Taste of Tasmania

DAY 2
This morning (June 22) we woke up at 7AM. After freezing my butt off I went into the warm kitchen to have some breakfast. Coffee, toast and cereal, yum yum. The we got all packed up and loaded the vehicle. This morning some others and I were allowed to take out some mountain bikes and go for a ride around town. This was quite enjoyable, made me really miss bike riding. We peddled down the street—passing a cute dog, yes I got a photo- and then heading up a park path to a waterfall. This was fun because the path was bumpy so it kept things interesting, a bit of uphill too. The waterfall was quite pretty and tucked away. We rode back out and down into town, circling around and heading into the other direction to an old railroad station. By 9AM we had to be back up to meet Andy. He took us into town (the one street with like 4 buildings) where we went up to a lookout point to see a good view of the harbor. Then we walked down into a few tourist shops and a really nice woodcraftsmen shop, didn’t buy anything but tempting. By 10 we were headed off for Henty Sand dunes, about 20 minutes outside Strahan. Oh yeah, Strahan is also a mining town. Henty sand dunes was really cool and really cold at first. We walked barefoot up a huge sand dune. Some people did some four wheel driving on the dunes, but most of us listened to a history lesson and walked around. Andy told us that this was the spot in the world where all other places were compared in terms of pollution. I guess this spot is the 0 reading and everything else is compared to that. So we all took a nice big breath. He also told us how if you went of the coast here and traveled in either direction W/E you wouldn’t hit land until South America. That is why the weather here was so crazy and so windy. The West coast of Tassie is one of the most inaccessible points in the world because of this. There are only 3 entry points in all of the 300 km of coastline because it is just impossible otherwise. In light of this, the sand dunes here are quite dynamic—moving up to a meter a day. There were several trees buried in sand—37 meters high. He told us that the sand dunes here ranged from 50-100 meters deep. Crazy! Also there are some of the largest waves here, the ones crashing today were about 3 meters high, high enough that I wouldn’t want to surf!
After this we headed to a place called Zeehan—another mining town, mining tin and cooper. We stopped here for lunch. This town was famous for their theater, which I guess at one point had Hudini in it! Impressive, a crowd of 1500 people, not bad! It was pretty much just as bland as Queenstown, but had a bit more people walking about. After Zeehan we headed up the coast to the top entry point of Cradle Mountain National Park. The views in this drive were stunning, we passed through several more mining towns and saw huge beautiful mountains. The flora began to change too. Wow, I could not believe my eyes, when we enter the park. The landscape was just so surreal. I can’t even describe it—it was just so winter like without snow though—beautiful white dead trees standing high into the sky, mosses covering the ground and just beautiful arrays of color—more color than you would ever see in a winter landscape anywhere else. When we came into the park we headed first to our accommodation point to drop off bags and such. We are staying in kind of a cabin like place, with heat! It’s a pretty nice spot for a national park. Then we headed to the visitors center where we kind of got orientated for the walks we will do tomorrow. There are walks anywhere from 30 minutes to 6 hours and they range in abilities too, lots of preparation. I plan on doing the longest hardest one so I can see and feel Tasmania to its fullest! Next we went to the home of the guy who found cradle mountain. I can’t remember exactly what was so great about him but I have some videos where Andy describes him. The house was beautiful but we were there momentarily before Andy shouted out that we had to hurry quick go to the mountain because the clouds had stopped covering it. This was a good idea as the view when we got there was spectacular. I took way too many photos. We headed back to our accommodation where we all relaxed for a while and had dinner. At dinner one of the Dutch girls told me about her trip to New Zealand and all the cool things she did. I can’t wait to go now, I am looking forward to it.
I guess I should give a brief description of the people here. There are several Dutch people, several Sydney-ans and Adelaidians. Also two from Japan and two from China. I am the only American and there is the mysterious guy who showed up finally—Estaban—who is from Colombia. Yup so that’s all for now. Tomorrow should be a good day of hiking if the weather holds up.
Day 3
Today we had to be up bright and early or more so dark and early. We wanted to be out on the mountain by 8AM so that we would have it to ourselves. It turned out that we didn’t see anyone else on the track until we were nearly finished anyway, but it certainly gives you a nice feeling when you are out on a mountain by yourselves, like you own it. Especially such an exceptionally large mountain.
