Australia Part II : Tasmania

Soooooo excited… my friend Megan is flying in from California to do this Tasmania trip – it’s a win win, time in a new place (and we have a great itinerary planned) and Megan time… bring it on! Alas I’m arriving with a hangover but that’s a whole other story! I decide to see it as a way to sympathize/match Megan’s jet lag so that’s all good then!!

The flight time from Sydney to Hobart, Tasmania is only one and a half hours. We pick up a rental car and after checking into our hotel, head straight to MONA – the Museum of Old and New. This is the weirdest museum I’ve ever been to. I’d read some reviews and met a few people who’d been and there was no consensus… opinions ranged from “brilliant, don’t miss it” to “I was offended”. Once I heard that last comment I definitely wanted to check it out!!!!

There was one really cool installation that Megan and I both loved. It was called “Bitmap” and it is a wall of water going through some sort of machine and creating words.. I’d never seen anything like it – very original:

There was a “museum of everything” which seemed to be a museum of art work by crazy people…. decide for yourself.. creepy dolls, a cats tea party and that wasn’t the worst of it.

Anything with video was really weird but I did enjoy a room with people singing karaoke where you can’t hear the background music just their voices… very amusing.

And of course there was the infamous “wall of vaginas” well that’s what we called it, the title of the work was a bit more crude so not going to repeat that here… there were 77 of these around the walls…. (sorry mammy!!)

For our Friday night dinner we hit Franklin, a fancy spot with a limited menu that when hungover or jet lagged is not gonna cut it, so we have a glass of wine with a couple of small appetizers and head to the nearby park where we noticed food trucks. Way better comfort food options here….. I try an Indonesian martabak which is basically veggies and chicken in a light pastry shallow fried.. it’s delicious. Another glass of wine and we are happy out!

Saturday morning is park run time. We drive out to Risdon Brook park and the run takes place around the reservoir. It’s pretty but “undulating”, not words I wanna hear when I’m running! After parkrun it’s time to leave Hobart and set off on our tour of the island of Tasmania, which by the way has a population of just half a million (ish). Our first stop is at the top of Mt Wellington:

The views of Hobart are impressive…

Onwards we go to the central plateau and Great Lake. It’s pretty scenery on the way although not much to do around the lake when we arrive. We check in to the Great Lake hotel which is really a motel and along with our key are given 4 slices of white bread for our breakfast.. that’s a first.

We hit the bar, hoping for a bit of local banter, but not much is happening other than a few bar flies playing keno (looks like a mixture of bingo and the lottery) and a stag party with a youngfella dressed up in a corset, gold bolero jacket and small hat on his head… quite bizarre! There’s a for sale sign over the bar (which apparently is for real and the place is going for $1m). There are “roo” patties on the menu so I jump at the chance of trying that! They’re not too bad but we call it a night after a couple of beers and the mediocre pub grub.

Next day we head for Cradle Mountain. There is so much roadkill on the road and we find out later that most of them are pademelons, a small wallaby type animal. They are in the middle of the road, on the side of the road, there’s big ones, small ones… they’re literally every few hundred metres… very sad really. I manage to get through the whole week without running one over although I did drive over a dead one at one point (ugh… I can see Megan’s grimace) and I did knock down a seagull… since when do seagulls not move when you drive toward them on the road… I felt terrible, for about five minutes then remembered the news stories this past year about them being vicious in Dublin so got over it fairly quickly!

It’s a lovely sunny day and we drive through some very quiet rural roads. We pass through a cute town called Doloraine and have lunch at a raspberry farm which is delicious. We do an 8km hike to Liffey Falls:

Before we hit cradle mountain we drive through Mole Creek and stop at the Trowunna sanctuary to see some Tasmanian devils. They are crazy looking animals:

They eat the roadkill we saw en route here and we watched as a group of them tear apart the remainder of an animal killed earlier that day… a little gruesome but fascinating to watch:

We also got to feed some kangaroos which was great fun especially when they hoped over to you… they come flying at you as if they’re going to run you over but then they stop dead straight about a foot in front of you. I loved it.

We also met a couple of wombats:

We are staying at Peppers Cradle Mountain resort which is quite a bit fancier than last nights accommodation!! It’s 100m from the entrance into the national park. We take a walk around the area and follow an “enchanted path”… truly not all that enchanting but we did see a very cute little animal on the way out and a nice waterfall on the way back.

