15-21 March 2007: Tasmania

15 March – 21 March: Tasmania

Tassie lives up to expectations! Tassie is an island, a small teardrop of the lower right bulge of the upside down kidney bean. It contains a sample of all the geological and environmental climates present across the mainland in one manageable package: Lush rain forest, high plateau, a few rugged peaks, bush, angry shoreline, rivers, placid beaches and pastureland.

Tasmania was originally known as Van Diemen’s Land. Occasionally it would land bridge with the Oz mainland during particularly strong ice ages. The best current guesstimates have it separated form the mainland for at least the last 10,000 years. This isolation allowed for the survival of a number of species that didn’t make the cut on the mainland. The most famous of course is the Tasmanian Devil. Unlike our beloved cartoon Tazzie, the Tassie devil is a nocturnal opportunist, eating anything from eggs to roadkill. The latter often leads to a similar fate for the feaster… Tassie Devils do have a rep for poor social behavior when it comes to food or breeding. Think of your basic mid-twenties roadhouse drinking, El Camino driving, Marlborough smokin’ tattooed redneck mullet boy (or girl…) late Friday night when they think someone has looked at their partner, or worse, given them “The Eye”…

Aboriginals had been living there for millennia before the Europeans arrived. One of the darkest spots in the Empires history was the total intentional eradication of Aboriginals from Tassie. It was, sadly, successful. On the mainland, similar policies had been in place regionally, however the sheer size of the continent allowed some tribes to hastily relocate and survive to some extent. It is still a dark mark in the minds of the current citizens, and is a topic not openly discussed.

Enough depressing stuff. We have decided to focus on the east coast, and north central interior. The east coast contains the Freycinet Peninsula, home of the national park of the same name. A world-class destination trek is to Wineglass Bay, regularly ranked as the most beautiful unspoiled beach in the world by assorted travel writers and programs. We manage to nurse our rental POS to Cole's Bay, our home for the next couple of days. Cole's Bay is the oh-so-small village at the border of the national park. We stay in a well-maintained holiday park/ backpackers with an attached pub, store and ice cream place. It’s right across the street from a beach, and just a few kilometers from the park entrance.

The rental POS has no air con. Surprise! We should be happy it has an engine and doors and windows that work…Ooops. Not quite three out of three. The back windows had been opened an inch or so for circulation while driving. Evening showers are predicted so its time to roll ‘em up (Power accessories are for wimps after all…). Turning the handle for the rear passenger window resulted in the window becoming hopelessly depressed and leaping form its track, into the depths of the door. The front passenger window tried the same trick, but apparently got its foot stuck or something and couldn’t completely leave its track.

Fortunately, not only is JD mechanically minded, he spent all his college years driving the Datsun, and then later Nissan, cousins of this exact car. There is no repair job that cannot be handled with the right amount of cursing, duct tape, and a Leatherman tool. Our Leatherman travels everywhere with us. Affectionately referred to as “The Tool”, it has all manner of heavy-duty blades and bits. If it can’t fix something, you can certainly use it to hack the offending bit of machinery to pieces. JD disassembles the door panel to get to the window, reseats it into its track, and closes it. It stays closed for the duration of the trip. Time for a beer.

The trek to Wineglass we choose to take will be an eleven kilometer round trip, with a few hundred meters of elevation change. It will bring us east to the beach, then loop around the isthmus and up the west coast of the peninsula (named “The Hazards”) back to the carpark.

Trail maintenance here is a true art! They must have brought in stonemasons to lay the steps. The rockwork is incredible, and the rest stops are highly functional. The upper viewpoint gives a commanding panorama of the entire bay. The beach is a rounded white pebble, easy on the feet. We kick back, absorb some rays, and enjoy our lunch. A dolphin was lazily playing along the length of the shoreline, and a local wallaby successfully works the tourists under the “don’t feed the wildlife” sign. An easy place to spend a lot of time.

The trek is a good work out, and well worth the park admission of $20/car. There were minimal flies and other nasties, and the weather was perfect. A quick shower, and off to the pub for a refreshing beverage.

