean and the Tasman Sea (which separates Australia from its neighbour New Zealand). And above all, the Straits are exceptionally shallow - despite being 240 kilometres wide at their narrowest, the waters are, amazingly, an average 50 metres deep. These conditions conspire to produce some particularly wild and dangerous waters - some call it the Bermuda Triangle of the Southern Hemisphere. And these waters separate us from our next Australian destination.

Tasmania is Australia's smallest state (excluding the Australian Capital Territory) and, by virtue of its geographical isolation is something of a backwater. The state's population is less than half a million and other a third of its surface is occupied by National Parks. As you'll remember from earlier entries, Australians love to give nicknames to people from states other than their own - Tasmania's inhabitants are affectionately known as Hillbillies, which gives a good impression of how undeveloped the place is, at least relative to the rest of the country. Others call them Taswegians, for somewhat obscure reasons, although from the standard of driving displayed by some truck drivers on the island's twisty roads, Tasmaniacs might be a better word.

There are two ways to get to Tasmania from Melbourne where we dropped off the campervan. The first is to take a ferry, the Spirit of Tasmania which sails to the northern town of Devonport every day on a 15 hour crossing. Given the fact that we observed the waters of Bass Strait first-hand along the Great Ocean Road and didn't fancy fifteen hours hanging over a rail, we opt for the second option, a quick domestic flight that connects Melbourne and the state capital Hobart in a little over an hour, thanks to Richard Branson (him again, again...) and his airline Virgin Blue.

Our evening flight gets us into Hobart late - it is dark, rather chilly and raining. Once again not an altogether promising start. We catch a shuttle bus from the airport to central Hobart, where we've booked a hostel room for a couple of nights. The guy who runs the place is shutting shop for the night by the time we arrive, so we manage to get a bed to sleep in for the night by the skin of our teeth. Tired, but thankfully not hungry as we had a bite to eat at Melbourne Airport before we left.

Our first day in Hobart doesn't start particularly well. Again, it's cold and wet. We cheer ourselves up with a cooked breakfast in a cosy little place off Salamanca Square, where every Saturday a nationally famous craft and produce markets bustles - unfortunately we've just missed it and won't be hanging around in Hobart in the next one. After breakfast we take a stroll through the neighbourhood's many art galleries and studios with their pleasantly relaxed and bohemian atmosphere. Salamanca Square forms one side of Hobart's picturesque harbour, where fishing boats and pleasure yachts of all sizes bob in the water against a backdrop of beautiful stone and brick buildings. After spending the morning wandering some of Hobart's beautiful hill-top neighbourhoods which overlook the harbour, we tuck in to some delicious fish and chips by the water - I know I only mentioned breakfast a few lines earlier but we did honestly do other things than eat. Seafood is supposedly one of Tasmania's delights and our first taste of it certainly bodes well for the rest of our ten days here. By chance, as we devour our lunch before hordes of aggressive and ill-tempered seagulls get their greasy beaks on it, we notice a beautiful tall ship - a clipper, perhaps - moored opposite us. We found out that the ship, the Lady Nelson, is actually a reconstruction of the one of the first boats which brought settlers to Tasmania (settlers of the non-criminal variety, on which more in the next entry). The boat is crewed by volunteers and runs charter trips around the harbour and the whole of Tasmania. During the summer (or what is meant to be the summer) the boat runs short trips around Hobart's indented coastline. With tired legs from our morning's walking, we hop on and spend a couple of hours sailing around Hobart's waters and appreciating the city's picturesque position overlooking the sea. The volunteer crew, some of whom are well into their sixties and seventies, demonstrate the setting of the sails (unlike the original, the ship has a motor), climbing the rigging agile as monkeys. On its way back to moor the ship passes beneath the Tasman Bridge, which crosses the Derwent River and connects central Hobart to its airport and eastern suburbs. In January 1975, a cargo vessel, the Lake Illawarra carrying a cargo of 10,000 tonnes of zinc ore, crashed broadside into the bridge and brought down a hundred-metre section of the highway. Five motorists lost their lives when their vehicles plunged into the river and wreckage below, in addition to seven of the ship's crew who died when the ship sank. The wreck of the vessel, covered in the slabs of concrete highway which fell on top of it, still lies in the mouth of the Derwent.

