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Published: December 16th 2010
Soooo, I flew to Tasmania the day before Julia left Melbourne - I guess I was doing what would be easier for me. Leaving Melbourne was incredibly hard, but the idea of going to a new place was pretty spectacular motivation.
Tasmania is a state of Australia (if you didn't know) and is an island that is tiny compared with the mainland and probably have the size of England. I flew into the capital, Hobart.
Hobart is built around a beautiful large bay in South Tasmania and was the first place that the UK decided to send some of its convicts. Thanks to this, Hobart resembles a city in the Midlands, very similar buildings, statues and monuments. The harbour itself is quite beautiful, the boats and bays, the water and the Tasman Bridge all helping the cause. Standing tall over Hobart like a protector. is Mount Wellington, which I decided to climb.
Local bus to the last suburb of Hobart at the base and then a couple of hours hiking it became clear than my Melbourne lifestyle had rendered me pretty pathetically unfit and with a desire to keel over. Fortunately a strong feeling derived from Jess and
Mountain Wellington
Approaching the Tasman Bridge with Mount Wellington looming over HobartJulia both leaving Australia and the idea of having to start again forced me to continue, to attempt make it to the top even if it killed me.
The winds of Tasmania come off the Antartic, so when it blows, it gets pretty damn chilly. It blew and so I was within the clouds, cold and pretty unsure how far the top was. I will point out that although it is a mountain, it's only about 1300m, which isn't exactly huge but I was (am) seriously unfit at this point! To my annoyance, when I sat down for a rest, the right lense of my glasses fell out. This kinda sucked, the screw had come loose and in my haste to get out and make the bus on time I hadn't brought my penknife. I carried on one-eyed for 15 minutes and repeatedly considered turning around due the one-eye, the fog around me, the potential rainfall and the aching legs; fortunately I heard a burp. A short while later the clouds cleared and I was above them and meeting two people, a Tassie and a Kiwi who were restoring part of the trail. Following a quick conversation we walked
The view from Mount Wellington
Admittedly I was disappointed with the view that greeted my trekking efforts. the rest of the way up the mountain which wasn't too far and we sat for lunch and I borrowed a knife to fix the glasses. So cliched, but I wonder how many times I have turned around where carrying on a short while could've been so surprising and rewarding.
The view from the top was rubbish. The clouds shifted again and on one of those maps that points to everything you should be able to see, I couldn't see any of them. Irrelevant, I was very glad to have made it to the top and headed back down on a different trail which went over the top of the mountain through marshes. I slept well at the end of the day.
Fairly spontaneously I woke one morning after a night out for a Spaniards birthday and decided to join 3 Dutch and 1 French in renting and heading out on a road trip for 3 - 4 days.
We got ourselves a slightly beaten up V6 Mitsubishi Magma and heading to Port Arthur where the first convict prison was built. I would recommend that no-one ever bothers going. Far to clean so that you cannot imagine
Port Arthur
The single purpose of this otherwise pointless boat trip - was to take this single photo. what the place could've been like, the asylum was immaculate and was home to a huge video projection. The main prison building previously burnt down so this wasn't fantastically interesting either. There were some good points, but frankly the place was so overpriced to visit I'm not gonna bother mentioning them.
We ended up driving over unsealed roads through sunset and due to a lack of knowledge of the nearest free campsite we parked the car just off the road on a sideroad for the night. Myself and Malouse (Dutch girl) slept in the car, the Dutch lads slept in a tent and Loic (Frenchie) slept outside on an air mattress. This was following some very rapid 'gooning' to make sleeping easier.
Second day we drove up the East coast stopping at various view points on the way, including a nice random little beach for breakfast in true hobo-roadtrip style, consisting on cheap bread and 1 dollar jam.
We passed through Tasmania's very own Swansea and arrived at Freycinet National Park. This is a beautiful place that's almost an island if not for a narrow straight connecting it to the mainland. The weather was stunning and we
Sleeping on the Road
Goon helps make people happy and sleep well! trekked upwards to a viewing point over the stunning Wineglass Bay. The beach must rival any in Australia if not the world, check below for a picture of me looking cheesily over it...
Good stuff right?? At this point Loic, Marlouse and I decided to trek down to the beach (kinda shite to take a picture of a beach without actually going on the thing, uber tourist), Bas had a bad ankle unfortunately so couldn't go down, Gerald didn't seem overly interested so they stayed behind and headed to the car. We promised we'd be back before too long. So we went down there, all things good - the beach was even more beautiful up close and then decided to head back up. Loic then decided that me and him should walk around as much of the island as possible in a guessed time that it would take Marlouse to walk back the way we came. This led to hyper sweat fest of half walking, half jogging (included a sprint across a different beach) most of the way around a 3.5 hour circuit in 1.5 hours. None the less, by the time we made it back, the 18 year
old Dutch lads had got bored and disappeared in the car. We bonded with an American lady who's friends had done the same and fed a random roaming Wallabe.
The picture above should really be of Loic feeding it, but eventually the others came back and Marlouse fed it and a picture of her doing so is much cuter.