In Oz Big Brother rules. It is an odd dichotomy with the pioneering tame-the-land, your-responsible-if you-are-an-adventurer attitude. Lets say you are in a national park and decide to scale a nearby cliff and get stuck. You are an idiot, will be told as much, and will need to foot the bill for your rescue. If you are successful, well Good On’ya mate that was impressive. Want to hop on one foot across the Outback to Perth? Good On’ya, and be sure to bring some extra water. Wrestle some crocs for sport or cash? Remember any croc that ain’t dead will be happy to tuck into you at its first opportunity…On the other hand; speed cameras are everywhere, even in the bush. You can loose you license on the spot, forever, for going 20kph over (About 14mph). We take ten over for granted on the interstates in the U.S. Burning rubber, squealing tires, “Lighting ‘em up”, whatever you want to call it, here it is called “Hooning”. Hooning is slang for being stupid or goofy. There are laws against hooning. (Yes, technically an actual law against stupidity… Unfortunately it is just one specific application of stupidity, and not even an important one at that.) If an officer sees you spin tires, your car is impounded immediately for up to thirty days. If someone reports you have hooned, without an officer witnessing, you get a $200 fine. In Tassie alone almost 600 vehicles have been impounded since the law went into effect last July. You can choose to swim with Stingers, Blueys, Rip tides, Pointers (Great Whites) and walk amongst tai pan, tiger, and brown snakes, even live with funnel web spiders under your front porch, with no official warnings, pressures or governance. If you chirp your tires, even by accident (not sure how it would be accidental, but it could be…) you lose your car! Maybe it traces back to Oz’s original penal colony roots…

Tassie has a few destination motorcycle roads. Just like in NZ, lots of rhythmic twisties. JD again misses his bike, tempered by the fact that 30 bikes on the island have been impounded for hooning. We make it to Launceston (Lawn-cess-ton) for St Patrick’s Day. An Irish hotel/pub chain called Irish Murphy’s has a place in town. We stop in for a bite and a pint or two. We are in time for the live music, yet ahead of the queue. Kimberly makes friends with the Guinness Drinking Team during dinner… When we get back into the pub proper it is already packed, and the floor feels like Velcro, we hope from spilled beer. The band is local and has more than a few fans in attendance. It is supposed to be a U2 tribute band, but we seem to miss both Bono, and the tribute aspect… Good fun nonetheless. As we are old people now we are out by 10:30. The queue outside is halfway up the block. The hostel we are in has gourmet gelato… ‘nuf said.

North of town is a wine-growing region. This part of Tassie is a bit arid with the current drought. There is also a great climbing crag called Hillwood. Mostly bolted for sport climbing, one of the few in the entire country. A school group was using the wall within JD’s pay grade, so we watched a bit before finding a winery to visit. We stopped at a beach in the far north to check the water. As has been the case here in the southern portion of the country it was brisk. Must be the proximity to Antarctica… Back to town and the gelato. Wild Hogs is playing at the local theater. JD was curious if it would be subtitled. It wasn’t.

On the trip back to Hobart we find the very dry central plateau. It greens up about 45k north of Hobart. A distinct rain line runs across the land. Cadbury has a factory here as well. We figure we could skip the tour and just hit the company store (just like in Dunedin). No go: No tour, No cheap candy. We really didn’t want the tour again. Our home until we fly out is Montgomery’s Private Hotel and Backpackers. As said in Ozzie: “Monty’s”. It’s clean and the staff is helpful. It is a block from the waterfront, which happens to have a plethora of dining options: Floating take-away fish stands, seafood cafes, and posh dining establishments.

A consideration when booking in an older building: street noise. When we checked our room before booking, it wasn’t exceptionally loud. At midnight we might as well have been on the infield at a Formula One race course. Hooning, trucks, pub patrons, and crosswalk signals blending into a non-harmonious audio sludge that oozed around the cracks of our foam earplugs. It was not a perfect relaxation environment. It was also the last double or twin in the building. It was paid two days in advance. It was just another part of the adventure. It must be said that the room was large and clean. The clean part is always top of our want list in a room. We prefer places that we have no fear of the showers. This met the bill in cleanliness.

