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…