A Tasmanian dream

One week ago we decided to go to Tazzie for just one week. “One week should do it right?” Hell no… you can easily spend a lifetime on this island and never see it all. Though it’s only a small piece south of the Australian mainland it has so much to offer, so much that we were sorry we had to go on. It’s an island of dreams and inspiration.

On the road
anybody who wants to visit Tasmania should be aware that without a car, you’re nowhere. Though Tazzie has a public transportation system, it’s not really suited for tourists who want to see it all. So we spend the first day looking for a campervan big enough for the three of us. After a long search in Hobart (it’s still high season here), we found one for the price of $750. We wanted to start as soon as possible for our roadtrip from Hobart (in the south) to Launceston (in the north) so we took it on the spot. We made a rough sketch of our route and we were on our way to discover Tasmania, the holiday isle.

The parks
Tasmania has some astonishing national parks that will never stop to amaze you. From the very first day it was clear that we wanted to do as much national parks as we could do. We would do four of them.

Mount Field National Park with the amazing Russell Falls and Lady Barron Falls. We climbed over every fence and risked life and limb (okay, I’m overacting, but it was slippery) to make some good pictures. The national park is also the home of the very disappointing Platypus Tarn. We walked a long and difficult one hour walk to the Platypus Tarn with high hopes of spotting some platypus, ofcopurse we didn’t see anything except black spots in front of our eyes because of the difficult hike. After one week we still haven’t seen one bloody platypus… stupid animals…

Tasman National Park with more rocks than I would ever see again in this lifetime. And most of them are shaped like the island of Tasmania.

Mole Creek National Park with the Marakoopa Cave. A cave full of weird forms and shapes and where glowworms have a place they can call home. A bit expensive though and it only took about a half hour for the tour… But hey, nobody can say we didn’t support the Tasmanian National Parks by ducking our entry fee.

Freycinet National Park with the amazing Wineglass Bay. If there’s one beach you should EVER see in Tasmania, it’s this one. Crystal clear water, soft white sand and totally secluded from the world. You need a hard half hour hike to get to it and than you have a beach to call your own. We had breakfast on the rocks next to the Bay and it was a breakfast I’ll hardly ever forget. We took a swim and you can still see the bottom 5 meters below you, even I could and I wasn’t even carrying my glasses.

Tasmanian Devil Conservation Park
Everybody will know the lovely Tasmanian Devil, one of Tazzie’s most famous creatures. Don’t be fooled by the pretty puppy routine. This little devil has enough power in his jaws to crush through almost anything. If a pitbul bites you, it has a power of 800 kg, this one has 2800 kg, a saltwater crocodile has 3000 kg… to give you some perspective. But lucky for us humans, he’s as dumb as Paris Hilton, as nearsighted as Stevie Wonder and has the survival instincts of a worm. We’ve seen a few in action at the Tasmanian Devil Conservation Park and they were funny to watch. Shame they are getting extinct, only 50,000 remain, last year more than 50,000 died.
Than there are the possums, the wombats, the pandemons (very small ‘roo’s), wallabies (a little bit bigger) and ofcourse… kangaroos. They all seem to run on the major roads at night and don’t seem to care that they get run over by cars. I’ve seen more roadkill on the roads of Tasmania than in Apocalypse Now. Even if you honk and bright lights are shining, they just stand there… looking stupid. Most of the creatures are a bit shy, but food is the magic word… one lucky possum even got our left over potato salad from Woolies.

Port Arthur Ghost Tour
Most people know that Australia was a convict colony for England. What most people don’t know is that convicts who still couldn’t behave themselves were sent to Tasmania. To Port Arthur, a little town on a Tasmanian peninsula. The only access to the main island was guarded by bloodthirsty dogs and rumours were spread that the waters around the peninsula were shark infested. After more than a century Port Arthus has become a huge Tasmanian touristis attraction, especially the night Ghost Tour were a guide shows you the historic buildings and tells you ghost stories about the place. Though I still don’t believe in ghosts, our guide was right when he said we’ll remember this tour for a long time.

Our breakfasts
People back home now that I don’t usually eat a big breakfast, but out here, you’re almost obliged to have one. And almost every day we had an amazing breakfast. The second day we woke up at the Remarkable Cave and had a brekkie on Maigoon Lookout. We kicked every tourist from the lookout, put a table up and pulled out some chairs. Another gorgeous brekkie was at Wineglass Bay where we stood up at 5AM to watch the sunrise, went for the very physical hike to Wineglass Bay, loaded with food in our backpacks. But it was all worth it, except the fact that the sunrise wouldn’t really cooperate, it hid itself behind the mountain, the bastard. So there we were, at Wineglass Bay at 6AM, having breakfast on the rocks next to the crystal clear water.
Ofcourse we had some less amazing breakfasts… like the one in some shitty residential street in Launceston, or the one in the freezing cold at Lake Pedder. But even those had something about them…

Tasmania, the holiday isle

Tasmania is one of the most overlooked states in Australia, it’s not connected to the mainland, it’s much colder than the other states and there’s more rainfall than in some European regions. But people overlook the fact that Tasmania has some gorgeous nature, unique wildlife and amazing views. So after I decided to quit picking pears in Kyabram I booked a flight to Tazzie together with fellow workers Guido and Bastian. They’re both Germans, but we won the war, so I was willing to overlook that fact.