The last day with the rental POS was a trip to some thermal springs two hours south. Thermal, by the way, is not the same as Hot, or Mineral. Thermal springs in Tassie mean warmer than normal spring water. In this case 27 C (about 81F). It was set in a nice fern laden temperate rain forest, not unlike the greater Seattle area. As Oz hasn’t had an active volcanic system in the last million years or so, these springs are heated by deep earth pressure rather than cooling magma systems. It was a nice pool, just not conducive to long soaks.

The warning lights in the rental POS were becoming more and more insistent. The Love Bubble was engaged at full strength. We made it back to Hobart without incident. JD brought the POS back to the rental place. The gal was pleasant, and asked how the car held up. JD gave her the laundry list: Stroboscopic warning lights, dodgy brakes, stalls at stoplights, burning oil, stuck gauges and serious alignment issues. He forgot to mention the windows, and the less than 10k/liter performance. (The gerbil powered car in NZ got 15-17k/liter). She smiled and twittered something about older cars. JD is done with rent-a-wrecks for the foreseeable future.

Our parting dinner was at a wonderful waterfront café/restaurant called Fish Frenzy: A bottle of Four Sisters white wine, scallops, chips, barramundi, squid, and prawn. Mmmm Mmmmm good. Our airport shuttle will be picking us up at 8:50, about a block away from the hotel… In and of itself not too early, however we anticipate another evening of airport runway sound effects. Lots of time to sleep on the plane.

We reassessed our timeline during our Tassie exploration. Originally we had planned to rejoin Christine and visit more of Victoria and then on to Queensland in a week or so. Maybe we haven’t learned our lesson about believing everything you read, but then again maybe we have. We found some intriguing four-color glossy brochures in Cole’s Bay: They have affordable live-aboard sailing trips into the Whitsunday Islands and the Great Barrier Reef. After consulting our Lonely Planet guidebook we discover that the Whitsunday Sailing experience is virtually mandatory for all backpackers and travelers passing through Oz. To add a sailing trip we need to hit Queensland a week earlier than planned. Virgin Blue (Our carrier from Melbourne to QLD) was very accommodating with the ticket changes. Done online it was only a $60 (total) change fee. Our flights to Brisbane are still less than the ferry to Kangaroo Island…

Kimberly does a masterful job of stuff distribution. Our checked bags are only 0.4 kilo over. No extra charges. Thank goodness no one asked to weigh our carry-ons. They do that if the carry-on “looks” heavy. In Melbourne Virgin is at the opposite end of the airport from Jetstar. This was the scenario that makes the little push trolley worth every penny of the $4 rental. Virgin Blue has the same weight restrictions, however they give everyone a 5-kilo grace. Much more civilized. Our car for the next three weeks is NOT a POS. JD found a deal from Budget for AU$40 a day for a mid-size auto w/ air, unlimited kilometers, and includes the one-way fee. No matter what, it has to be made in this millennium. Here we come Queensland!

9-14 March: Adelaide to Tassie

9 March - 14 March: Adelaide to Tassie

Imagine for a moment you are traveling through the whoop-whoop (another term for the deep bush…). It is late, the roo’s are starting to cluster on the roadsides for the evenings game of dodge-car. You have driven for 6 or 7 hours. A dot on the map is actually a small town with a holiday park and a couple of chain motels. One of the motels is the namesake of the large carved bandicoot at the head of its carpark. It looks clean and inviting, the price is also right.

A warm shower before you eat sounds like an invitation to nirvana itself. The motel has graciously provided towels, little shampoos, and little sealed packages of soap. Somewhat bleary from the road you step into the shower and open your little soap packet. The soap is smaller than you would have thought, and contrary to previous experience, there is no embossed logo or name. Again, you are somewhat bleary from the road, thinking about food. As you begin to lather up your hands a non-soap like texture is felt. (You have very sensitive hands; after all, you are a chiropractor…) As you inspect the soap you notice wiry black strands imbedded throughout one side… Your brain begins to engage. Neurological pattern recognition runs through possible matches. A spark forms. You have not yet washed the nether regions of you own body, therefore the wiry strands are definitely SOMEONE ELSES! Some dodgy bastard pubed up the soap and snuck it back into the package!

