Steve’s Travel Blog

Hello all,

Tassie has been a ton of fun and I got to meet so really great people.  Meghan and I left Launceston and drove thru the west coast for 4 days.  Our first day we started with a stop at a town called Sheffield which is known in these parts as the town of murals.  The sides of a bunch of building are painted with murals and they are really neat.  I was surprised at the amount and the quality of them.  Our next stop was to Tazmazia which is a big maze made from hedges.  It has many different mazes and other attractions.  We had our lunch here which consisted of pancakes.  THey were the best pancakes I have had since leaving Canada as most so far have been more like crepes than what we call pancakes.  We then walked all the mazes and I really felt like a kid again.  We had so much fun!!! and I got lost a bunch. We ended up spending about 3 hours in the mazes it hardly felt like we were there.  We had to leave to make our way to Devonport where were we staying for the night.  It is best not to drive these roads at dusk as there are so many animals.  If you thought there were lots around Banff then you should check out the amount of dead wallabies at the side of the road here.  In Devonport we stayed at the Gingerbread House.  It was pretty basic but had everything we needed.  THe next morning we got up and headed off to Cradle Mountain.  We did a 3 hour hike around the area and part of the Overland Track that many spend 5 days on.  A few ours was just fine by me.  We made our way yo our next overnight stop of Queenstown.  We has a few stops on the way to stretch our legs and see a few sights.  Queenstown is an old mining town and does no offer a whole lot.  THe backpackers we stayed at was only $20 but not worth much more.  Good thing we brought all of our own food.  THe only good thing is that the room was a twin room and we did not have to share with a bunch of others.  We slept in and the we were off for a train ride.  We booked the train ride from Queenstown to Strahan.  This ride was on an earlt 1900’s steam engine and a pretty slow ride.  We followed along the Queen and King rivers between the 2 towns on the line that they used to transfer copper and gold to the coast.  THe views were amazing and we were feeling pretty young as most others on the rain were seniors.  THe rivers were an ugly redish brown because of all the polution over the years.  They are now considered dead rivers as there is nothing alive in them anymore.  They are trying to revive them but only started in 1990 and it will take many 100’s of years before improvements may be seen. We had about 2 hours to tour thru Strahan which was more than enough becasue it is basically 2 streets.  We wasted a little time in the cafe with a hot chocolate as it wasn’t that warm out (only about 18 degrees celcius).  I know but it sounds funny to me!!!  We were shuttled back to Queenstown on the bus and stayed one more night in Queenstown.  At this point we are at Tuesday morning and we need to get to Hobart for 2:30 as that is when Meghan has to check in for her flight to Melbourne.  We made 2 stops on the way with about 20 minute walks for each stop at some of the highlights.  Meghan was really cool to travel with and we were very alike so it made it easy.  She is just out of Uni (studied Biology) and doing some work overseas while traveling. I even gave her a nickname (bugs) because none of the freak her out and she knew a lot of the bird sounds and the different animals. We got Meghan to her flight on time and I made my way to the City Central Backpackers.  It was a relaxing evening with a Australian movie that was very strange and early to bed.
I woke up on Wednesday and thought that I would try to set up a fishing trip so I started making some calls and the cheapest I could find was going to cost me abou $260 which is way to much.  THis was the last day I would have the car so I decided to take a drive out to Bonorong Wildlife Park.  This was a great day.  I spent about 4 hours walk thru the park and it is not that big.  THere were only a few people there when I got there and so the animals were nice to see.  A little later a school bus showed up and the animals got a little skitish. I was able to see Tasmanian devils, wombats, wallabies, emus,kangaroos, echindas and quolls.  The kangaroos would eat right out of your hand and were fun to talk to.  THe devils were really neat to see as they cruised thru there area.  THe kangaroos, wallabies and varoius birds are able to roam anywhere in the park and so  they do come right up to you if they want.  Most of the animals in the park are only here for short time before they are released in the wild again, the longer term stays are because they have an injury and would not survive in the wild. I left the park after having some lunch that I brought and headed back for town.  I dropped the car off at about 5 so that I would not have to do it in the morning,  That evening I walked around the waterfront and thought about what is next.  On Thursday morning I planned to piece together getting to Melbourne.  I wanted to take the ferry across but in the long run it was way to expensive.  The bus back to Devonport (where the ferry leaves from) would cost $62.50 and then the ferry itself would have been $160.  That would have been alright but all the sailing are at night and I would not have seen anything so why bother.  I sussed out at flight and was in Melbourne by 5pm on Thursday evening for $90.
While I was living at my brothers place before i left he was getting some work done on his place.  One of the workers (Matt) was an Aussie and lived in Melbourne.  I have been in contact with him since he came back and he picked me up at the airport and is letting me stay at his place while I am here.  We went and picked up a few groceries and headed back to his place, had supper and chilled for the evening.  I am looking forwrd to checking out Melbourne and plan to look for a vehicle to drive around the rest of Oz with.  By the way it is hot in Melbourne, I landed to 34 degrees and sunny, although it is supposed to rain for the next few days.  The heat is nice to get back to and it should be pretty warm for the rest of my stay in Oz.

Till next time everyone take care,
Steve
PS:  Congrats to Chris and Tara on there new business venture as they have bought the Humpty’s franchise in Brooks.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 2nd, 2009 at 4:57 pm and is filed under Australia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.