After spending a few days in Hobart, revisiting old favourites and a couple of new ones, I'd caught the bus up to Launceston in the north and planned on spending a few days exploring before heading over to the West Coast. Here's how that went.
So. Un. Fit.
On my first morning in Launceston, I woke up stupidly early and a little sleep deprived courtesy of the two snoring monsters in my dorm. This may explain my confusion when there was breakfast laid out in the kitchen despite me being pretty sure there wasn't free breakfast. Still, with no one else around to tell me otherwise, I helped myself to a couple of slices of bread and was just fishing them out of the toaster when someone appeared in the kitchen.
"That's for a private group," she said, giving me the evils. Sleep-deprived me apologised profusely but failed to point out that I could hardly return the now-toasted bread. Slightly more awake me thankfully kept her mouth shut, but really wanted to point out that there was no way for me to know that it wasn't part of the hostel services and there was no need to be giving me evils. Ugh.
Having avoided that argument, I clambered onto my minibus with Graeme, our guide and driver for the day. Scary ass driver.
We made it safely to Ross, which is a pretty little village with a rather elaborate convict-built bridge.
It also had an excellent bakery that sold scallop pies, so that was my tea sorted.
Onwards! Down the winding road to the east coast. Whether it was because I hadn't slept much or because Graeme was a terrifying driver, I ended up feeling sick.
Fortunately for me, I fell asleep for most of it and by the time I woke up we were coming up on the little town of Coles Bay, gateway to Freycinet National Park.
First stop, Cape Tourville Lighthouse. Glorious views, a very short walk and a rather disappointing lighthouse.
And back on the bus to Wineglass Bay, supposedly home to one of the world's best beaches. I had no intention of going down to the beach. I remembered the climb up to the lookout from 6 years ago and that seemed quite enough to me.
So I marched up to the lookout in less time than expected, scowled at people getting in the way of my photos and started the trek back down again. A few minutes down from the lookout I heard someone call me and turned to find a couple of American girls from my group beckoning for me to join them. Some scrambling later, I managed to clamber up onto the huge boulder by the path and enjoyed a nice, sociable lunch for a change. Lovely.
Back down at the bus, we headed back up the peninsula to Honeymoon Bay, actually a series of little bays scooped out of the gorgeous red rock. Not content with sitting around and enjoying the view, I embraced my inner child and went scrambling over the rocks in search of the third bay, away from the crowds. Here goes... One.
Two.
Three.
Success. The water was the most amazing colour and so clear. At that point, Honeymoon Bay shifted somewhere near the top of my favourite places list.
From there, a short stop at Richardson's Beach, where I claimed the sand for New New Grimsby, as per New Zealand roadtrip tradition.
And so onwards, back out of the park to the Devil's Corner Lookout. Not much of a lookout - I think the haze was messing things up. The cafe did nice muffins though as well as a sorely needed cuppa.
Then an uneventful ride back to Launceston, where I scoffed my delicious scallop pie with some new potatoes and an enormous cup of tea. I needed it.
I can see the mountain!
Another early start beckoned on the Sunday morning. Dragging myself out of bed, I boarded the minibus and found that my driver for the day was once again crazy Graeme. Awesome.
First stop, the little bakery cafe at Elizabeth Town where I picked up a couple of bits of deliciousness. From there, on down the back roads to Sheffield, town of murals. I recall visiting there last time I was in northern Tasmania, but I missed most of the murals. Besides, there's some new ones now, including this one with Tim Minchin on it.
This resulted in me getting Tim Minchin's songs stuck in my head for the rest of the day. Worse things have happened. Aside from the murals, Sheffield doesn't have much going for it, so then it was off to Cradle Mountain, the main destination for the day.
Last time I went there, accompanied by one of my lovely housemates, it pissed it down with rain the entire day and we didn't actually see the mountain because of the cloud. We could barely see Dove Lake, which sits at the bottom of it.
This time the sky was cloudy but bright and the view was amazing.
I toddled off on a lovely 2 hour walk around the lake, during which I wandered through a fragment of ancient forest that made me feel like I'd stumbled into Mirkwood.
