Southern Tasmania

Hobart

Tigerair took us to Hobart on time, but unfortunately something had gone wrong with the booking of our rental car and the office was closed already. Whatever it was, we could not get a car that evening anymore and had to use a taxi (trying to speak French with us) to reach the house of our hosts, Philip and Louise. We did couchsurfing once again and stayed for 3 nights with a very lovely couple beginning of their 50ies in a quiet residential area on a hill above Hobart. They had a big and cozy house, two fluffy cats and were both very funny and helpful.

The first morning we arranged to pick up our car from the city instead of the airport (as easier to reach) and left for brunch and sightseeing in town. With sunshine and nice warm weather we strolled around the city center (incl. Salamanca market) and the harbour where an exposition of old wooden sailing boats had just finished. We bought some more camping supplies we would need on our way through Tasmania and after picking up our rental car, another reliable Hyandai Accent, we drove all the way up to Mount Wellington to enjoy views of the city. The weather was sunny, but hell was it windy up there. Phil had warned us but we almost blown away when walking down some stairs to a viewing platform. But it did pay off as we saw the city and many of the surrounding islands and peninsulars. That evening we joined Phil and Louise for their weekly Pub Quiz night which was big fun and at the end our team won (we had some real pro pub-quizzers in the team)!

On our second day in Hobart we drove up to see MONA, the most famous and probably as well most controversial art museum of Tasmania. It is beautifully set on a small peninsular between some vineyards and can equally be reached by ferry or road from the city center. The owner of the museum was a friend of Phil & Louise's, a seemingly peculiar character as we heard lots of interesting stories about him (made a fortune in the gambling industry, his wedding table was shaped like a penis, etc.). Already when we arrived at the parking we needed to laugh when we saw the two prime parking spots marked as reserved for "God" and "God's mistress"... The concept of the museum was as well quite different: you got an Iphone and headphones with it, went to the lowest floor (the museum was 100% underground without daylight) and worked your way up through the exhibitions. Instead of explanations next to paintings or pieces of art, the GPS in the phone would locate the art close to you and you could click on it to get more information, stories, interviews or explanations. There were some fixed and some temporary expositions and we can really not but call this whole museum "interesting". There were indeed some very interesting parts - like different views of the origin of art -, there were some weird parts  - like a provocative photo series about a homeless couple in Eastern Europe - and some plainly disgusting parts - like the reproduction of a human stomach that is being fed 3 times a day and produces poo once a day (hell that whole thing stinks!!). The main themes of the museum in general seemed to be death and sex even though we heard that in its very beginnings the exhibitions were even more shocking and provocative than today. Well, even though Moni is usually not a museum person, it was well worth it.

In the afternoon we shopped food supplies for the coming camping adventure (yep, back to our old tent routine) and cooked lasagne for dinner with Phil and Louise (topped with … Australian wine of course). And the next morning it was time to head out of town to explore some of the beautiful countryside of wild Tasmania. First stop: Bruny Island!

Bruny Island

After driving all the way to Red Center and back we overestimated travel times and distances in Tasmania by far. While we expected a good 1-2h drive (still super easy!) to reach the Bruny Island ferry, Louise had been laughing at us telling us it is only a 30min drive... Well, even better :). We headed out in the morning to make the most of our two planned days on the most southern part of Tasmania, Bruny Island. It is a small island off an island that has an excellent reputation for fresh produce and good food (oysters, cheese, honey, fruits, wine, etc.). Once we left the car ferry we drove south and picked up two hitchhikers on the way, a Scottish guy named Tom and a French girl, called Amandine. Hitchhiking is a common thing in Tasmania, especially for backpackers that have even less money than we did :).