Somehow I forgot to add that little tidbit about our journey to Adelaide in the last blog. How? I don’t knooeew…

If you can picture Oz as a kidney bean with the rounded part as the north coast, South Australia is the small inner curve at the bottom. South Australia suffers from the same weather issues as its easterly neighbor Victoria. Somehow Adelaide manages to have a lot more greenery surviving. It’s an orderly city, set up in a manageable grid pattern. It is surrounded by low hills containing the ‘burbs. A bit farther out are the small agricultural and niche towns. Straight north is the Flinders Range. Real bush where men can be men, and women can be men too. Past that is the true Outback, 10’s of 1,000’s of square kilometers of real hot and real nasty. There is a road that can take you to Alice Springs, gateway to Uluru (The Rock). There are a few “last petrol fro 350 kilometer” signs… We are saving the west, north and interior for our next trip.

Christine’s cousin’s family lives in the hills south of city proper. They have a great house that is along a koala migration route. Susanne’s daughter, Christen, works as a veterinary assistant and brings home the occasional unwanted critter, bird, cat, lizard, etc. Susanne’s husband, Rob, is particularly fond of birds. At the moment they have a lorikeet (who is a real wimp) and a cool red and blue parrot/cockatoo beastie who has too much personality for one little birdie body. A mostly bald Pomeranian named Skeeter tops off the bird and cat menagerie. He was bald because the had shaved him three years ago for the summer, and his coat never grew back…

Adelaide is the festival and alternative ideas center for Oz. This particular weekend begins a citywide fringe festival that will last the rest of the month. Buskers, comedy acts, musicians, late night adult themed entertainment, and a variety of other stimulating activities are on tap. It is also the weekend for WOMADelaide (World of Music Adelaide), a Woodstock/Lollapalooza music festival with regional, national, and international bands on multiple stages. Needless to say, we will not be trying to find a parking space downtown. Hello public transport.

Susanne and Rob treated us to a good ol’ fashioned Ozzie Barbie for dinner. We had steak, chicken wings, roo snags, chicken snags, tinnies, box wine, and bottle wine. (Snags, for those who really want to know, are sausages… Tinnies are canned beer) Rob looks and sounds just like Red Forman from “That 70’s Show”. JD spent the whole night trying not to call him Red, which became harder and harder as more empty bottles were created. Susanne is a rabid footie fan. (Aussie Rules Football, a cross between rugby and American football)

Red recently installed a hot tub. They keep it around 36 C (98-99F) for the warmer months. Adelaide got into the mid 40’s (mid 100’s) just a couple of weeks ago. He dislikes chemistry, not unlike us, so he installed an ozonator and diatomaceous earth filter system. The impressive part being they are designed for an in ground swimming pool. It smells like a lightening storm when you lift the tub lid.

The public transport system is not well mapped or marked. It is great if you already know where you are trying to go, but it is not real user friendly if you haven’t been on it before. We still manage to find our way into the city. Adelaide is tenser than we had expected. Could be the volume of visitors for the assorted festivals. We wander about for the afternoon, checking into some of the entertainment options. The comedians we were interested in are sold out. Bummer that. Susanne meets us when she gets off work. She leads us to the city market, a fantastic collection of food and fun. A pub in the market has a happy hour special- half dozen oysters and a beer for AU$8. She splits an order with KK. We have been introduced to a lollie called “Chicos Choco Babies”. In essence it’s a chocolate gummie bear shaped like a baby. These things are yummy! There is a confectioner in the market that has them for AU$5 for 450 grams (more or less a pound), about half the price elsewhere.

Saturday we head to the botanical gardens. WOMADelaide takes over the northern portion. The band we can hear on our way through intrigues us, so we camp out for a bit and enjoy. Dinner includes a bit of wine. After dinner we decide to have some more wine. One thing leads to another and next thing you know we have had a lot of wine. Good wine. Tasty wine. Unfortunately for JD, later in the morning it became cheeky bugger wine. This makes packing up and leaving for the Kangaroo Island ferry at O’ dark thirty an entertaining adventure.

