Where are the Tassy Devils?

You might be surprised to learn that Tasmania is a real place. You might be even more surprised to learn that it is not it's own country but an Australian state.

Tasmania is an island that is less that 200 miles from north to south and east to west. It is located south of Melbourne and is reachable by an 8 hour ferry ride or a 1 hour plane ride from Melbourne. Hobart is the largest city in Tasmania. 200,000 people live there; which gives you an idea of the sparseness of the population on the rest of the island. Mainland Australians talk about Tasmanians the way Americans talk about West Virginians. The city of Launceston (pronounced "lawn-ceston") is referred to as "Inceston" by some mainlanders.

I skipped the expensive ferry journey to Tasmania and opted for an $85 AUD flight. (That's like $55 USD!) I'd made plans with Dan (from NJ), who was already in Tasmania, to meet in Hobart on March 3rd and venture from there out to various places around the island where we would do some hiking and camping. We had reserved a hire car for 8 days beginning March 9 so we had a few carless days to kill at the start. After spending 2 nights in a 20 bed dorm in a brand new, former night club converted into a hostel, in Hobart, we packed up our bags and headed off in search of some wilderness on our own two feet. In anticipation of this I had left anything outside of the absolutely necessary with a friend in Melbourne. My bag weighed only about 11 - 12 kilos on arrival in Tasmania. Dan's bag however, holding the tent, pots, stove, 7 liters of water, and a crapload of other miscellaneous gear (including a roll of duct tape that turned out to be a lifesaver on multiple occassions), weighed at least 21 kilos--before we added food. In most situations I hate to not carry my own weight, but in this case, if I'd taken any camping gear off him to carry myself, I literally might have been "CARRYING MY OWN WEIGHT". Well not exactly, but it sounds good.

The morning we ventured out it was raining. Dan had a real waterproof packcover but my rainproofing system consisted only of a plastic rubbish bag over top of the backpack with holes cut for the backpack straps. We boarded a city bus, paying the student rate of $1.50 (that 10 year old TCNJ ID with no date has been excellent to me out here) and rode out to the base of the Mt. Wellington trail. We walked for about 2 kilometers uphill with our bags hoping that the tip we'd been given-- that there was a place called The Springs that was not an official campground but where there is a stone hut and a place to pitch a tent-- would turn out to be true. Luckily it was.

We left our stuff in the doorless stone hut and went for a short walk. When we returned we found Bev and Gordon from Victoria in the hut having tea. We talked to them for a bit and they told me that I didn't sound like I had an American accent. (I get that a lot.) They were retired and had bought a used 4wd army vehicle and converted it into a campervan. They would be spending 6 months driving around Tasmania and sleeping in the truck. Their two daughters had done a bit of traveling in Europe and Asia but this trip to Tasmania was the first time either Bev or Gordon had left mainland Australia.

It was very cold that first night, and we'd heard that the night before it had actually snowed. We slept inside the hut, instead of in the tent. It was kind of an equal trade though because although we could make a fire in the hut, unlike the tent, it had no door and the heat quickly escaped. We partially solved this problem by using the DUCT TAPE to hang a heat blanket over the doorway.

In the morning we ate a breakfast of hardboiled eggs and avocado, put up the tent in a spot hidden from the road, left our heavy stuff behind, and started the climb to the top of Mt Wellington.

With my crappy knee situation I generally assumed that I would be slower going than whatever length of time the sign at the start of a trail indicated. However, it turns out that these time are pretty grossly exaggerated or are based on an 80 year old hiker, because we always completed in less time. At least this was good for my psyche.

After camping a second night at the The Springs (this time in the tent) we packed up and walked back down to the road. Before we arrived at the bus stop however, a car pulled up and asked us if we wanted a ride. Dan had done a good bit of hitchhiking on both the mainland and Tasmania. I was originally hesitant to the idea when we'd talked about it 2 days earlier, but the weight of the bag and the additional section of downhill walk we had ahead of us was enough to make me an instant supporter of this free mode of travel. I was the first to accept the ride.

