Llew Wanders the World

Leaving Sydney proved to be slightly more stressful than I’d planned. Despite a 10:00 flight (an entirely civilized time to be flying) and the fact that the Kostrevskis live a mere 10 minute drive (under normal traffic) from the airport, I still JUST arrived in time to check in. This was due to a combination of a late rise and bad rush-hour traffic.

But in the end all was well. I arrived 28 minutes before the flight was due to depart (not the mandated 30) and even if the flight hadn’t been delayed by a half hour or so, I still would have made it on board.

My (very inexpensive) flight was on Virgin Blue, my first experience with any of Richard Branson’s airlines, and I liked what I saw. While meals and drinks weren’t provided, just as on North American discount airlines, the attitude was entirely different. They made the odd joke over the PA system, chatted with the passengers, and just generally seemed to be having fun while flying.

Hobart’s airport was surprisingly small for a state capital, and I had no difficulty finding the shuttle bus into town (the driver actually took the destination of each passenger and dropped us off at the door.)

(If you’re keen on following along, you can find a map of the area I travelled during this entry here.)

For no particularly good reason I was in an unpleasant mood upon arriving in Hobart, and spent my afternoon disgruntledly walking around the city centre and doing my food shopping.

The main point of interest in Hobart itself (and while it is a generally nice city, there aren’t many) is the wide variety of well preserved architectural styles. After admiring many of these, I started to do some planning for the remainder of my stay in Tassie. This included purchasing a National Parks pass (a great value at $13.50 for two months entry on foot or cycle to all of the parks in the state.) It also included phoning the parks service to see if I REALLY needed a tent and pair of gaiters to walk the Overland Track, which I planned to do later on during my stay. While they suggested that I could get away without the gaiters, they stated very firmly that I absolutely would have to bring a tent, in case the huts were full, or in case I got caught by bad weather.

Thus it was that after 175km of tramping in New Zealand without one, I finally broke down and bought myself a tent. With all my planning and shopping complete, I wandered back to my hostel for supper and sleep.

The next morning found me in a markedly more cheerful mood. I headed back into the city (my hostel was a bit to the north of the town centre) and then on to the Cascade Brewery, just to its west.

The walk to the brewery provided some lovely views of Mount Wellington (1270m) looming above the city.

The brewery itself was also quite impressive. It seemed as though it could have been easily cast in the role of the Elsinore Brewery in the Bob and Doug MacKenzie movie, Strange Brew (for those of you who don’t get this reference, please ignore. It’d be too much trouble to explain.)

The brewery tour was also interesting, for a couple of reasons. First of all, the tour took guests through all parts of a large-ish brewing facility, including those that tours don’t often go to since they’re too busy/dangerous (e.g. the bottling line.) Second, and even more interesting was the fact that the tour also went through the malting facilities. Most breweries purchase their malted barley from a manufacturer, but Cascade actually malts (partially germinates then dries) their own barley on site. This marked the first time I’d actually visited a malting plant, and seen such features as the soaking and germination tanks.

After enjoying a few of their beers in the gardens near the original brewery owner’s home (their springfest lager was quite good) I walked headed back to town through the nearby Cascade Gardens, and passed by the Hobart Female Factory. This was my first brush with the convict history of Tasmania. The Female Factory was one of the spots where women prisoners laboured during Tasmania’s time as a penal colony (early-mid 19th century.) There wasn’t much left of it, but I knew I’d be seeing more of this period of history in a couple of days.

I finished my day with a walk through the Salamanca Market area of Hobart (nice, old buildings, a 7-day fruit and veggie market, even if the main market area was Sundays only) and the port of Hobart. The most interesting thing about the port was perhaps the sculpture honouring the many Antarctic expeditions that have left from the city.

My third day in Hobart took me beyond the brewery location to Mount Wellington. The mountain is crisscrossed by something like 27 different walking tracks, and I planned to make use of this vast parkland (and my newly acquired tent) both for walking and for camping during the night. As I waited for the bus that would take me up to Fern Tree at the start of the walking tracks, I was approached by a scruffy looking fellow with a pack and bedroll who asked me if I planned on camping on the mountain. Since I’d already been told by the tourist office that it was possible, but not technically allowed, I responded non-committally. The fellow cautioned me, saying that there were rangers who went out looking for people camping against regulations, and that unless I went to the distant backside of the mountain, I’d need to set up camp after dark. This made me a little nervous, but then he’d also said that they used helicopters and night vision goggles, and that he’d been chased away from a campsite in Victoria by Australian Naval Intelligence, so I took his warnings with a grain of salt.