And then I made friends with a Black Currawong that was clearly trying to creep up on me and steal my lunch. Clever little buggers.
With another hour or more to kill, I took a very short side trip down to Lake Lilla, pondering whether to tackle the hill up to Wombat Pool. I made it to Lake Lilla.
One look at the track up to Wombat Pool made me turn around and head back to Dove Lake. I haven't done enough walking so far on this trip and I didn't really fancy the steep slope. Wuss.
Sitting by Dove Lake, admiring the beautiful view and the (almost) peace and quiet, was rudely interrupted by a guy sitting a few metres away who suddenly shot up shouting that there was a snake. I want to see a snake. I've never seen a like snake. Still, the urge to tick something off my mental wildlife-spotting list couldn't quite override the basic human instinct to stay as far away from the bitey animal as possible.
From Dove Lake we headed back up the road a little way to Ronny Creek, where there are wombats. I have a love-hate relationship with wombats. On the one hand they're sort of cute and appealing. On the other, I got chased by one while on a field trip in Narawntapu National Park. So I wasn't entirely happy with how close Graeme was leading us to this guy.
Fortunately, this wombat was far more interested in getting away from the nebbing tourists than chasing us off. A quick stop at Waldheim, home of the guy who first suggested Cradle Mountain should be a national park and then we were off again.
And I saw my second echidna of the day, but given that I always seem to spot echidna from moving vehicles, I have no photos. Guh. Cute little buggers.
Final stop for the day was Ashgrove Farm which produces the most delicious cheese I've had in months. So of course I decided to treat myself to some. They also had cider. I haven't had cider since I was in Canada and that wasn't great. Outside the UK, cider just doesn't seem to exist. But I was willing to give this one a try.
Back home at the hostel after a glorious day of walking and wildlife, I cracked into the bottle. Best cider I've had since leaving home. Not as good as Henney's, but good enough. Yum.
Yes, I am a child
I started Monday with a glorious lie in after two days of early starts. JOY. Then I had a productive morning of bus booking and grocery shopping before heading across the road to the Queen Victoria Museum & Art Gallery (QVMAG). I was far too happy to find that all of the interactive displays from 6 years ago were still there and spent far too long indulging my inner child.
There's also a surprisingly good collection of dinos for such a small museum, plus a fascinating display about the wreck of the Sydney Cove. This ship foundered on an island off Tasmania's north coast and while there's some interesting artefacts from both the wreck and its cargo, I think the most amazing bit was this.
On the left is a bottle of ale recovered from the wreck. The seal held, so the ale in there hasn't been contaminated by the seawater. Scientists were able to extract yeast from these bottles and use it to brew a new batch of ale over a century after the ship went down. That's what the bottle on the right is. That's some great science there.
The museum also has a great WWI exhibition, including a somewhat terrifying sound and light simulation of what the men in the trenches would have heard. It's loud. Scarily loud. I think my sister will appreciate the Siegfried Sassoon poem at the end of the experience.
And then I rounded out my day with a solo trip to the cinema to see Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them, which was rather better than I expected.
I think I had a plastic one of those...
After another glorious lie in, I spent the morning reading my new Pratchett book and generally being a lazy mare. I made up for it by heading back to QVMAG in the afternoon to check out the bits of the museum I'd missed the day before, including a great temporary exhibition about the Permian era. It's not something I see covered that often even in natural history museums, so I had to have a look.
The Permian is the geological period just before the Triassic and therefore just before the age of dinosaurs. Evolution was doing some interesting things at this time, with a whole host of bizarre looking critters floating about, including this nightmare possible-shark called Helicoprion.
As far as I'm aware, it's only known from the fossilised tooth-whorl and has been colloquially known as the buzzsaw shark for obvious reasons. Very odd. The Permian was also the period during which mammal-like reptiles flourished. Mammals themselves wouldn't evolve until after the end-Permian extinction event, but there were some early precursors running around before then. Like these little guys whose name is escaping me... bad scientist. Google tells me it's either a dicynodont or a cynodont (the latter being mammal ancestors).
Still, I think Dimetrodon is my favourite Permian critter. Big and ungainly with a huge sail down its back.
