Tasmania

4 days in Tassie

We touched down in Tasmania right around midnight; given the late hour and the fact I hadn't booked a room anywhere, I figured I would simply sleep at the airport as I'd done many times before. After the place had cleared out, a security guard came by and enquired whether I planned to stay there; when I replied that the thought had crossed my mind, he informed me that the airport was closing and it wouldn't be possible (his original question now seemed a bit mean-spirited); he went on to tell me that the last shuttle of the night and all the taxis had already left. So it seemed the only remaining option was to hike the 18km into town. It was a clear night and the 9C temps were downright pleasant in a jacket and cap. The island is supposedly a good place for hitch-hiking but in the wee hours of the morning, my chances of getting picked up were virtually nonexistent, and on the off chance that someone did stop, the chances of them not being a deranged psychopath were also pretty low; there were no lights on the highway so I held my flashlight up to illuminate my face and outstretched thumb – I think, if anything, this just added to the spookiness factor. The lands to my sides were filled with critters of every variety – when I once began to jog, I looked over and noticed a dozen black horses galloping beside me; in one spot, I saw a wallaby hopping along the hill to my left, and then abruptly, there was a growl and a loud thud – no more wallaby.

After 3 hours in morbid fear of being eaten or abducted, I arrived in the city center; this was incredibly eerie as not a single shop, hotel, restaurant, or transit center was still open; the only sounds in the streets were the constant ticking of the crosswalks and the occasional menacing yell of a homeless person. When I passed the New Sydney Hotel, I noticed that the door was slightly ajar; reception was nowhere to be found, but the anteroom was warm and apparently secure; I sat there huddled on the floor for close to an hour before the manager arrived and offered me a dorm room; I was then able to sleep for 4 hours before my roommates rudely decided to get up and start moving around 8. The manager refused to let me pay for my stay which made this hostel one of the more exceptional values I'd encountered.

That morning I explored the city (which is much livelier once the sun comes up). The big event of the day was the conclusion of the “Three Peaks" race where competitors alternated sailing and running to do 3 marathons over 3 mountains in 3 days; sadly I arrived too late to sign up. I visited half a dozen discount car rentals and eventually decided on a Nissan Pulsar with 300,000K and most major components intact.

My housemate (a German guy named Jann) arrived from Sydney around noon and we soon set out for the Tasman Peninsula. Our first stop was the Tessellated Pavement where some geographic phenomenon had caused the rocks to resemble grooved blacktop; next it was on to the Blowhole (which wasn't really blowing at the time), Devil's Kitchen, Tasman Arch, Remarkable Caves, and other cleverly named assortments of rocks. We passed through Dootown where in lieu of numbered addresses, the residents had named their houses with some doo-inclusive term such as “doodle-doo," “much-a-doo," or the highly sought after “doo-doo." I attempted to buy a “Couta" (apparently a Barracouda) off a local sandwich van, but when he explained that it was only the raw, uncleaned fish, I thought better of it (still haven't figured out the tin foil on the engine trick) so it would be baked beans for dinner once again. We went to Port Arthur and discovered there was nothing there but a historic site charging $20 admission with more parking spaces than there were residents in the town.

The sun had set so we made our way northward to a town that promised accommodation; leaving the peninsula, we had the choice of taking the highway 50km out of the way, or taking a direct dirt road straight through the forest. We opted for the latter, but were quickly realizing that ours may have been the wrong vehicle for this island – as we bounced along the varied surface, our engine had the annoying habit of abruptly shutting off, and after 20km, the speedometer dropped to zero where it would remain for the rest of the trip (woohoo! no mileage surcharges). The drive was a bit unnerving as we had no mobile coverage and we saw a total of one other car for the 40km stretch. We ran across (and occasionally over) a number of animals including several pademelons, a few wallabies, some wombats, and one of the infamous devils; in one spot, we found a scene of utter carnage where a wallaby and wombat had evidently been conversing when an SUV had come along and ploughed over both of them.

We arrived at a hostel located on a farm in Triabunna around 9; this place was a bit surreal – when we checked in, the owner gave us each a home-baked cookie and took us over to the living room where she introduced us to all the other guests (she knew each one by name) who were clustered around a roaring fire conversing and playing board games; if you're ever in Triabunna (you never will be) I highly recommend staying at this place.

It was a bit hard to get across to my roommate that we should take advantage of the early morning daylight hours (it gets light here at 5:30) and we didn't get moving til after 10. We went north to Coles Bay and the Freycinet Peninsula; here we paid the exorbitant $20 national park fee (so as to avoid a possible $25 fine) and hiked to Wineglass Bay – here a pristine beach awaited us among the mountains.