I walked about a third of the way up the mountain passing much scrubby eucalypt forest, not to mention a monument to a young man who died in a race up the mountain 101 years ago. At this point I stopped to drop my main pack off at the Rock Cabin (unlike the huts on NZs trails, the cabins on Mount Wellington are very rudimentary structures indeed. enjoy the view out from Sphinx Rock, a cliff looking out over the eucalypt tops and the city of Hobart below. Not only was the view pretty, but the birdsongs were incredible. They sounded like what you’d expect to hear in a tropical rainforest, not a semi-arid mountainside.

With my pack dropped off and lunch eaten, I headed for the summit. The walk took me through more eucalypt forest, then eventually up a steep rocky path above the treeline, through seemingly the only face on the front of the mountain that wasn’t guarded by dolerite (an igneous rock) cliffs and fractured columns.

The view from the top of the mountain was more than worth the walk up. It looked out over the whole of the Hobart area, across the mighty Derwent River, and as far away as the east coast. The walk back down was, if anything, better than the walk up (and not just because it was easier.) I wandered through more eucalypt forest, passing through very dry scrubby looking areas, as well as more fertile ones with beautiful wild flowers. The walk down also took me across the base of the Organ Pipes, the highest and most impressive of the dolerite cliffs/columns, where I met a group who had spent the day rock-climbing nearby.

Arriving back at the Rock Cabin, I decided to pick up my pack and move to Sphinx Rock itself. While there was very little room for camping (its fortunate I had a small tent) and almost no soil to put tent pegs into, the sunrise promised to be spectacular, and I was sure I’d be woken early by the symphony of birds I’d heard earlier in the day.

Though there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and the forecast called for fine weather, I spent the whole evening wondering whether I ought to put the fly up. Eventually I tried, couldn’t manage it in the dark, and just went to sleep, hoping that the fine weather would hold.

Thankfully it did. The sunrise was every bit as good as I’d hoped, although since I wasn’t alone on the Rock, I was a bit nervous about moving out of my campsite back in the bushes, so I missed getting a photo of the best of it. Eventually I did walk out and greet a friendly Tassie who didn’t seem at all disturbed by the fact that I’d camped on the mountain. After he departed, I also got a beautiful view of the first unobstructed rays of the sun hitting the Organ Pipes.

After a quick pack and breakfast, I headed down the mountain, intent on striking out for Port Arthur, site of the best-known and largest ruins from the convict era. I’d hoped to hitchhike there, but after inquiring everywhere I could think of about how to get to the edge of the city with no clear answer forthcoming, I eventually decided to take the bus. The 17:00 departure time was a bit inconvenient, but did allow me to visit the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (no photography permitted, but there were some interesting exhibits about the convict times, as well as the now-extinct Thylacine [more commonly known as the Tasmanian Tiger.])

I also had time for a quick visit to the state rhododendron fair before catching the bus headed across the Derwent, then down through the lush green hills and pretty coastline of the Tasman Peninsula.

I arrived in Port Arthur with plenty of time to set up my tent in the motor camp, but not quite enough to walk out to the historic site.

The next morning I woke up early to find the air full of a misty rain. Normally I might have been a bit disappointed by this, but when visiting a place of such past miseries as Port Arthur, I thought it somewhat appropriate. So I was actually a bit disappointed when the rain STOPPED and the skies cleared before I headed out towards the historic site.

Nonetheless, the morning rain did have some positive effect in that it gave a lovely appearance to the plants and flowers along the nature trail leading from the motor camp to the ruins.

The ruins at Port Arthur are actually those of a secondary punishment facility. That is, a place for punishment of convicts who had re-offended in Van Diemen’s Land (as Tasmania was known at the time) after being transported there for offences elsewhere in the British Empire. With this in mind, you can likely imagine what a bleak place it was from 1830 to 1877 while prisoners were housed and worked there. Many of the buildings from the settlement had suffered due to bush fires, vandalism, and even sale of their structural materials by the government, but several were still in fine shape.

