Tasmania!

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We left our hotel in Kuala Lumpur by noon Tuesday and didn’t fly out of KL until 1:20 AM for a 7-hour flight to Melbourne, a 2-hour layover and a 1 ½ hour flight to Hobart. We arrived about 5:00 PM Wednesday. Tasmania has some pretty strict import rules about bringing plants, seeds, etc. in from other parts of the country so we were subjected to a special form of screening as we entered the terminal. A cute little black and white beagle was waiting for us and we were told to carry our flight bags on our left side. As we passed by, she sniffed each bag and let us enter her airport..

I later found out that the “other” beagle, slightly larger in stature, crawls over the checked baggage and gives them the once-over. Fortunately, our bags are waterproof. We didn’t think of it quickly enough to get a picture of the 4-legged security guard.

Before we came, my vision of Tasmania was that it is filled with dust bowls, Tasmanian Devils and lots of desert. Nothing could be further from the truth. Tasmania is a largely rugged mountainous island just south of mainland Australia. It is one of the states of Australia and its capital city is Hobart, where we stayed and explored. There is beautiful coastline and Hobart Harbor is a fine deepwater port that regularly hosts ocean going cruise ships.

Hobart Harbor is also the finish line of the famous Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race held each year. A couple of years ago I read a novel about the race and I’ve been fascinated by it ever since.

We originally planned to stay in Melbourne for a few days after we left Malaysia. However, upon trying to book a hotel in Melbourne online, we found that hotels in the city are
much more expensive than in SE Asia. Why not, we reasoned, just fly on to Tasmania and find something there upon arrival? Well, we found that all of Australia is just plain expensive - lodging, meals, transportation, tours - everything.

We asked the bus driver for a recommendation near the center city and he suggested the Welcome Stranger Hotel. While we were used to paying $30-$40 per night for a hotel with a swimming pool or a villa on the beach, our choices were $70 for the shared bathroom 2 single bed room or $95 for the 2 double bed unit with our own bathroom. We decided to splurge on the more expensive unit and we’d try to find something else tomorrow. We’d been traveling for over 24 hours and we were bushed.

Tomorrow came and we searched the town. Alas, alack - our $95 room didn’t seem so bad. We dragged back to the Welcome Stranger and sheepishly asked if we could stay another night, even though we’d already checked out. “Oh, yes” the kind lady at the desk told us. The $95 room you had last night will cost $135 tonight and last night’s $70 room is now $80. “It’s gone completely chockers.” She explained. By the way, it’s pronounced “chawkahs” and means that the town is full for the weekend - Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. I reasoned that “chockers” must come from chock full or something like that.

OK, one more night here and then we’ll head for New Zealand tomorrow (Friday). Except that when we found an internet café and tried the flights to Christchurch and Auckland, those flights are all full. You guessed it, we booked a flight back to Melbourne and we’ll start over.

The rest of the day we booked a Grey Line tour of the city for the afternoon and toured the island in a delightful old bus painted to look like a trolley car. On the tour we discovered that we were staying within a block of the Melbourne Hospital - again reassuring for a couple of oldies but goodies like us. We haven’t had to use one yet, but for some reason, we keep finding these hotels next to hospitals.

We toured the harbor, learned of the seafaring history of Hobart and its roots. We walked through lovely gardens, past a pastoral stream, saw the outside of a 150 year-old brewery and visited the Female Factory. The Female Factory is a 19th century prison for women convicted of crimes in England. It operated from the 1850’s until 1904 and saw some pretty rugged times. It lay dormant from its closing in 1904 until the 1990’s when townspeople decided they could turn it into a tourist attraction. It has a way to go before it competes with the Coliseum in Rome or the Acropolis in Athens, but we’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.

They have worked hard to restore it to the point it now enjoys, which is still pretty primitive. But then, considering what they have to work with, I guess it is OK.

The highlight of the tour was probably the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Garden. Considering that neither of us can keep plastic flowers from wilting and we agree that culture belongs in a petrie dish, that’s saying quite a bit. We were given an hour to explore the grounds and could have spent three hours and not be exhausted by all the interesting plants from the region and around the world.

The weather here in Tasmania is really quite pleasant. It's been in mid to upper 20's Celsius (mid to upper 70's Fahrenheit) and sunny every day. Walks like this through the gardens and around the town and down by the waterfront are most enjoyable. It sure beats the sauna baths we experience walking around cities in SE Asia.

As far as Tasmanian Devils go, the only one we saw was a plaster unit at the airport with a slot for making donations for preserving the animals. It seems they are becoming endangered and need our help. Taz, the cartoon character was my grandson Nick’s favorite when he was a little kid. The pictures I’ve seen, look nothing like the cartoon character and seem to be far more dangerous.

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Photos

Welcome to Hobart
Airport at Hobart, Tasmania, Australia

Hobart Harbour
finish line of the great Sydney to Hobart yacht race

Welcome Stranger (hotel)
the Ritz it ain't

Female Factory
No, they don't assemble females here.

Royal Tasmaian Botanical Garden
this is the conservatory

Tassie
the only Tasmanian Devil we saw while here

Comments

[Heather]

Great posting!
I'm really enjoying reading about your travels! What amazing experiences you're having! Thanks for sharing, and keep up the great posting! dirty-hippies.blogspot.com