JD grew up in a tourist area. You learn to read between the lines of the travel snippet, and see between the colors in the fold out brochures. Kangaroo Island is touted as a must-do in South Australia: Overrun with lush verdant bush and more wildlife than you could shake a stick at. Roos, wallabies, koalas, heath goanna, seals, penguins, birds, birds, and more birds. Doctor Dolittles own piece of paradise. Caves, treks, fine dining, wineries, scenic drives, scenic views, all this can be yours- Just a short ferry ride away! We had heard over and over we had to see Kangaroo Island. We had scrambled to find literally the last available room on the island. SeaLink is the sole ferry. They know it. The 45 minute ferry for three people and a car cost over AU$300. The earthly vision of Eden painted by the guidebooks should more than justify the expense…

The only living roo was in the eucalyptus distillery. The rest decorated the roadsides. There were a few koalas along a private koala walk. Kimberly and Christine went on the guided seal walk, and did get to see seals. Kangaroo Island was in the same drought as the rest of the country. The only green was what had previously been kangaroos along the side of the road. There are ten penguins in the rookery, which can only be seen at night, on a paid tour. The scenic drive was 157 kilometers of what we had been looking at for 900+ kilometers from Melbourne to Adelaide: dry brown scrub with the occasional eucalypt.

We did find a delicious dinner. It was the only restaurant open Sunday evening, but it was still delicious. Kimberly admits she did get to see things, and we did have a brisk walk along the coast. This would normally be acceptable, except for the so incredibly over hyped expectation build-up and extortionist ferry charges.

We will be traveling the Great Ocean Road for our trip back to Melbourne. We catch a plane to Tasmania (Tassie) early Wednesday afternoon. We get off the ferry from KI at 5:30 Monday afternoon. We have some driving to do. We push our luck during the “dodge-car” opening salvo (dusk) and into the early night: Us-0 Roos-0 good score both ways. We end up in Kingston, crayfish capital of the south coast. Home of the Big Lobster. JD is intrigued. Apparently there are dozens of these ‘Big …” throughout the country. The Big Pineapple, The Big Banana, The Big Bullock (with real swinging bollocks!), and the Big Rocking Horse are but a few. Similar to the themed roadside café’s of the fifties (teapots, boots, etc), they are big resin and fiberglass sculptures that exist solely for tourists to come and admire. Almost all are located in Queensland. Yet another reason to visit the tropical northeast.

The Great Ocean Road was originally built as a tribute to Ozzie casualties of WW1. It is now considered a memorial highway for all war casualties. Started in 1918, it took over 14 years to complete. It runs along the south coast of Victoria, directly exposed to the wrath of the Southern Ocean. The designers had not realized that the south coast gives up 15cm a year to erosion. Those kinds of studies just weren’t done then. The sea is actively eating the soft limestone coastline at lightning pace, geologically. During the last 70 years more than a few of the formations in and along the coast have modified themselves. One when people were on it… (More on that in a moment)

Spectacular rock formations and scenic lookouts abound all along the highway. Shipwrecks were common through the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. Dozens of wrecks are documented. Blowhole and Thundercave have a part in the shipwreck history. Blowhole is a sinkhole connected to the sea by a hydraulically powerful underwater cavern. A few hundred meters away is Thundercave. Thundercave started just like Blowhole, with the cavern collapsing at some point leaving an open channel to the sea. In the late 1800’s a particularly nasty storm dashed a ship on the rocks near Blowhole. 50 sailors were sucked into Blowhole. They were all dead. Two people were sucked into Thundercave. They both lived and were rescued a few days later. Kimberly enjoys saying “Blowhole and Thundercave.” Repeatedly. Then laughing. JD enjoys ignoring her.

Further down the coast is London Bridge Arch. Until 1998 it was London Bridge. At that time there was a well used official trail that led over a pair of thick, solid limestone arches to a viewpoint. One very normal sunny day, while two people were standing admiring the view, the first arch collapsed into the sea. No one was hurt, and the trapped tourists were lifted off the rock by helicopter. Needless to say, that particular trail is now closed…

The Twelve Apostles formation originally had 13 seastacks, and also had been know as the Sow and the Piglets. No one is sure why the name was changed, but it happened in the thirties. Currently there are nine left that can be seen, with one collapsing spectacularly just a few years ago.