The $19 student rate admission fee to the grounds seemed a bit pricey, but it was actually a great value, given the size of the place, and the fact that it included a 40 minute introductory guided walking tour and a short boat cruise to the nearby settlement cemetery and boys prison.

I spent the morning taking the walking tour, as well as visiting the ruins of the prison hospital, the military portion of the camp (for most of its history the guards were soldiers,) the well preserved commandant�s house, the paupers quarters (usually occupied by ex-prisoners who could find no place in society after their release) and the cottage occupied by noted Irish patriot William Smith O’Brien. I also wandered around the grounds, and (no doubt in part due to the lovely weather) had great difficulty envisioning this as a place of torment and misery.

The short boat cruise followed (it was nice enough, but not particularly memorable) as did lunch. In the early afternoon, the weather returned to its earlier state, with clouds gathering and rain beginning to fall. This was the perfect atmosphere to visit the main penitentiary barracks (originally built as a flour mill, with the bars on the windows added later) and perhaps the most horrific parts of the settlement: The separate prison and the lunatic asylum.

The separate prison was one of the first places in the world where solitary confinement was used as a form of punishment. It was taken to such extents that no noise of any kind was permitted from the prisoners, and even the guards communicated using only writing and sign language. Even so, the inmates were expected to keep op their labour while being punished in this fashion. Prisoners were even kept segregated in their own tiny boxes in the chapel on Sundays.

Transgression of the separate prison’s rules led to an even more solitary state: A punishment sell with 1m thick stone walls, no windows, and four heavy wooden doors between the 2m square cell and the outside. Inmates kept here could not be transferred out into direct daylight afterwards or its intensity would blind them.

Perhaps the only place more depressing than the separate prison was the lunatic asylum. It now houses the Port Arthur museum, so it wasn’t really possible to get a full measure of the place. After a visit through the museum, I headed to the well preserved (if not spectacularly interesting) homes of the camp’s civilian officers, and then back for a look at the visitor’s centre.

The visitor’s centre was fairly well done, and included a delightfully personal touch: With admission, I (and all other guests) received a playing card that corresponds to one particular real-life inmate of the settlement (the young fellow here was mine.) As you pass through the exhibits, you learn about your prisoner, from the nature of his offence to his personal characteristics to a typical day in his individual life at Port Arthur. The trip through the visitor’s centre concluded with a video documenting the MANY ghost sightings throughout the site. So entertaining was the video that I regretted missing out on the lantern-lit ghost tour of the grounds the previous night.

My final stop before leaving Port Arthur was at the memorial to the most recent victims of the place. Not convicts, but ordinary people who had the misfortune to be visiting Port Arthur at the wrong time: April 28, 1996. It was on this day when a gun-wielding madman shot and killed 35 innocents at the Port Arthur historic site and surrounding areas. This reminder of the continued cruelty of man made me feel all the more lucky to be alive, healthy and travelling the world as I am.

After leaving the sombre atmosphere of Port Arthur in the mid-afternoon, I aimed to hitchhike north 130km or so to the town of Triabunna on the east coast of Tasmania, which is the departure point for the ferry to Maria Island National Park. I met with great success hitching, and save for a food shopping stop in the town of Sorell, had no wait longer than about 10 minutes. As in New Zealand, I had several interesting chats with my drivers. Perhaps most memorable of these was with Peter and her (yes, her) daughter, Jackson, who informed me of the plans of a rich German immigrant to build a replica castle on a small island, to which he’d already built a viaduct without official permission. They, and everyone else I rode with, gave me many wonderful suggestions on how to spend the rest of my time in Tassie.

I arrived in Triabunna nice and early and made my way to The Udda backpackers, and was greeted by its thoroughly inebriated proprietor Don. He’d spent the (Saturday) afternoon at lunch with some family friends, which explained his current state. I couldn’t quite gather whether some of his statements and comments were meant to be jokes or were actual rudeness, but I eventually concluded that they had to have been the former.

After a pleasant night at the Udda I was offered a ride to the Maria Island ferry dock by Dirk and Diane, a pair of Germans who were the only other guests at the hostel. I gratefully accepted and rushed out the door, down to the dock and (very early) on to the boat. After dropping off my pack on the ferry I took one more quick trip into town to pick up a bit of extra food for my four day stay on the island.

Maria Island is about 20km long and anywhere from 100m to 10km wide. See a map of the island here.
It’s an ideal place for camping, walking and cycling, being very isolated with no shops or motorized vehicles present on the island.

