13. Australia - Tasmania, Hobart and the east coast

Covering 10 to 16 November 2019

Richmond - now how British does this look ?

3x Wales is almost the size of Tassy (of course) using the standard international unit of area and it has a population of about 500,000 compared to Wales at just over 3 Million. Just to add to this fact dense first para. I can also tell you that the population density of the USA is eleven times greater than that of Australia. This country really is an empty place overall. Heart shaped Tasmania’s capital Hobart lies in the south east corner of the island and a huge swathe of the south and west of the island is wilderness. Real wilderness, virtually no roads or population and it’s a World Heritage Area.

a hard Rain's a gonna fall

We were flying from Sydney to Hobart and then due to some type of brainstorm we decided to stay in an airport hotel because we were to pick up our next motorhome at the airport the following morning. Once we’d arrived we thought that no taxi is going to agree to a one kilometre fare to our hotel, so we walked. As we checked in we found that the hotel has a free shuttle service from the airport. Then we decided we didn’t

the usual Aussie style,
not beating about the bush

want to waste half a day sitting around a bland hotel room and then eat in their restaurant that evening. So we got a taxi into town to an area recommended by the hotel for being where the restaurants are. Now maybe it was because it was Sunday or maybe it was because Hobart is as dull as dishwater but all the available restaurants had pretty much the same ‘pub grub’ menu. Not the best arranged start for or by us.

a corridor inside MONA

Once we’d picked up our van the following day we headed for what appeared to be The Main Attraction in Hobart - MONA. This is a AUS$70M art gallery hacked into the rock and going down five or six levels. It is very much like the Guggenheim in Bilbao, a fantastic building but full of crap, although even the Guggenheim has one or two decent pieces inside.

Our assumption is that Tasmania can only get better and we head for the east coast. It turns out to be very beautiful with small islands offshore setting off the sandy beaches. On the way and before we reached the coast we had a look at Richmond with an old stone bridge over the river and rather more antique shops than such a small place ought to be able to support. It also has some of the standard Victorian/Edwardian buildings with corrugated iron roofs and decorative wrought ironwork. Australia was settled by Europeans (Brits really) so late, there really is very little in the way of historical structures before about mid 19^th century. The aboriginal population seems to have left virtually nothing than wasn’t organic material and very little of that survives from very far back.

from The Devil's Corner Lookout

Eastern Spinebill

On these trips we always end up with leaflets and maps from all sorts of different places and these are regularly thinned out so that we can move. Plus many of them are thin on content but fat on adverts but with just enough useful bits to pick them up in the first place. So, very well designed then. We met an Australian woman who told us she keeps all the leaflets and during a trip, packages them up and posts them home. Clearly she’s welcome to her decision but I can’t help wondering what she does with them all when she gets home.

Grass Trees - growing a mere 1mm a year

Halfway up the east coast we stopped at Swansea, a quiet little place with wide roads, a great view across to the Frecinet Peninsula and a little museum with some wildlife info. Tasmania has a number of native species not seen on mainland Australia, the most famous of which is the Tasmanian Devil. It’s the largest carnivorous marsupial in existence and is about the size of a small dog. The main threat to them now that hunting is banned is a form of facial cancer which many have a tendency to develop. The previously largest carnivorous marsupial was coincidentally also from Tasmania and was the Thylacine or Tasmanian Tiger, a much larger animal (over four feet long) with dark stripes across it’s lower back. The last known individual died in a zoo in 1936. If you search the internet you can find footage of this rather sad individual walking up and down in a cage. They were hunted to extinction because they were thought to be sheep killers. Recent studies now show that their jaws were too weak to kill sheep. That’s all right then, as comforting as the pardon for an executed person. See the photograph of the rules of the Buckland and Spring Bay Tiger and Eagle Extermination Society.

at least this sort of thing doesn't happen now
- unless you're managing a Grouse Moor

We were off to the Frecinet Peninsula for a couple of days and to make sure we included some walking. One we settled on was about a mile or so up steeply to a lookout point across the appealing curve of Wine Glass Bay. This was part of a circuit uphill, down what

near the top of the 1,000 steps

was listed as 1,000 steps to the lovely white sandy beach, straight across the peninsula and back along another wonderful beach. Going down the long flight of irregular steps we met twenty to thirty young people who it turned out were participating in the Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme. The further down the steps we got the more tired and unhappy they seemed until at the bottom we came across a leader trying to jolly up two girls who it seemed had just had enough, well too much really. When we began the walk just before 7.00, we had thought our campsite was fairly close to the start and walked rather than drove it. This was a misjudgement and it was about 50 minutes road walking before the start and then of course we had to walk back along the road at the end. It ended up as a six hour/thirteen mile circuit although it was a really enjoyable walk. However, our timing was almost impeccable. We had sun and clear views for nearly the whole walk and not more than fifty yards from our van on the return was when it began raining.

Wine Glass Bay Lookout

Wine Glass Bay close up

Tasmania has a look and feel of a place which is like Britain but more so. It’s how you might imagine a film set being made by someone who has read about England and seen pictures of it but had never actually been there. We like it a great deal. Now we head to the northwest of the island.

Here's some wildlife for you.