We drove up to Bicheno (along the way our car's fuel gauge stoped working); this was “Tasmania's tidiest town" whose main attraction was the nightly march of the fairy penguins up the beach; since it was still a few hours til dusk, we stopped only long enough to climb on some rocks and empty our garbage bag onto their spotless streets and then moved on.

We drove up a steep winding road to the top of Mt. Elephant which was home to the “Mt. Elephant Pancake Barn;" at $15 a plate, these were pricier than Parisian crepes, so we settled for cheese sandwiches from our boot and drove down to St. Helens.

This, the largest fishing port on the island came highly recommended by a number of people, but when we arrived there, we had a tough time deducing why; we stopped a gang of teens on mountain bikes and asked what historical highlights their town had to offer – they pointed us towards the beach (which has apparently been around for quite a while).

With the onset of darkness, we moved to Launceston in the center of the state – here we grabbed a room in the backpackers and posted a notice for people who needed a ride (who could pay for our park fees).

In the morning, I explored the bustling metropolis of 50,000 people and hiked through the gorge next door. When I returned, we had acquired a new member in our party – a German named Stephen – and we set out for the west with three.

We had a couple of options to go across to the other coast (and amazingly both were paved); one was up through Sheffield which the map claimed to be full murals and robot tigers, and the other went through cave country. As intriguing as “robot tigers" was, it sounded like something that would cost money whereas we could crawl into a hole in the ground for free.

We were directed to a “Honeycomb Cave;" there were no signs (other than the standard “Warning: caves will kill you") to indicate where it was or how to go about exploring it, but just when we were preparing to leave after 20 minutes of searching one big boring room, I discovered a dark channel in one of the walls. Equipped with a flashlight, glow stick, and six backlit LCD screens, we travelled back into the deep, dark recesses, passed by glittering walls and negotiated low-hanging stalactites; when we turned off the flashlight, we could look up into a star-studded sky of glow worms. Our descent halted when it appeared that subsequent passageways were under water; we left the cave and the town of Mole Creek with no time to enjoy other attractions such as a honey farm offering 50 flavours.

The road into the Cradle Mountain National Park was long and winding with only the occasional lookout to break up the drive; at one such stop, we encountered one Dutch and one American girl who we had seen on an earlier hike and who seemed to be following our exact path; they too had received a cookie from the lady in Triabunna, and they would have stayed at our Launceston hostel if only they hadn't run out of gas and car-camped in a random town in anticipation of the morning opening of the station there (gas is, for the most part, only available during daylight hours). We met up again at Cradle Valley (something similar to Yosemite Valley in terms of relative tourist draw, but unimpressive in its natural features) and all hiked around the periphery of the tranquil Dove Lake. My carload had taken a shuttle to the start of the track, but when we finished, the last shuttle had already left; so, warily eyeing the large dent in the back of their car, we got a ride with the girls; along the way, we flattened a wallaby that leaped into our path; the driver seemed to be on the edge of tears – the first kill is always the hardest.

Having returned to our car, we drove a few hundred K along dark mountain roads to arrive in Rosebery; the cheapest accommodation here was a self-contained cabin for two for $100; strangely they wouldn't accept our offer of half that for 3. Moving on to Zeehan, we tried to secure a mining cottage for 5 (since the girls had caught up with us); however, in a bit of bad luck, the hotel had had a bad experience when 30 backpackers squeezed into a 2-bed cottage the week before, and they now had a non-negotiable limit of 4. The coastal town of Strahan (50K down the road) offered a youth hostel, but reception had closed several hours before we arrived so we all slept in the parking lot (the girls disappeared – supposedly to find a more glamorous parking lot).

We were up and moving before 7 the next morning (since reception may have taken issue with our use of their lot) and were soon having breakfast on the beach. Leaving the coast, we passed into the Franklin River National Park; we made a bushwalk to a lush waterfall and another to the top of a hill where we could view all of the surrounding peaks; on our final walk of the day, we ventured into platypus territory, scanning the lake waters and poking sticks into burrows, but sadly, we never managed to turn up one of the little egg-laying freaks. From the final park, we drove into the night, moving through a string of villages that rarely had more than a few houses and a single pub. Arriving in Hobart around 9, we checked into the pub/hotel where I had stayed on my first “night"; a band was playing til past midnight, but I was sufficiently exhausted to pass out despite the shaking floor and deafening tones as they banged out “Like a Rolling Stone" directly below. My driver seemed reluctant to get up at 5 in the morning, so I took the AirBus and by 7 was soaring back to Sydney.