Going to Tazzie
There are four ways to go to Tazzie.
- With the ‘Spirit of Tasmania’, an 11 hour bumpy ride with a bigass ferry.
- By plane
- Get your own boat
- Swimming
Neither of us was willing to risk the last option and we didn’t nearly picked enough pears for the third option. And when we read that the trip with the ferry would take 11 hours and we would probably throw up 90% of that trip… the plane looked really tempting. We booked with Jetstar, a returntrip to Tazzie from Melbourne (Melbourne to Hobart, Launceston to Melbourne). The plan was to find a campervan so we could drive through the island and see as much as possible for the few days we were there. And frankly, we were just happy to get away from anthing involving apples or pears.

Tazzie, the natural state
This is what’s on most of the license plates, and they’re not lying. Even though we arrived at 10PM, we could just smell the clean air. Some books say Tasmania has the cleanest air in the world, I can feel the bacteria leave my body… Even my alcohol intoxicated liver is clapping. The next day would start with a frantic search for a campervan. Not that easy, as this is still the high season and most campervans are already rented. But we were lucky enough to find one from Tasmania Campervan Rentals, a really nice guy who obviously had enough experience with backpackers. We were so proud of our baby…
First we went to Mount Wellington (thanks for the tip mister and misses Newspaperagent…) for some amazing views of Hobart. Than of to Mount Field National Park where we plan to do some excellent and invigorating hikes… Russell Falls, Lady Barron Falls, Platypus Tarn,… Wildlife as we have never seen it before…

Leaving Kyabram

Leaving Kyabram and my future
I am leaving Kyabram, the wonderfull place (ehum) I called home for the last 7 weeks, behind. I was planning to pick for another two weeks, but the quality and the size of the pears were so awfull that I decided to go to Tasmania for one week and than to Darwin through the center. So expect a lot of pictures of that big red pebble in the middle of this country. If all goes well, I should be in Darwin around the 12th of April and I’ll probably look for a job over there OR fly to Perth and look for a job there. Not really sure yet, that’s the beauty about this trip… you’re not even sure where you’ll be the next day, notting is really planned and everything can change in a heartbeat.
Johan and I also split up… Australia is such a big country with so many beautifull people that we decided to each go our own way for a few weeks, months,… who knows? He always left the toilet seat up, I got sick of it… We’ll probably see eachother again in Perth, or somewhere else, like they say in Oz… ‘no worries’. Johan is setting up a blog of his own as he’s probably going to see and do different things as I am, I’ll post the link to his blogsite as soon as he manages to set it up.

So what have I done the last few days?
There’s actually not much to do in Kyabram. One weekend there was a rodeo and that was about THE event of the year in Kyabram, how sad is that? The last few days where an eclectic mix of getting bored to death, picking pears, going to town just to see time fly by and ofcourse complaining in unison about the quality of the trees, seriously, one of the last blocks was of such a bad quality that my arms were full with scratchwounds… pictures online soon at Raiderspix.

Melbourne Formula 1 Grand Prix and the Crown Casino
This was like the event of the year for me, after more than a month hiding in Kyabram between pears, apples, flies, spiders and cockroaches I was more than happy to go to the big city. We booked tickets for Sunday, a whopping $99, about 4 bins (after picking so much, you start to calculate in bins instead of regular dollars). On Saturday we went to the Melbourne Crown Casino, the biggest casino in the southern hemisphere and the place where we all hoped to get rich quick. We even had a “can’t lose system”, but we lost anyway… I personally blame Al-Qaeda. I lost $90 on the roulette table after having won $150. Tip: If someone says you should stop… STOP! But we had a great time, though we all lost money.
On Sunday… Formula 1 baby, yeah! I hooked up with Johan again and we were just in time to see the start of the Celebrity Race, the only familiar face I knew was Kelly Slater, surfer, who came in third. At 2PM the big race began, and boy, do those machines make noise! Crap, I wished I bought some earplugs… we stood about 5 meters from the course and the noise was deafening, we could hear the engines from 3 kilometers away. And for those who didn’t watch it, Raikkonen won.It’s all a big show ofcourse, with plenty of entertainment and ways to spend your money on overpriced t-shirts, hats and other useless merchandise.
The only downside of the short trip to Melbourne… our hostel. We stayed at Hotel Bakpak, a hostel too huge to be properly managed. It took an hour to check out and the ambiance was horrible… for those who’re planning to come to Melbourne… skip this one.

SO NEXT UP:
Tasmania, Melbourne, Adelaide, Coober Peddy, Alice Springs, the big red pebble, Darwin and a lot of sand…

One month in Kyabram…

Part of the ‘going to Australia’-experience is working in Australia. You can’t expect to hav enough money to travel for a whole year without any worries. So at this time, I have about 25 euros on my Belgian account and I’m already in debt on my Australian account. (i’d like to see how they’re going to get their money when I’m leaving the country…). ‘Though it gives a strange sence of freedom when you travel without any money, not knowing if you’re going to be able to buy enough food for the coming week, unsure if you’ll find a place to stay,… I don’t want to spend 8 months in the middle of nowhere without money, there’s still a lot of Australia to discover…
The next few days I’m going to the casino in Melbourne, once the biggest casino in the world, now still the biggest one in the southern hemisphere.
There’s also the Formula 1 Grand Prix next weekend. We’re going with a lot of people from the orchard, we’ve bought the cheapest tickets available.
And last but not least, tonight there’s the world famous night rodeo in Kyabram, don’t know what to expect from an Australian rodeo, but you will all soon find out.

So picking pears, but you already knew that… I’ll still be here for the next four weeks to get enough money, things are getting hrd because all the pears are almost picked and we don’t know how long we have to wait untill we can start picking apples. A little doubt the next few weeks and probably a whole lot of doing even less than we’re doing right now.

So what has happened up untill know… nothing actually… besides turning into an expert when it comes to pears and the fact that I haven’t eaten that many pears since the first 26 years before I left Belgium. Especially the Nashipear, sweet, you seriously have to try them.