Tasmania

14/12/10

Flying out of Broome was a bit of a PITA. It’s not just a city that sleeps, but a city that hibernates! It’s like a total shutdown after November until the springtime. There’s not a great deal of activity going on, but you do get a feeling this place has a special party vibe when it is fashionable and in season. Given its purpose location between the beauty of the West Coast and the magnificence of the Kimberley, I have no doubt one day I’ll see that place in a new light. For now though I had to get to the airport (in the city centre!) and fly off to Tasmania for a bit more of the same. Starting at 5pm, and arriving at 11am the following day, I was shattered after three flights, four airports, and three time zones, but keen nonetheless. Here’s my Tasmania leg of the trip:

Hobart - quite an uninspiring city which seems to lack any charisma whatsoever. It has no homeliness of a Brisbane; no razz-matazz of a Melbourne’s artistic scene; and definitely no vibrancy of a Sydney nightlife. I immediately booked onto a 6-day tour of the island, but had to wait a day for it to start. Passing time in a city that I can say nothing more positive than “It has little in the way of a traffic problem” shows you I was clutching at straws to avoid boredom. I did find enough entertainment in the form of sitting with a case of beer watching the third Ashes Test get under way. The tour started the next day, and I happily left the city.

Over the course of a day or two I became very endeared to Tasmania. I had been rather unfair in comparing it to the scenic beauty of the west coast, but Tasy certainly has its own charms which are well and truly worth seeing. There are 60 short walks to do, and each seems to end with a beautifully tiered waterfall, or a tranquil lake, but always with something to make the short excursion worthwhile. We did our fair share, and probably saw the main island highlights in doing so.

The sleepy, but pretty towns we passed through on the way were all worthy of a little bit of time, but it is the driving and the national parks that are the most worthwhile stop offs. With Tasy having two breweries on the island as well, beers and other alcohol are a fair bit cheaper than mainland Oz. Needless to say, I took advantage of this fact!

Drinking aside, I would say the highlights of Tas are certainly Cradle Mountain. I had an absolutely fab day there just wandering around and pausing for the occasional photograph. It is quite honestly like being inside a fairytale with all the enchanting forest and little streams surrounding you. The odd piece of company from a none-to-shy pademelon or wallaby as well only adds to the fantasy. I had some great company as well to enjoy my surroundings (mostly from an American girl, Janet, and an English girl, Philippa, but also a highly entertaining Dutch couple and Chinese family, as well as several others), but unfortunately we had one huge burden in the form of a retired German woman who seemed to quickly become the butt of all jokes as she drove everyone crazy. Sometimes though, having a common release does help maintain group harmony, so I guess it wasn’t a complete bad thing. Myself and Janet often did step it up a gear though to put a safe amount of distance in between walks, and make the time spent within a group more bearable.

By Day 3, we had covered the West Coast of Tas, and had often been drenched for our efforts. It is a strange place though where the dull weather actually kind of suits it. It is a largely green island and is probably more reminiscent of say New Zealand than typically Australian. Unfortunately though, by this stage it was goodbye to Janet. I say unfortunately because she had largely been the one person Ankhor (the German woman) had made a bee-line for, and so often ‘took one for the team’. That left me, and indeed a whole host of others, a little more vulnerable for the second leg of the trip. I was in my element by this stage though, and used the huge amount of cheese on the iPod to remove any fledgling hope of conversation. From Cyndi Lauper to the Spice Girls, Annie Lennox to Take That (I probably shouldn’t admit to these contents, but it was locally popular on our bus) got us pretty much all the way back to Hobart with certain stops along the way. My favourite dedications to a certain someone included EMF’s ‘You’re Unbelievable’, and ‘She Drives Me Crazy’ by the Fine Young Cannibals; you see, I can be a bit of a b*****d at times, though this did get the targeted laughter from the shameless majority.

The blowholes and orange rocks of Cosy Corner were amazing to see, but my favourite stop off on the East Coast had to be Bicheno, where I saw the penguins coming up from the sea to their nests for the evening. This was a first for me.

Of course of all of Tasmania’s wildlife, there is one particular member that stands out, and you have to visit them. They are almost extinct now thanks to an incurable cancer sweeping through, but some of the aggressive beasts can be seen near Hobart. Highly carnivorous marsupials, that actually don’t do the whirlwind spin like the cartoon suggests, do make the devils a lot less than cute at feeding times, but that’s exactly what you come to see isn’t it?

After playing my role of a young David Attenborough, it was time for an evocative reminder of the nation’s macabre convict past at Port Arthur. The strong alienation techniques used do tend to give a feeling of cabin fever quite quickly, but for a dose of the past history, which is quite elusive in Australia, I can’t really think of many better examples to visit than here. I attended the guided walk and the boat trip to the so-called Death Island and enjoyed both, though that, and a short walk amongst the ruins, was enough for me. I walked back with a few others to the house where we were staying, and helped out a bit with preparing our final lunch.

The drive back to Hobart was via a couple more stop offs, but on the whole it was quite quick. We got back around 5pm, which gave me enough time to check in, get a shower, make a few new friends, and then go out for the evening for some cheap food and beer with everyone. It turned out to be a great evening for me, probably one of the best nights I’ve had in Australia, which isn’t bad at all considering that I was in two minds whether to go out or not. It just goes to show how a little bit of spontaneity can go a long way sometimes. I do hope to keep in touch with my new friends and see where the travels take us in the future.

Well there’s a fair brief of Tasmanian for you. As always I will endeavour to put the fuller day-by-day blog up when I get back on home soil via the usual travelling websites. I would certainly recommend a visit to Tasmania, as I’m sure many others who have been would. It’s a shame many backpackers miss this place off their itineraries, but I’m very pleased not to be one of them. I even kind of wished I’d spent Christmas in Hobart with the company of some friends I’d only just met, but Melbourne and the Ashes series was calling me.