As humans we tend to view the planet as static. Geology is something that happened a long time ago. Volcanoes and earthquakes make sense, mostly because of the expectation of change following a major cataclysmic event. Coastlines are supposed to stay put. We can’t be changing maps every few years after all… The continent of Oz disagrees.

After an uneventful overnighter in a small coast town we make the dash for Melbourne. There is time to stop at a beach or two, including Bells Beach to watch some of the Rip Curl surf challenge. Kimberly and Christine got to enjoy a few surfer dude muffin tops. JD vows to think about doing a few ab crunches… An early lunch in Geelong and a short jaunt along the waterfront prepares us for the Melbourne Airport challenge.

Domestic airlines in Oz limit the total weight of luggage per passenger to 20 kilos. More than that and you pay $7 per kilo to a max allowable of 32 kilo. The carry on is still capped at 7 kilos. At our best we have 70 kilo between us, more often 75… We are ecstatic when we can get the two main packs under 20 kilo each, without the rope bag, climbing pack and JD’s technology bag. We did not know about the draconian weight requirements before we got to the ticket counter. With some fancy maneuvering, cajoling, and fancy footwork, we get away with only 4 kilos over. It helped significantly that JD’s tech bag didn’t get weighed… It is at least 15 kilos by itself. It just doesn’t look big and heavy.

Jetstar is the no-frills domestic arm of Qantas. The crews are nice, but the planes are set up to move the maximum number of bodies in the smallest amount of space. Classic cattle car setup. It is only an hour in the air. We arrive on time and catch the shuttle into Hobart.

We have rented another el-cheapo car from a company called AAA rentals. The shuttle drops us about a block and a half away: “Too much traffic” to drop us near the entrance… right. We see a large self-store building labeled AAA, but do not see any car rental signs. We wander up and down the block, with our 70 kilos worth of stuff, wondering if we had been dropped in the wrong place. JD checked inside the AAA storage. Sure enough there was a rental car office inside. A closed rental office. When we made the reservation we said we’d be there at 5:30. We were there at 5:30. The office supposedly had closed at 5:00. (Kimberly had called form the airport around 4:30 and left a message to let them know we were getting on the shuttle…) JD called the after hours number. The owner, Paul, was mildly apologetic and said someone would be in tomorrow morning. He said our hostel was about five blocks away and hoped we didn’t have a lot of baggage. We were less than impressed. Royally pissed off for a brief moment, then we chalked it up to adventure. 2 kilometers and a partial incline later we were less keen on adventure.

Our hostel was a small step up from the Sydney hostel. We were only mildly afraid of the showers. Our roommates didn’t snore and an elderly German man complemented Kimberly’s legs, confirming her German ancestry is still genetically strong.

We walked to AAA the next morning to get our car. It didn’t matter we had a confirming email with times, nor that we slogged our stuff halfway across town. No apologies for inconvenience or hassle. At times the thought of getting ugly American on someone’s ass is enticing. Somehow we managed to suppress the urge. The icing on the cake was the car itself: A 1989 Nissan sentra (whatever the Ozzie equivalent of the sentra is anyway) with 225,000 kilometers. A 15-year old threadbare sheepskin seat cover with a scent that would embarrass any sheep covered the driver’s seat. The seat springs long since sprung by the weight of thousands of different ass shapes over the decades. It did have a spacious boot. For the privilege of driving this one of a kind classic automobile we were paying AU$35 a day. Sadly still $20 a day cheaper than any other car rental company was charging. We drove back to the hostel and loaded up the bags. We were crossing the main bridge out of town when the dash lights started flashing like a disco ball. Alternator light, brake light, parking brake light all flashing to their own beats. The car was still running. They all went out. Car was still running. So were we. Off to Coles Bay and the Freycinet Peninsula 200 k north.

Our main job is to keep the “Love Bubble” engaged around the car and have a good laugh. The car will definitely keep us laughing…and at times gasping for air.