Our first stop was in Adventure Bay, a tiny settlement from where you could start the 3h hike around "Fluted Cape". It was a nice hike through the forest with good views of a small and apparently penguin-inhabited island, but we did not see any. Neither did we see the albino-wallabies that Bruny Island is known for. After the hike we felt we deserved a treat and went to the one and only winery on the island, to Bruny Island Premium Wines (what else). We tasted our very first sample of Tasmanian wine and even though it was not exceptional, we were still positively surprised as Tasmania is not at all known for wine making in Europe. We learned later on that wine production in Tasmania is fairly young (last 10-15 years) and no wine is exported at all, but distributed domestically. And then it was time to look for a place to spend the night. There were 2 campgrounds in the National Park in the very south and one seemed to be quite a remote and nice place, but you had to drive across the beach to reach it. Even though many people had written om Wikicamps that the sand is hard enough to drive with a 2WD we were a bit sceptical and waited for the jeep that was just coming up to ask for the "road conditions". The elderly man was very nice and told us that with the rain that had set in he would definitely not risk it without a 4WD so we turned around and went to the other campground at Jetty Beach, close to the Cape Bruny Lighthouse.

The camp was well sheltered (though the rain did not reach that side of the bay), there was a toilet and even a rain water tank for washing and cooking. The beach was very pretty as well and we saw some crazy people (Tom e.g.) that went swimming while we started to freeze in our fleece wests ;). The night was cold, but in our good old reliable tent and our sleeping bags we were warm and the next morning was sunny and clear so we set off to do a 3h hike around the Labilladiere Peninsular. It was in the bushy and grassy part of the trail that we saw our first snake in Australia, the highly venomous black Tiger Snake. Actually, we only saw snakes in Tasmania, none on the mainland, and we were told that there are only 3 species of poisonous snakes in Tasmania and they all require the very same anti-venom. Practical, if you get biten, just call the emergencies and tell them you have been biten by a snake. No need to identify which one :). Luckily, it moved away quite quickly, so there was no real danger for us. After the hike we slowly moved back up north towards the ferry with a few stops in between: the Cape Bruny Lighthouse with amazing views, then the Berry Farm where we had delicious waffles and pancakes with freshly harvested berries and homemade ice cream. Then we crossed the so-called "neck", a long stretch of sand that connected both islands. Shortly after climbing to the view point we reached the "Bruny Island Cheese Factory" where we sampled some outstanding cheeses and locally brewed beer.  And the last stop was for Alex only - the "House of Whiskey" where he tried a glass of one of the oldest and most prestigious whiskeys of Tasmania, Trappers Hut. Moni was driving (of course) and we took the 15:00 ferry back to the mainland and had time to drive to the Tasman Peninsular where we would spend the next few days.

Tasman Peninsular (Port Arthur)

As already mentioned, the scale is much smaller in Tasmania so we drove from Bruny Island via Hobart to the peninsular, direction Port Arthur. We decided however, to spend the night in the National Park around Fortescue Bay to go for a hike the next morning. The night was a bit rainy, but the next morning was dry. Therefore, we packed up our tent and started the strenuous 4h return hike to beautiful Cape Hauy. We went through pristine forests with beautiful view of the rough coast and ended up climbing to the viewpoint at Cape Hauy from where we got excellent views of the so-called "Candlestick" and "Totem Pole". If you check out the pictures, you will recognize why these rock formations are called like that (because they look like a huge candle and a totem pole ;)).

Upon our return we went further south to reach the historic site of Port Arthur where we spent the rest of the afternoon. Tasmania's beginnings are actually not a very joyful chapter in history. Tasmania, originally inhabited by Aborigines, was first used as a base for whalers (who took the opportunity as well to rape and enslave the aborigines). Then came the convict’s era. Port Arthur was one of the first convict settlements in Australia where prisoners from Europe were sent to work in the timber milling industry, mining or ship building. It was a very rough outpost; the weather was harsh and cold and conditions were quite brutal. There was practically no escape from the peninsular as the connection to the mainland was well-guarded and tales about shark-infested (ice cold) waters kept people from trying to swim "away". The convict area is now a Wold Heritage site where you can walk around a huge compound visiting the leftovers of several different buildings from the convict area: the main prison, the Governor’s House, the asylum, a separate round building that served for particular experiments (trying to pacify the toughest prisoners by isolating them to the extreme and keeping them in total darkness), the harbour, a beautiful church and many other official buildings. It was a truly incredible, but also sad place as we could picture the rough conditions prisoners were facing back then.