After the 45 minute ferry ride, I joined the day trippers to the island for the walk down to the Painted Cliffs. These small sea cliffs are made of sandstone that has been “painted” by the evaporation of mineral laden fresh water as it runs down them, along with their subsequent erosion by the waves of the Tasman Sea. This process has left a variety of unique and beautiful symmetrical patterns all across the cliff faces.

After the Painted Cliffs, the day trippers all headed back north, but I continued south towards the two campsites near the island’s centre. Along the way, I ran into my first native Australian wildlife: A wombat (which scampered away the moment it saw me) and a few wallabies (including one with a joey poking its head out of mom’s pouch,), which were much less nervous, along the side of the track.

Three hours of walking later, I found myself at the Encampment Cove campsite. After bidding farewell to the departing group of three (they were the only others at the site when I arrived) I set up my tent and wandered off for a walk around the convict-era ruins of Point Lesseur (Maria Island was, like Port Arthur, a secondary punishment facility during convict times.) The ruins themselves weren’t that impressive (the best of them were back near the ferry docks where I planned to return in a few days) but area positively teemed with wildlife. There were many places where it was literally impossible to take a step without walking overtop of marsupial droppings. By the time I returned to my campsite, I’d seen 22 Forester’s Kangaroos, 8 Bennett’s Wallabies, 2 Red Bellied Pademelons (‘roo like animals even smaller than wallabies,) 1 wombat, 1 white breasted sea eagle, and countless kookaburras and other birds.

I spent a wonderful evening alone at the campsite sitting be the campfire, reading, drinking gin and tonics (the extra weight in my pack had been miserable on the walk down but it was worth it then) and shooing away the many possums that came to join me by the fire. Throughout the evening I found myself smiling and even occasionally giggling at the beauty, solitude and just general wonderfulness of my situation.

After all this was over, I climbed into the tent and as I undressed was struck by a horrifying realization. My moneybelt, which contained my passport, plane tickets, a credit card, and a significant amount of American cash was not with me. In my hurry to catch a ride with the Germans, I’d left it at the hostel the night before. Aaaaaaaaahhh!!!

After my initial panic, I realized there was nothing I could do about it that night, being a 3 hour walk and 45 minute ferry ride from the place. This realization calmed me considerably, and I managed to drift off to a fitful sleep where I dreamed about (what else) losing my moneybelt.

The next morning, I retraced my steps to the ferry dock (thankfully there was a phone there.) Yes, Don had found my moneybelt. Yes, he’d picked it up and put it in a secure place. Yes, he’d be happy to hold on to it until I returned from Maria. WHEW! WHAT A RELIEF!

With that horrible scare over with, I was able to enjoy the rest of the day walking up Mount Maria, the tallest point on the island at 709m. The walk took me through more eucalypt forest, but ended above the treeline with a huge field of boulders that required some a good lot of scrambling, verging on rock-climbing at times.

The view out over the island from the top was gorgeous, and allowed me to look out over the south half of the island, my destination for the following day.

The walk down the mountain was a nervous time, for a couple of reasons. First the scramble down the boulders was no easier than up. Second, there were lots of small lizards around. At one point there were over 20 visible to me at once, including the 7 you can see in this one photo. Now those who know me know that I wouldn’t normally be bothered by small lizards, and in fact I wasn’t in this case. What bothered me was what eats small lizards: snakes. And all three species of snake in Tasmania are venomous. And I was walking in my sandals with no protection from their bites. This being the case, I scanned the trail very, very carefully as I walked, making sure there was no chance I’d accidentally step on one on my way down.

After my long (by the end of the day I’d walked over 37km,) nervous walk back to the (still unoccupied save for me) campsite via the island’s inland road, I was looking forward to a big dinner and a campfire. Unfortunately I only got the former. The previous night I’d used the last of my matches, and tonight was relying on a box I’d picked up for free at the hostel in Hobart. I went through the entire box without even being able to light a piece of paper. Grrr. Nonetheless, I went to sleep happy. I’d seen lots more wildlife (I’d stopped counting after the first day,) some beautiful landscapes, and had, of course, dealt with my forgotten document disaster.