I had a plastic one as a child. I think that says something about how far back my geekery goes. I wonder if it's still in the tub at my nanna's?
Paleontology fix achieved, I decided to go and geek out about locomotives instead. See this shiny red train, built in Launceston.
The whole museum actually takes up what used to be Launceston's engine yard and workshops and they've kept a few of the original features including this bench.
[IMAGE]
This is not some sort of modern art. The guys who used to paint the trains and signs and what not just used to leave their brushes and whatnot to drip here instead of cleaning them. I think this is somewhat more interesting than most of the stuff in the Tate Modern...
With another early start beckoning in the morning I decided to get to bed early...
I haven't been on one of these in 8 years...
Unfortunately, early night plan was once again foiled by the snoring bastards. Great. Anyways, I stumped down to the bus station and hopped on the bus. Somehow I didn't fall asleep again all the way to Cradle Mountain. There I got to have an hour off the bus, which would have been much more fun if I hadn't had to keep an eye on my bags and actually been able to go for a walk...
From Cradle Mountain an entire three people hopped on the little minibus that would take us out to Queenstown on the West Coast. It was a beautiful drive, entering the temperate rainforest that blankets a large part of Tasmania's west and is part of the reason that most of it is protected under the Tasmanian Wildnerness World Heritage Site. Did you know, the Tasmanian Wilderness ticks 7 of the 10 criteria to be named a World Heritage Site? There's not many that hit that many and only 35 from over 1000 sites that qualify under both natural and cultural criteria. The Tasmanian Wilderness is special.
I digress. At Queenstown we all trooped off the bus. Our driver pointed me and the sole remaining passenger in the direction of toilets and cafe and assured us he'd be back in a bit with the bus for Strahan. Only at this point did either of us realise that the bus to Strahan was the local school bus. Hm.
After whiling away our little break with cake and chat in the cafe, we hopped back on the bus with a warning from Terence the driver that the kids could be a bit rowdy. I haven't been on a school bus in more than 8 years, but I was pretty sure I knew what to expect.
As it was, the kids were pretty well behaved and the little ones at the front were fascinated by the presence of English and French girls on their bus. I'm not good with kids. I did a lot of smiling and nodding and "oh, really?" It seemed to work.
After depositing all the kids around the town at Strahan and my fellow backpacker at the YHA, I had a chat with Terence while he drove me to my destination. Nice chap. Even carried my bags to the door which was sweet and entirely unnecessary.
Yeah... I treated myself to another night in a hotel. This time it was because the YHA was fully booked for the night and what with the funny bus timetables, I rather had to arrive in Strahan that day or spend more time back in Launceston and less time in the West. Still, I'd booked the cheapest room the hotel had going and given the lack of sleep I'd been getting in Launnie I was looking forward to having space.
Bliss like having an exceptionally long shower, filching ALL the free toiletries and then spending the evening watching Tomb Raider. Because why not?
What day is it?
The following morning I waited until I absolutely had to check out and then tramped off in search of the YHA. I had a vague idea where it was, having seen where the French girl had been dropped off the previous day, but somehow I managed to get totally confused and had to summon up the courage to ask for directions. Turns out I just hadn't walked far enough down the road. It was literally just across the road from where I'd given up looking. Duh.
Strahan being on Tasmania's notoriously wet West Coast, I decided to make the most of the short breaks in the rain. First stop, post office to offload those postcards I'd been carrying around all week. There was a dog on the counter, so of course I had to make friends. Friendly chaps in the post office too. Then via the information office for ideas of trips. Lots of leaflets were acquired and I decided I'd go on one of the wilderness cruises and maybe on the railway, since there's some really interesting engineering history around that.
So I booked my day cruise and then set off in search of the train station to see about booking that. The views over the harbour were pretty nice, despite the weather.
Unfortunately, I'd completely muddled up what day it was and the rail trip I had planned on taking would only be running on the day I'd booked the cruise. Clever me. Oh well. I saw the station at least...