After our visit in Port Artur we continued to the southern tip of the Peninsular close to Cape Raoul where we camped on the property of a guy called Andy (did we mention that Wikicamps was awesome?!) and for 5AUD per person we could use a small sauna in the garden. As it was quite cold we happily accepted this offer and after dinner Alex went to make a fire to start the sauna oven (no electrical thing, it worked the old-fashioned way with fire wood). After a chilly day and an even colder evening we warmed up our bones in the little sauna cabin and the oven was at the same time heating up a keg of water that we could use for a hot shower afterwards (in a bucket and over the head!). Heated up we crawled into our sleeping bags and had a cosy night.

We got up early the next morning as we wanted to go on yet another 5h hike all the way to Cape Raoul, but once we packed the tent the rain set in quite heavily. Therefore, we decided to skip the hike and do other stuff instead. We went to the "Remarkable Cave" (wasn't that remarkable) and to the "Tasmanian Devil Unzoo", a recreation center for the Tasmanian Devils that was quite interesting. It is called "unzoo" as it is not supposed to be an actual zoo and they rather created a kind of natural habitat for the Tasmanian Devils. These animals are marsupials like the kangaroos and carry their young ones in a pouch, but they look like a mixture of a bear and a rat. Not too pretty from close-up and they make terrible sounds when they are eating and fighting - that's what gave them the name of "devils" when the first settlers heard these diabolic screams at night. Tasmanian Devils do not hunt themselves, they only eat leftover cadavers and can crack even cow bones. They are in fact the animals with the strongest biting force on earth (stronger than crocs) and are facing a treacherous face cancer disease that is decreasing the population in Tasmania dramatically. The devils in the unzoo are cancer free, but cannot be released into the wild to avoid infections by the others (the disease is transmitted by biting which is a common thing during eating and mating). You could see the devils running around in their huge domain and they even created a "dome" where you are under a glass bubble in the middle of their habitat and could see them face to face.

Apart from Tasmanian devils there were a lot of other animals around like pademelons (a Tasmanian species of wallabies), birds and quolls, a cute looking little cousin of the Tasmanian devil. They looked like fury squirrels with big white dots on their backs, but actually they were not as cute as they looked like. Alex got seduced by their sweet looks and kneeled next to the cage to put his finger in and try to caress the quoll. However, that little beast came running like a rocket and tried to bite Alex' finger. Luckily, he was fast enough to pull his finger out before it could close its jaws, but he could feel its teeth already. We were both standing there, half laughing, half ashamed because the little not-so-cutie got stuck with its jaws on the wires of the cage and made some terrible noise. Just when we wanted to get some staff to help that little thing out of its inconvenient situation it managed to free itself.  We are still laughing today about Alex' naivety with that fury animal...

In the afternoon, we wanted to go on smaller hikes to see some other rough cliffs and blowholes, but as it was still pouring rain we did not even want to walk 5m outside our car and decided to carry on driving north to our next destination. On the way to Triabunna we got lost twice on the secondary roads and tried to book a ferry ticket to Maria Island for the next day. As it was high season we did not get the departure time we wanted, but we got tickets for the midday departure and back the following day in the late afternoon. Just before reaching Triabunna, the base to reach Maria Island, we stopped at lovely Darlington Vineyard in Orford to do a small wine tasting. We tried three amazing dry white wines, one semi-sweet Riesling and an excellent Pinot Noir, Tasmania's signature grape for cool climate wine. So of course, we had to buy one bottle and headed to the pub opposite of the small ferry pier in Triabunna where we slept in the backyard against a small donation. Prime location and the famous "Fish'n'Chips-Van" was just next door to get a big portion of fresh fried fish for dinner.

This was our first week in "Tassie" as the Aussies call Tasmania and we did like it a lot. Contrary to what many travellers had told us before ("in Tassie it is always raining", "out of 7 days it will rain 5 days a week", etc) we were pretty lucky with the weather except for that 1 day in Port Arthur. And we can already tell you that the sunshine was following us up the coast and over to the northwest ("the west is even more miserable" they said). A good thing given that we were still sleeping in our tent and did not have to get wet. So be prepared for some more incredible wildlife and landscape pictures in our next article about the East coast!

Enjoy the summer back home and all the nice barbecue and garden parties. We'll join you very soon :).

All the best from South America,

Moni & Alex