At first I thought I was ill prepared because it was so so cold. But by mid way through I was down to just a t-shirt. It was a really diverse walk—it was like we walked through all of the seasons –rain, snow, heat, wind –can’t really describe it better than that. There were tough spots where we really felt like mountain climbers, there were slipper spots where I felt like crash bandicoot running across wooden platforms and there were easy spots where you didn’t have to even look at your feet (actually these really didn’t exist). It took us 5 hours and 54 minutes to complete the circuit. We did stop for a 15 minute lunch and had several stops along the way to just take in the surroundings. The last 100 meters of our walk we saw a wombat! This was really really cool as we had been hoping for one the whole time and finally did see one! Yeah hard to describe any more of this—really the pictures are the only way.
When we got done with this we headed on a drive to Devonport which pretty much took the rest of the evening. Finally in Devonport I had phone service. I had 34 text messages, holy crap! It turned out that since I left no one knew where I had gone and were all worried sick about where I was. I felt really bad but what could I do I was on a remote island state in the middle of a national park—no internet no phone service. I’m sorry everyone! Anyway I talked to Rhona, Miranda and Sameer and that was really really nice. I am really missing them but really glad they still care about me to call and worry about me.
Day 4
Today we left Devonport by 7AM and headed East to Launceston where we lost two of our group members who were on their way back to life again. Oh I should also mention we got rid of the older couple in Devonport too so now we are down to 11 people. Today was another big driving day as we basically had to get down the East coast. We stopped at the Bay of Fires for a beach excursion. It is so named because I guess when James Cook first came here he noticed there were tons of fires being set by the aboriginal people. It was a beautiful place with pretty massive waves. Our guide put on a wet suit and went boogie boarding, as you can imagine I was quite jealous, but I enjoyed picture taking along the beach. After about an hour of this we had lunch in the harbor down the street, which consisted of refried beans fried on a hot plate (it looked like poop but tasted pretty good). After lunch Andy (guide) insisted that we play ultimate Frisbee. I insisted that it be girls against boys, and the boys agreed. As you can imagine, we kicked their butts 10 to 2. Next stop was Fallow Beach where we were allowed to do some sea shell collecting! Wohoo, I jumped on this. Most of the areas in Tasmania are part of the state park system and so basically it’s a no take zone, so this was cool that we could take something. (It turns out later this was a pain in the butt in getting into NZ). The drive along the East Coast was beautiful. It was basically an ocean scene the whole way and huge waves. The East Coast was also way more populated—unlike the West Coast where we saw very few cars if any on our drives. That night we stayed in a little town called Bicheno. When we first arrived Andy took us to this spot called the blowhole, which you can imagine what that is. It was right in some rocks—actually in the same place where a colony of penguins was known to be (based on the conspicuous poo left behind). So that night we were determined to see penguins. After we got to the house and settled in, Yoanna and Sissy (the Holand girl and one of the Chinese girls) and I went to the beach to do some penguin spotting. We were there around 4PM and I guess they leave the water to come back to their nests around sunset so we had to wait a while. We did a little bit of peaceful beach sitting and then got antsy so we went to explore for their burrows. We think we found some as we tracked footprints to them but who knows if they really were. Waiting till sunset and beyond we never saw penguins, but it was really cool and exhilarating to try. Empty hearted we went back to our Bicheno home and had a delicious chili meal that Andy had cooked up by himself (it was even spicy!).