Next day is our big hike day but we wake up to rain… a lot of it… we decide to put our raincoats on and just get on with it. After discussions at the visitor Centre we realize it’s pointless to do what we’d wanted to do as that involves hiking high up but there won’t be any visibility because of the clouds so instead we decide to do the Dove Lake circuit with a little extra path to get there. Even in the rain you can see how lovely it is but it’s a pity it’s such bad weather… (seems to be following me around)

Ah well we manage 7 miles which we’re happy enough with and it’ll have to be books and relaxation for the rest of the day.. not a bad way to spend a Monday afternoon. We end up getting stuck into a local Pinot noir (Clemens Hill – best we had) and playing Trivial Pursuit.

Next morning it’s time to leave Cradle Mountain but not before sneaking in another short hike before breakfast.. we do the King Billy trail, King Billy is apparently a tree and we see more pademelons on our way.

From Cradle Mountain we head for Launceston and stop at Mole Creek on the way. We visit Morikooba cave which has amazing stalagmites and stalactites and my favorite little critters – the glow worms. We climb a lot of steps upwards inside the cave which seems counter intuitive to being underground but we are obviously under quite a big mountain. The area we climb up into is known as the cathedral and it has amazing acoustics. Our guide Dawn is amazing and she belts out a bit of Nina Simone which sounds amazing. On the way back down she turns out the few basic lights that are turned on along the way and we experience full darkness which must be what it’s like to be blind… we can’t even see our hand right in front of our faces.

In Launceston we take a walk around the downtown area which is very quiet and seems almost deserted. We find a really good seafood restaurant and both have poke with some delicious wine.

Next day is our longest day of driving as we drive the scenic route from Launceston to the Bay of Fires before finally getting to Bicheno. We have a busy day planned which includes visiting a cheese factory and Columba falls where St Columba visited (all the way from Ireland possibly via Scotland) many many years back… isn’t it amazing that he would have made it to Tasmania – crazy!

Onwards to the bay of fires for a hike along the coast.. again the weather is a bit cloudy so the views are not as spectacular as they probably often are… still it’s nice to get some fresh air and hear the ocean. The rocks are an interesting orange color:

We arrive at Biceno to our beach front retreat (which sounds really fancy but not so much!)…. it is a great big two bedroom unit with the best view of the bay. This is the view from my bed:

Today is our day to hike in Freycinet National park…the weather is decent and this is definitely going to be the highlight. We start by heading up to the Wineglass bay lookout which is the highlight of the National Park. It’s well worth the steep climb and the view is amazing:

We continue downward to the beach itself which has beautiful white sand:

Onwards along the coastline of the park we do the Hazards bay circuit, which the sign says takes 5.5 hours and is an all day hike which you need to pack food for… ehhhh well we had some cheesy toast before we left and we’ve got nothing with us (Suzanne MacLean you’d be horrified at our lack of planning!) but all in all we complete the hike in three hours and we even throw in a couple more of the 60 short walks before devouring lunch.

We have a nice lunch at Geographie cafe in downtown Coal Valley and decide a lazy afternoon is on the cards after all that so we adjourn for some downtime. By 8pm the sun is gone and we have a date with some little blue penguins. These tiny penguins (also called fairy penguins) live in the water and at night they waddle onto land to their burrows. It’s moulting season right now so we don’t see a huge amount but we do see nine in total. You’re not allowed take photos so this one was taken by the tour operator:

Our week is nearly over and it’s time to drive back to Hobart. Again we drive through some lovely countryside and see a lot of roadkill. We stop at Spikey beach and Spikey bridge:

Along the way we read some of the history of the island. Well I’m driving, Megan is reading! Apparently the last of the aboriginal people died out here. The history of the convicts is also very interesting. We are now driving through some wine country so we stop to check out a couple of them… we are on the hunt for a great Pinot noir. Poole wines is delicious, will be bringing back one of those for Hallas HQ!

On our last night in Tasmania we have our best meal at Syra, a Mediterranean/Lebanese place on Salamanca street. The owner chats to us about the restaurant and the food. They have amazing dishes including their signature fried cauliflower and they happen to have our Clemens Hill Pinot which we treat ourselves to. We couldn’t have picked a better place for our final meal.

Another Saturday morning and another parkrun to be done. This time we hit a newish one in Hobart at Queens Domain.

Then it’s off to the airport… goodbye to Megan, sniff sniff, and back into the arms of my Irish red head… on St Patrick’s day…. Hils I’m on my way….