The next morning I woke up very stiff from the previous day, but nonetheless I packed up and moved my camp to French’s Farm, only 20 minutes away, but still a bit closer to the Ferry Docks where I’d have to walk the next morning. After dealing with this, I headed across the sandy isthmus and to the south half of Maria Island. Despite the cloudy weather, I planned on another long day of walking, visiting first Haunted Bay, then Robey’s Farm.

On the isthmus the eucalypts of the rest of the island gave way to smaller, scrubbier trees and thick ground cover. There were birds everywhere, and the sound of the waves crashing was always nearby. The beaches on either side of the isthmus were beautiful as well, with their waters still appearing a gorgeous turquoise even under this day’s cloud obscured sunlight.

The walk down to Haunted Bay was much the same as what I’d grown used to on the north half of the island, except for the fact that I saw no non-avian wildlife here. Perhaps it was the weather?

Even without any wildlife to see, Haunted Bay was still quite a sight. A steep-sided inlet at the very south end of the island, the bay is made of pink rock covered by all manner of lichens, with colours ranging from orange to yellow to green. The combined effect of these was very pretty, even in the cloud and rain (which had started more or less as I arrived.)

The walk back from the bay started unpleasantly as I got (very slightly) lost on my way back up to the main trail from the bay itself, and got less and less pleasant as I got damper and damper. The continuing rain convinced me to give up on Robey’s Farm and head straight back to French’s Farm, this time walking on the west beach of the isthmus rather than on the walking track down its middle.

Upon arriving back at the campsite, I met a pair of older Australians who were the second and third non-ranger people, (and the third and fourth people of any kind) I’d seen since I parted ways with the day trippers at the painted cliffs two days before. The rain stopped not long after my return, but I was tired enough that I couldn’t be bothered to do more walking, and I spent the afternoon and early evening reading inside the restored farmhouse, and watching the wildlife that had decided to put in an appearance after all.

The most exciting thing about that evening’s animals were the four wombats I saw. To my mind, they’re the cutest animals in Australia. Unfortunately, they’re also among the shyest. The moment they realize a human is nearby, they scamper/waddle (their mode of locomotion is halfway between these two I think) off into the bush.

As I headed off to bed, the rain started again, and carried on throughout the night. I woke the next morning, cozy and dry with the rain continuing outside my tent, now accompanied by a blustery west wind. Bleah. And I’d have to walk back to the ferry dock through it. Despite all this, a family of kangeroos were still out hopping around as I sat around packing my things inside the farmhouse.

I’d hoped the rain would clear, but by 10:00 it hadn’t and I resigned myself to walking in the rain. With that, I packed up and headed out. The walking wasn’t too too tough, with only a few spots of yucky mud, but despite my raincoat and pants, I quickly became soaked through (with sweat.) This was all well and good while I was warm from walking, but upon arriving back at Darlington, site of the main historical settlement and the ferry dock, I plunked my pack down inside and unheated building and rapidly started to get cold. This was only helped marginally by lunch and a walk around the historic buildings, and I very quickly became utterly miserable.

The buildings that I walked miserably around ranged in age from about 150 years old (convict era) through to ones from the early 20th century. The later ones were the work of an Italian immigrant who tried to run a huge variety of industries on the island, from vineyards, to silk production, to fruit orchards to cement manufacturing.

One particularly memorable interpretive exhibit was found in the Coffee Palace (from yet another of the island’s periods of settlement, as a resort) where fully set tables, complete with artificial food, afforded the guest a place to sit down while a sound and light show described meals eaten on the island at various points in its history.

While I was exploring the ruins, I met the leaders of a school group who informed me that not only was it windy and rainy, it was also rough out at sea. Apparently about 20 of their 30 students had thrown up on the trip over to the island. While I wasn’t terribly excited about sharing the ferry back with them, I was happy to discover that they’d made arrangements for the ferry to leave early.

After the (thankfully not SOOO rough) trip back to the mainland, I hurried back to the hostel in Triabunna, looking forward to a nice hot shower, and a seat in front of the wood stove. My only stop was to buy a bottle of wine for Don and Fran to thank them for picking up and looking after my valuables for me.