Next morning we were up and out by 730AM and on our way to Freycinet National Park. Unfortunately we had a terrible day of weather—it was raining from the start. So when we got to the park there was fog covering everything. The initial plan was to do a pretty hard core walk up to the top of the mountain to oversee the infamous wineglass bay, but because of the rain it was too dangerous a hike to make (I guess its pretty steap). Instead we did a relatively easy and short hike to a lookout point where we still really couldn’t see much. Real bummer because this was one of the most attractive looking spots in my tour book! Afterward we went to a lighthouse and did a walk around that. And then another walk down to the beach. This was pretty because it was a pretty high energy beach. There were huge rocks that the waves would crash in and also it looked like the waves had carved out caves into some of them. Too bad it was raining. We stopped and had an early lunch—veggie burgers and watermelon-oh my! It was still downpouring –hence we stopped where there was an enclosure so we wouldn’t get wet. Our next stop was at the berry farm-Kates Berry Farm (thought this was pretty cool until I realized it was Kate’s not Kates) We had a delicious and well needed warm hot chocolate here. 4 bucks I didn’t mind spending. Then as we made our way to Port Arthur we passed through a town called Doo Town where instead of street names all the houses have a different name with doo in it like.. Doo it or Dr. Doo Little. Quite nifty I thought. As we drove through Port Arthur Andy told us of this horrific incident that happened in Port Arthur in 1996. I won’t write about it here in respect to those affected by it but you can ask me to tell you in person. Before heading to our house that night we made a pit stop at the Tasman Peninsula where there was this massive and outrageously cool cave called Miraculous cave as well as a dark and beautiful view of the Tasman Peninsula. That night dinner was to be late because a few of us were going on a Ghost Tour of Port Arthur. The Ghost Tour was about an hour long and basically brought us through a few of the main buildings. The tour guide told us some stories about murders and deaths. He brought us through an old church, someone home, the surgery room (in a basement cellar) and into the separate prison (where people supposedly went crazy). It was pretty spooky at times mostly because of the weather—which was insanely windy and wet. Near the end of the tour I was taking a picture and this white thing appeared. Obviously I first thought it was a ghost—but then after catching it on video I realized it was just an effect of my camera—still cool—ask me to show it to you. The walk back to our house in the pitch black was actually the worst of it all because it was poorly lit and…no one but the 5 of us were around. Luckily I got to walk in the middle so I felt a lot better hehe.
Day 6
Today we were actually allowed to sleep in—we didn’t need leave the house until 845 since we were so close to the site of interest that day. Unfortunately my body had already gotten so use to it that I still woke up at 7. On the news today was Michael Jackson’s death, how tragic..I’m really bummed to hear it.
Today we headed in to Port Arthur. On entrance we were given a card in which we would be matched up to the life of one of the convicts and we could follow his story throughout the visitors center. My person was actually not really a convict—he was just good at what he did so he was sent to Port Arthur to oversee convicts. In the end he was murdered by convicts because they despised him for what position he was in. I didn’t have a chance to go back and follow other stories-definitely could have spent a lot more time here. At 930 we took a guided tour and basically got a lot of information about the daily lives of the convicts—and a sense of what else was going on in Port Arthur at that time. What caught me off guard was the fact that 7 year olds were legally responsible for their actions and at 9 years of age they could be hung. There was a whole separate prison for younger people—mainly because they hoped to reform them and put them back into society. People could be sent to Port Arthur for a variety of crimes including stealing food or robbing someone—but mainly they were sent because they were habitual criminals rather than for a single action. Again the weather really helped set the mood—cold, windy, dark and grey. After the guided tour Jolanda (a dutch girl) and I went into the library to see if we had anyone with our same last name in the records for being in Port Arthur—didn’t find anyone under Kates but I did under Curran! That will be a mission for Grandma—to figure out if that person is related to us our not. I hope not! After this we ran off to a boat tour of the Port Arthur Harbor—this was pretty boring except that Jolanda bought me hot chocolate and we got to see the Isle of the Dead (where 1600 people were buried). When this ended we had just enough time to skim through the rest of the site. Quite an eerie place.
At 1245 we had to meet Andy to go pick up the others (who went on a cruise) and then head to the Tasmanian Devil Conservation Park! How cool!! We got to see them feed the Tassie devils and hear a little about what is going on with them. Currently there is some kind of cancerous disease spreading through them—spread through their biting (which is a common practice) and basically there is no cure for it. The only way to prevent the extinction of the devils is to isolate those that are still undiseased and repopulate them. They are awesome little creatures and have wild characters. Definetly worth the 12 bucks to see them. Also at this conservation park they had tons of cool birds, quolls and kangaroos, all of which definitely brightened the grey day. Before heading back to Hobart we made a detor to another blowhole and more of the Tasman Peninsula. We left just in time because I filled up my entire memory card, whoops! When we got back to Hobart some of us made plans to meet up later for dinner. I met up with Yoanne and we walked to this address my hostel attendant had found online –but it was a café so we found a new spot—we met up with some others at a Thai restaurant and enjoyed a yummy taste of Pad Thai. After some friendly goodbyes Yoanne and I made our way back toward our hostels which luckily were just a block apart.