On we drove, past some random landscapes that looked like they should be inhabited by dinosaurs, by hills, mountains and gorgeous beaches. We reached St Helen's up on the east coast by early evening and settled in for a BBQ on the side of a lake. Australia has endless free gas BBQ's you can use and a giant pack of sausages costs only 3 dollars, so we did this every evening of course. The sunsetting over the lake as is tradition with any view in Tasmania when you're not looking at the surface of a road (there is a staggering amount of roadkill in Tassie), was beautiful.
After finishing up here we decided it was time to camp for the night - the involved finding the place first of course. The wasn't the easiest, I was driving which
meant I couldn't navigate. One of the Dutch lads who happened to be particularly immature and a tad petchulent wanted me to go a direction that everyone had agreed was wrong and as he was already in a sulk as his camera battery had died due to forgetting to charge it before leaving Hobart I went his way. It was of course wrong and we arrived at the campsite after dark. More goon and sleep.
Next morning we drove to Launcestion, the second biggest city in Tassie and stopped at the gorge for a free shower and rest. The same Dutch lad decided he didn't want to just stop in this beautiful spot with a land, ravine and free swimming pool and instead head into the town to find a new camera battery - being a bit of a numpty, it took 2 hours to find a camera shop. Loic and myself chose to stay at the gorge, sunbath and relax before crossing the gorge on a suspension bridge for some pretty great views.
There was a debate over whether to drive to Cradle Mountain, a big national park due to the vast amount of time it would
Wandering Wallabe
Malous feeding the scrounging wallabe take, which would lead us to only be there a short while. Loic and myself being marginally more mature felt it was best that we go elsewhere to take our time and actually see some things. Loic and me were the drivers I should add. Retiring to the idea that a several hour whine fest would result if we didn't go to Cradle Mountain, we headed in that direction. Another thing I will add it that the Dutch lad Bas had a bad ankle still, he couldn't trek if he wanted to, he simply wanted to go all the way to the national park on small windy roads to merely take a photo - my idea of a lousy lousy lousy lousy traveller. In any case, the decision was made.
We stopped in a tiny town Mole Creek for the evenings BBQ and headed on into the dark, on deciding we couldn't find our campsite we pulled up into someones field. Marlous and me, tiny torch in hand started on a neverending walk down a field to a lit house, wondering whether we'd be eaten by a guard dog, or even worse some derranged country kinda folk who enjoy
St. Helens
Perfect spot for a sunset BBQ living literally miles and miles from anything.
A man spotted the light of our torch and came outside and following a short conversation, the typically friendly Tassie man had no problem with staying on his land so long as we didn't scare his wife when she came home.
Being relatively high now, as we were on our way up into the mountains and everything, so quick goon drink was required to cope with the decreased temperature. It didn't help much though, we woke just before the sun did. Fortunately this allowed us a stunning sunrise and a few great photo moments on the way to Cradle Mountain National Park itself...
On arrival at the National Park we seperated; Loic and I went our own way so we could see a lot more. After walking a stupid ass board walk meant for 95 year olds in wheelchairs for an hour we bailed and headed for a harder trek. That probably sounded odd, but as with the Grampians most well used trekking routes in Australia almost feel like a conveyor belt for the many elderly people who use them on a regular basis. We changed route and arrived at
a lake in front of Cradle Mountain and ended up doing a mixture of several trekking routes before meeting the others back at the car.
Following Cradle Mountain we headed back to Launceston and dropped off Loic before heading on towards Hobart. At about 100km, a car came towards me with its headlights at full beam. Finally a fraction of a second before it passed they were turned down, unfortunately this was to late for a hapless possum sitting in the middle of the road. My first road kill. This wasn't a great moment by a long shot and I was generally horrified, although at the same time it became oddly amusing. The poor things just don't move, not even a milimetre, they just sit there looking at the lights like a. It's like a teenage boy witnessing his first boobs. This odd comical horror managed to keep me awake and going until we arrived back in Hobart and enjoyed a fantastic night sleep in an actual bed.
The next morning before returning the car I drove Gerald and Malous up Mount Wellington to the top as they had not previously been up there. This time there was
Not a Bad Place to Wake Up
Sleeping in a field after getting lost en-route to Cradle Mountain. a semi-view, pretty tasty but nowhere near perfect - I was not finished with Wellington yet, although you''ll have to wait a blog entry to find out about that. Having said it wasn't perfect, the picture below is pretty damn cool - you have some mountain, some Hobart, some clouds and then the view above the skyline! Different!
The last few days I chilled out with some guys from Hull, a cool girl from Holland, Javier from Spain and a few others as well, whilst deciding that all things considered I'd be happy to leave Australia without a second visa and go to Canada instead. I booked a flight to Melbourne to catch up with people before moving on to Perth or Adelaide!
Tasmania is a beautiful and stunningly varied island, it's a shame and a good thing that not enough people who travel to go there. At the same time I did meet a number of people who had come to Australia JUST to go to Tasmania which is pretty great too and says a lot about the place.
Until next time...
Alan
PS: Whilst at the airport I changed my mind and decided that
I did want my second year visa after all thanks to mum!
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