My night at The Udda was supremely enjoyable. Not only did Don and Fran provide me with their customary fresh biscuits (cookies,) they also gave me a glass of wine. And better still, since there were only two guests at the hostel that night (myself and a Japanese girl named Yoko) they pulled two mattresses out into the lounge so that we could sleep in front of the fire. After my cold and miserable day on the island, this was utter bliss. The only excitement came when a huntsman (spider with a leg-span of about 6cm) appeared from behind the curtains. I gallantly chased it around with the ash-scoop from the fireplace and eventually succeeded in picking it up and carrying it outside. (To be honest, it made me a little nervous too, since huntsmen can inflict painful if not actually dangerous bites.)

The following morning Don drove me out to a good hitchhiking spot (though I could easily have walked, he insisted) and even made me a sign! With all this in mind, I have to say that The Udda in Triabunna is the best backpackers I’ve seen in Australia yet.

It took a little longer to get a ride this morning on my way to Coles Bay and Freycinet National Park (whose rugged coastline and granite mountains are one of the tourist highlights of Tasmania), perhaps 150km up the coast. Nonetheless, I still didn’t wait too long before being picked up by Alistair and Penny. They were an older couple from Sydney who had just come down to Tasmania on a “reconnaissance” mission to sort out a route for a group of overseas guests they’d be taking down on a bushwalking/driving tour of the state. Riding with them was nice because not only were they pleasant and interesting people, but they also made a few stops along the way to check out various accommodation options. This allowed me to see a little more of the countryside than usual when hitching.

Eventually they dropped me off in Swansea, saying that they had to do more extensive research there, but noting that if they saw me waiting at the far side of town when they’d finished, they’d pick me up again. No sooner had I arrived there on foot than Alistair and Penny pulled up again. Not only did they continue on up the main road to the Coles Bay turnoff but, in a decision that I suspect had much to do with my presence, they decided to have lunch in Coles Bay itself, going some 30km out of their way to take me exactly where I was going.

This had me at the entrance to Freycinet Park rather sooner than I’d expected (around 13:00.) As such, I threw on my pack and headed out on to the track straight away rather than spending the night at the YHA hostel in Coles Bay as I’d planned. After my four days on Maria Island, some of which included very long walks (albeit without a heavy pack) I’d decided to forgo the circuit of the whole peninsula, and do a shorter walk over the hill to the famous Wineglass Bay, camping at the far end of the beach there, then walking back across the beach to the isthmus track that would take me over to Hazards Beach on the west side of the peninsula and then back to the start of the track. According to the literature, this should have involved 7-8 hours walking in total (though it turned out to be much less.)

Before starting out on the trail itself, I had a pleasant walk from Coles Bay to the Park Entrance, then along an orangey-sanded beach, and past a series of small inlets at Honeymoon Bay. All the while, I saw the granite mountains known as The Hazards growing ever larger in the background.

The walk over the saddle to Wineglass Bay was a tough 200m climb (tough with a large pack on at least) but it went by quickly enough as I chatted with an Aussie gentleman who was spending a year touring around his home country. So engrossed were we in conversation that we entirely missed the lookout over the bay and so had to walk all the way back up the saddle to see it (though I left my pack down at the beach while we retraced our steps.)

Perhaps even better than the famous view of the day (especially in light of the even better view of it I’d get the next day) were the eroded granite columns and perched boulders that surrounded me at the top of the saddle.

After admiring the view for a bit, I headed back down to the beach, then along its length to the campsite at the far end. As I walked along the beach, I was amazed by the whiteness of the sand and the clarity of the water; usually you expect such things only from tropical islands like the Cooks, but here was a picture perfect beach down around 42 degrees south.

As on Maria island, I was the only person present at the campsite. My only company was a boat anchored out in the bay, and a few very un-shy wallabies (plus little pouched joeys) in the camp. Exactly how un-shy they were became clear in the late afternoon when I walked back to the beach to watch the sunset and returned to camp to find my food bag ripped open and one of their number helping itself to a large block of cheese and some bread.

The park visitor’s centre made it clear that they’ve had a bad problem with people feeding animals at the park, and the resulting lack of fear of humans made it obvious that they weren’t exaggerating. I had to go to great pains to chase away the wallabies so I could eat my dinner in peace. The key was to surprise them. Simply yelling or running towards them didn’t work. I needed to walk away from the camp for a bit (carrying my food with me of course) then come running back into the clearing making a lot of noise. I felt rather bad about this, since I’d helped contribute to the problem by letting them at my food, as well as because wallabies can contract a fatal disease by eating human foods 🙁

Eventually I did manage to enjoy my supper and went to sleep with my food hung from a tree a bit away from my tent.