Back on shore, we spend the rest of the day pottering about Hobart's pleasantly compact centre. State capital it may be, but with a population of 200,000 it feels nothing like it. Quiet and relaxed, with inhabitants to match, it is certainly a wonderful place to spend a day wandering in...That evening we tuck into a couple of delicious gourmet pies (Australia does them like nobody else) while watching The Queen's Sister, a hilarious dramatisation of Princess Margaret's life - it was either that or the news in Maltese (Maltese ? Tasmania ? I still don't quite get it).

The following day I get up bright and early to pick up our wheels for the next 10 days, a cute little Suzuki Ignis which we hope will get us most of the way around the island. After picking up Alex and the bags from outside the hostel we leave Hobart and head southwards. It doesn't take long to leave Hobart's tiny centre and its few suburbs. To our left stretches Tasmania's convoluted coastline. The coast to the east and south of Hobart is a tangle of peninsulas, inlets and islands. What looks like an offshore island turns out to be a peninsula, what looks like a peninsula is actually an island. Land and sea, in alternating layers, stretch confusingly to the horizon. Our first stop outside Hobart is the town of Snug - a short walk down a track running down a wooded slope leads us to the beautiful and deserted Snug Falls, where a small stream hurls itself over a cliff face before tumbling into a shallow pool and heading towards the sea as a babbling brook. Damp, mossy, green - this is the Tasmania we have seen in so many pictures, the Tasmania we have come to see.

Invigorated by our first walk in Tasmania's lush greenery, we make a special lunch stop at Peppermint Bay in the small town of Woodbridge (Snug, Peppermint Bay - where did they find the names ? My favourite is Eggs and Bacon Bay...what can top that ?), home to a restaurant overlooking the bay, where we indulge in a beautiful lunch made from the freshest Tasmanian produce, washed down with a glass of locally brewed ale, a glass of liquid honey. Delicious ! The restaurant's menu hints at the culinary delights Tasmania has to offer - something we intend to enjoy to the full. Seafood in particular is a local speciality - no wonder given the vast, fertile seas the island sits in. Salmon, trevally, scallops, rock lobster, abalone - all abound in Tasmania. The road south along the coast is studded with small smokehouses, cheeseries, wineries, not to mention the countless roadside fridges filled with local apples and other produce, all operating on the honesty-box system. We are going to like this place...

Our hostel for the night is Far South Wilderness Lodge, a short drive from the tiny town of Strathblane. Indeed, we are but a few miles away from the South Cape, Australia's southernmost point and the third closest landmass to the South Pole (behind, or rather above, Cape Horn and New Zealand's southernmost point). Our "backpacker hostel" turns out to be a palace - we have in effect a whole house to ourselves, as there are no other guests. Surrounded by trees on three sides and a sheltered bay on the fourth, it is a quietly idyllic place to stay. We while away the late evening with a dinner of smoked trevally while reading 1970s back issues of National Geographic in front of the gas fire.

We awake to crisp, clear blue skies - an hour's drive inland takes us to the first of Tasmania's numerous National Parks that we intend to spend time in: the Hartz Mountains National Park. Here we spend the better part of the day exploring the park's day walks, which lead through dense bush to mountain tarns filled with impossibly clear, and impossibly cold, water. Rare King Billy pines, unique to Tasmania and highly endangered, are still to be found here. The last remnants of snow still cling to the mountaintops. Behind us stretch miles of rolling hills, swooping into the sea beyond. It's quite beautiful and utterly calming. The ground here is quite boggy, and as we make our way along the boardwalks criss-crossing the park the sound of water never stops, as tiny gurgling trickles make their way downhill, where they eventually congregate to form rushing streams and roaring waterfalls, complete with overhanging, bright red warratah flowers. The ecosystem here is fascinating, one which is able to tolerate extreme cold as well as bushfires.

After indulging in a tasty pie for lunch (we are keeping a pie-tally but are far too ashamed of ourselves to reveal the result) we drive back south, past Geeveston, Dover and Strathblane towards Cockle Creek which lies at the end of a rough, unsurfaced gravel road. Smoggie wasn't allowed on unmade roads - which is just as well given the racket all the cutlery, pots and pans in the back would have made - but this car is. Which is also just as well since so many of Tasmania's roads are unsurfaced ! Cockle Creek isn't really a town, or even a village - it amounts to little more than a campsite and a deserted National Parks office sitting on the edge of a calm bay at Tasmania's very southern tip. From here starts the trail for the 14km, four hour walk to the southern cape - a fascinating succession of landscapes, from eucalypt forest to marshy bog to tussocky plain to rugged coastline. Along the way we spot numerous echidnas fossicking in the undergrowth. Startled wallabies stare at us for a moment before hopping away out of sight to go back to their browsing.