The girl and guy who picked us up had just come from a place called Florentine, where people were living "in trees" or so we heard, in protest of logging in Tasmania. We'd heard that an english girl named Sandy, who was a friend of Dan's from Byron Bay was supposed to be at this protest. At the hostel in Hobart we'd met someone who confirmed they'd met her there. The people in the car also said they'd met her but that she had since left the protest. It is so strange to be able to get information about your friends through complete strangers. But I guess in a place with as few people as Tasmania, that occurrence is common enough that people don't even bother to exclaim about it being a "small world". Their's literally IS as small world.

We arrived back in Hobart and restocked on food. I picked up a much needed sleeping mat and we hopped on another bus to take us to the highway, just north of the city. Here, in the rain, we began our hitchhiking journey to the Tasman Peninsula. Over the course of the day we never waited more than 15 minutes for a ride and most people would tell us that they picked us up because they'd hitchhiked themselves before and they wanted to return the favor. The first guy to pick us up had just won 1st prize for a painting he'd entered into a competition. He had a newspaper article about it in the car with him, which I read. He won $30,000! We rode for a bit with a high school math-history-gym-art teacher traveling with his 9 year old daughter and their dog; with an older man who owned a strawberry farm; a woman who had recently visited new york and another couple who I don't remember much about.

Why don't I remember? Because I was distracted by the realization that I'd left my north face jacket -- an essential layer for Tasmanian nighttime temperatures -- in the backseat of the last car.



We finally arrived at the campground around 4pm to discover that it was Tasmanian Labor Day weekend -- and the campground was full. The owner told us there was free bush camping inside the national park but that we'd probably have to walk 5 kilometers before we'd come across a usable spot. After a bit of deliberating over the maps and chatting with some cyclists friends who turned up from the Hobart Hostel, the campground manager -- who must have felt sorry for us since we didn't have a vehicle to take us elsewhere -- came over and told us he had a small spot where we could put the tent, as long as we kept quiet about it. We thought we really lucked out, until it rained and the tent, which had been reliable for many months, started to take in water at all of the 8 corners where the walls met the floor. The DUCT TAPE saved the day again.

In the morning with fingers crossed, I checked at the campground office to see if there was any word about my jacket. And there WAS! The woman had come by only 20 minutes earlier and had left a phone number. I called her and she said she would leave the jacket at the store in Port Arthur.
"I'm sorry, which store did you say?"
"The store. There's only one."

And sure enough, an hour and half later, having packed up and hitched a ride from Bev and Gordon -- who we just happen to have bumped into again that morning, we arrived in Port Arthur and found a building with a sign over top that read, "Port Arthur Store". After my jacket and I had a nearly tearful reunion and we began to hitch back to Hobart to pick up the car.

Once we had our Hyundai Getz, the weight of the supplies we carried wasn't so critical. We could bring non essentials like Tim Tams along!

We decided on a route around Tasmania that went to the west, then up to the north coast, through Launceston and down the east coast. The west coast of Australia is the least accessible area. A good chunk of the southwest is a national park with no sealed roads and even very few unsealed. We could only venture out as far west as Gordon Dam. And when we arrived there we were absolutely the only people. No staff, no nobody for who knows how far. But there was a very excellent echo.

This place void of people seemed an ideal location for me to learn to drive a manual car --on the left side of the road AND while sitting on the right side of the car. Since there was never any reason to stop for 100 km along the road, I soon learned to drive in 3rd, 4th and 5th gear; but it was a few days before I could manage a stop sign or traffic light without several stalls.

We headed north and visited Lake St. Clair, which is the end point for the Overland Track, then went up to the north coast to hike up to the top of The Nut in Stanley and around Rocky Cape. We passed through Devonport and Launceston to gawk at some fellow humans – the kind that showered on a daily basis. Next stop was the Bay of Fires where the red lichen stained rocks looked like an art exhibit.
The following night we gave the tent a rest and stayed with Dan's friend Sam at his house in the mountains that is entirely solar powered and draws it’s water supply from a rain water collection tank. He doesn’t have a flushing toilet but rather a pit toilet outhouse -- which except for the fact that you have to go outside in the cold at night to use it, wasn't any different than using a regular toilet. Throwing saw dust down the hole keeps the smell away, and a regular toilet bowl makes you forget there is just a big hole in the ground underneath.


Wineglass Bay

At our last destination of Wineglass Bay we did a final hike of 13km. The next day we were back in Hobart to return the car and catch flights back to the mainland.

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