Instead I tramped back to the very small town centre and went to Banjos for lunch, once again indulging my love of the Tasmanian pie chain. With the weather not looking set to improve, I spent the rest of the day in the hostel, trying very hard to be social, which was a partial success until it got a bit busier later in the evening and I promptly ran away.
CHEESE
After that day of laziness, Friday in Strahan was far more adventure packed. Cruise time! A nice leisurely sail around Macquarie Harbour and up the Gordon River, in fact.
First stop, the aptly named Hell's Gates. This is the narrow entrance into Macquarie Harbour and was so named by the convicts who were sent to the Sarah Island Penal Settlement within the Harbour. Technically, the entrance to the harbour is quite wide, but more than half of it is far too shallow and riddled with sand banks for any ship to navigate. Instead they have to pass between Entrance Island and the mainland. And just getting that far must have been hard enough. The seas are notorious down the West Coast. I was told later that there are wave height buoys just offshore and one recently broke from its anchor. The cord used to attach it should have been good up to 20m. Just to give you an idea of the swells around here...
Back through into the Harbour, our next stop was a quick look at the fish farms. Tasmanian produces a lot of salmon and I think most of it is from places like this.
And so on to the infamous Sarah Island, considered hell on earth and perhaps the worst of Australia's convict establishments. Most of those sent to Sarah Island had already been transported to another penal colony, subsequently re-offended and been, effectively, banished here.
In the first few years of its existence, the commandant dealt out thousands of lashes for seemingly minor offences, conditions were said to be hellish and escape attempts common. We were led around the island by Chris from the Round Earth Theatre Company and he had some interesting additions to make to the conventional narrative.
Plus, he was easily the most engaging guide I've had in months. Anyway, common knowledge would have you believe that Sarah Island really was hell on earth and for those first few years, it probably was. But then something changed. A new commandant arrived, prisoner behaviour improved, far fewer punishments were doled out and the shipbuilding, which used the convicts as forced labour, thrived.
Still, that didn't stop one final escape on the last boat built by the convicts, but more on that in the next post.
Thoroughly entertained and planning on reading up on Tasmania's convict history, I re-boarded the boat for a gentle trip down the Gordon River, through beautiful temperate forests, largely untouched by people.
Oh, and lunch, during which I ate far too much cheese, potato and bread because if there's food included I will make the most of it.
After lunch, we moored at Heritage Landing and took a short walk through the forest, admiring centuries-old Huon Pines.
That was our last stop for the day, so off we went back to slightly damp Strahan where I promptly booked onto another boat trip for that evening.
After a brief return to the hostel where I managed to be somewhat more sociable courtesy of discovering a shared love of Minecraft, I hopped back on another, rather smaller boat, this time to head out to Bonnet Island in search of Little Penguins.
My notes remind me that our guide was called Errol and that he had to stress he was no relation to famous Tassie Errol Flynn...
Anyway, off we went back out to Hell's Gates, which felt a lot more powerful in a little motor boat instead of the big catamaran I'd been out on earlier in the day.
Then I got fed again, with delicious Ashgrove Farm cheese and biscuits and other yummy things, before we climbed onto tiny Bonnet Island to await the penguins.
Armed with red-light torches so as not to scare or hurt the penguins, we crept quietly along the short path, peering under bushes and down the steep slope to the harbour.
In the end, we spotted about half a dozen of the little things, but it being night and not being able to use flash for fear of hurting their sensitive eyes, this is the best photo I got.
I know there's a penguin there and I can see the feet and a vague outline of the body. Not sure if anyone else can...
When I finally got back to the hostel at gone 11pm, I mostly just wanted to fall into bed and go to sleep. That plan was thwarted first by a couple of noisy Swiss guys and then, again at some point in the night when the French guys from the other end of the room suddenly kicked off and starting swearing at the Swiss guys. I honestly thought I was going to have to break up a fight.
Turns out on of the drunk Swiss guys had pissed on one of the French guys' stuff. Disgusting bastard. Still, I'd have appreciated getting a full night's sleep...
Next week I'm heading back to Hobart to finish up my three weeks in Tassie. Maybe it'll be the Huon Valley, a part of Tassie I've never seen. We'll see.
And if I can spot some more wildlife, all the better...