Tasmania is more or less a triangle pointing downwards, and Cockle Creek is at the bottom of its south-eastern face, and is thus sheltered in the lea of Tasmania itself from the ever-present roaring southwesterlies. Along the way we pass several walkers heading back towards Cockle Creek with surfboards under their arms - and we thought carrying our pie-inflated backsides was effort enough...

Sure enough, as we reach the cape and look south into the vast expanse of the Southern Ocean, the wind whips at our faces as well as at the sea, stirring up waves that come crashing upon the long and utterly deserted beach that stretches back up the western side of the cape. It feels like the very end of the Earth, and in a way it is - nothing stands between this place and Antarctica other than this truly vast, cold and stormy ocean. Strange to think that we are, even here, still as close to the Equator as we are to the pole. Vast, indeed. To the north-west, the Tasmanian wilderness extends for tens of thousands of square kilometres...not a road, not a town, not a sign of permanent human presence, let alone inhabitation. The western half of Tasmania's southern tip is a World Heritage listed site of the rarest kind, a true wilderness, untouched and unspoilt, a touchstone for all Tasmanians who - despite never having been there and with little prospect of ever doing so - take great comfort in its presence on their jewel of an island. Alone standing on the edge of a cliff with nothing but the sound of crashing surf, so do we. So do we.

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Photos

Church in Hobart
One of the many beautiful stone buildings to be found in the quiet residential streets perched above the city centre.

Capital City ?
Could have fooled me. Hobart has none of the hustle, or the bustle, of a state capital. Bakeries, bookshops and antique shops aplenty.

Narryna
A beautiful old residence now a local history museum. Hobart must be the most "English" of Australian cities.

Brave settlers
Who gave up all they had at home in the hope of a better life in the colonies. It was hard to find anyone who survived past the age of 35. Gravestones in one of Hobart's attractive parks.

Salamanca
Hobart's photogenic Salamanca Square, where art galleries sit side-by-side with relaxed cafés where Hobart residents read their morning papers with a coffee.

Fish frenzy !
Our first taste of Tasmania's world-famous seafood. We weren't disappointed.

Harbour
Hobart's beautiful little harbour. Fishing boats, yachts and fish and chip shops complete the perfect picture.

Small ship, long voyage
The full size reproduction of the Lady Nelson. And to think this tiny vessel with its crew of 13 sailed all the way from England to Tasmania...

Spaghetti junction ?
A member of the Lady Nelson's volunteer crew climbing the tangle of rigging to furl the sails.

A period feel..
Yet another of Hobart's impressive collection of stately stone buildings. Government offices, banks, museums...

Snug Falls
The lush and green waterfalls an hour's walk into the hills west of Snug.

Broken coastline
The heavily indented coastline between Hobart and the South Cape - islands and peninsulas interdigitate as far as the eye can see.

Meal with a view
The view from the restaurant at Peppermint Bay.

In a Tassie country garden...
A peaceful rose garden in the town of Cygnet near Huonville.

Duckhole Lake
A delightful little sinkhole lake a short walk away from our lodge in Strathblane. We were hoping to see a platypus here in the fading light - better luck next time ?

Layers of hills
Hills and mountains stretch to the horizon. Tasmania's interior is a wild, rugged place.

Wet island
Tasmania's has a damp, temperate climate to thank for its hundreds upon hundreds of waterfalls, like this one in the Hartz Mountains.

Warratah
A colourful and unusual warratah flower growing by a waterfall in the Hartz Mountains National Park.

Hartz Moutains
A walk through snow-gum forest leads to beautiful moutain tarns.

Mountain tarns
Lake Osborne, a cool and shallow moutain tarn with beautiful views of the surrounding countries. Extremely rare King Billy pines grow around the lake edge.

Lake Esperance
Another tarn, shallow and clear and toe-numbingly cold !

Cockle Creek
At the end of a rough and bouncy gravel road, Cockle Creek is the starting point for walks to the isolated cape.

Southern Cape
The arresting view from the top of a cliff overlooking Tasmania's southernmost point.

Nothing before Antarctica
Nothing to stop the wind, nothing to stop the waves.