I woke up quite late the next morning (9:30) but the wallabies were still there to harass me during breakfast. During this time, I sorted out the ideal way to get them to go away: Offer them a stick or some other item as though it’s food, then throw the stick away. The wallaby will go running after it, reach the landing point, look around for a bit, then set about eating whatever wallaby food happens to be nearby (grass, leaves, whatever.) No one ever said wallabies were the world’s smartest animals.

After packing up, the lack of timidness exhibited by the wallabies did allow me to get a couple more good photos, including this incredibly close shot of a little joey venturing out of mom’s pouch.

This day’s walk took me across the peninsula, then to Hazard’s beach. While not as classically spectacular a beach as the one at Wineglass Bay, it does have its own charm. It gets rather fewer visitors, is more sheltered (facing out into Great Oyster Bay, rather than the Tasman Sea) and has a vast array of marine life washed up on its shores.

Though I knew the water would be cold, I still couldn’t resist throwing on my swimming suit and heading out into the water for a quick dip. It was a chilly, but still fun couple of minutes before I headed back in to dry off before recommencing my walk.

The walk back to the start of the track took me along Hazards Beach , passing by oysters, starfish, scallops, mussels, sponges and an incredible quantity of kelp. Indeed, I’d been very tempted to grab some soap out of my pack and use one of the washed up sponges for a quick bath when I’d been out swimming.

After what seemed like an interminable walk through the scrubby forest of the peninsula, broken only by a few nice coastal sections, I eventually arrived back at the car park where I enjoyed a late lunch during which I was accosted by even an even more aggressive wallaby. I actually physically pushed this one away from me several times as it stuck its nose into my lunch preparations, but it still took a long time before it got the message that it wasn’t welcome. I have to admit, I was amazed at how quickly wallabies had gone from being cute cuddly critters to outright pests.

After lunch I stowed my pack behind a tree and headed up nearby Mount Amos. The walk up was lots of fun, with steep solid granite faces to walk/scramble up, and the occasional wet patch to make my boot bottoms slippery. The route up was very pretty, but the views from the top, both out over the peninsula (Wineglass Bay is the curved white beach on the left-hand side, Hazards Beach the straighter one on the right) and back up towards Coles Bay.

At the top of the hill, I met an Australian couple, as well as two fellow tourists, a kiwi currently living in South Australia and an Israeli. They’d rented a car together, and were planning on heading back to Hobart the next day and offered me a ride with them if I wanted. I gratefully accepted (I’d planned on hitching back to Hobart.) Even though they were planning on doing the same peninsula walk I’d completed earlier in the day before they departed, it would still be nice to have a ride pre-arranged, plus I could serve as a bit of a guide for them on the trail.

The walk down the mountain was almost as tricky as the walk up, but the angle of the sun had changed and in addition to the interesting perched boulders and pink granite I’d seen on the way up, the shine of recently dampened rock faces was also quite pretty.

Upon reaching the bottom I hopped in the car with Carl (the Kiwi) and Amir (the Israeli) for their drive back to a hostel in Bicheno, some 35km distant. We spent a quiet night there, having dinner at the local pub, than heading off to bed.

The next morning, after a while spent searching for Amir’s mobile phone (we found it in his backpack after looking for an hour or so) we headed back to Freycinet Park. The walk was very similar to what I’d experienced previously, but I did have a couple of wildlife highlights: On the isthmus track I saw my first Australian snake (it was either a small Tasmanian tiger snake or a large copperhead) or at least the back 2/3 of it as it quickly slithered into the bush at our approach. Later on the trail, I saw my first Echidna, one of only two monotremes (egg-laying mammals) in the world (the other is the platypus.)

With out walk completed, we headed back to the car, and then on to Hobart, this time taking the inland route, through rolling green-brown hills, dotted with eucalypt trees and sheep.

And now here I am back in Hobart, having done a bit of grocery shopping and eaten a monstrous breakfast (french toast with saut�ed cinnamon apples and corn flakes) in preparation for the next stage of my Tassie adventure: the famed Overland Track, a 6-day, 82km long walk across the highlands of the Central Plateau. You will, of course, hear all about that soon enough 🙂

Tags: Australia

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 30th, 2004 at 6:42 am and is filed under Australia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.