Tasmania

I can’t work out if I’ve drawn the short straw or not as I drop the family off at the airport. They’re taking a one hour flight whilst I go with the car on the much more expensive 11 hr ferry. Although the trip across the Bass Strait is notoriously chunderworthy I do have the chance for some good ‘cave time’. As it happens the waves are only 2M max. This is a relief on the top bunk where I still feel to be sliding off and struggle to sleep for a while.

It’s a beautiful dawn drive to join the family at the plush Tasmania Country Club in Launceston where we decide to stay another night. We drive along the Tamar River scenic wine route that involves abundant forests, roadhogging logging trucks and constant drizzle from the imminent hurricane (lucky I crossed the Bass Strait when I did). We also enjoy some good wines at Piper’s Brook and Jansz that helps us to sleep soundly through the passing of the tail of the hurricane. Next day we sign up at the Flying Fox for some zip-wiring between some very tall trees. It’s great fun with the kids in harnesses on top of us whizzing through the trees like a family of monkeys.

That afternoon we drive 3 hours to the capital Hobart and check into what turns out to be a very old fashioned Rydges apartment. The whole place is very 1950’s and not at all pleasant apart from the squeeze your own juices for breakfast (I go for the unusually healthy apple, carrot, beetroot and ginger). We decide to stay for 4 days at a working winery instead and make tracks to the Riverdale Vineyard in the picturesque Coal River region. We have a quaint little cottage all to ourselves with fantastic views across the vineyards down to the river.

We decide to explore the nearby town of Richmond that is quite charming. We cross a beautiful sandstone bridge built by convicts in 1823 making it the oldest bridge in Australia. Armed with rolls from our bakery lunch we feed a plethora of ducks that get quite excitable and Harley has to be plucked out in tears from of a sea of frantic feathers and biting beaks. There’s time to stop at 2 churches including one with a ‘Garden of Gethsemane’ graveyard with headstones dating back to the 1840’s.

It’s Saturday and time to explore the renowned Salamanca market in central Hobart. The stalls are nothing special but there is a live band and good coffee. We decide to check out Battery Point with apparently excellent examples of very old Australian cottages. This translates to turn of the century concrete eyesores a bit like OAP council houses back home.

Time to explore the old convict colony of Port Arthur. It’s 100km away which is a good 2 hour scenic drive through forests and past lakes. We get a bit of a shock on arrival to discover that there is no actual town there at all just a bunch of ruins.(A little bit like going shopping to St Albans only to find Verulamium). Having doubled back to find some lunch, Port Arthur turns out to be a great day out, if a little chilly. A boat tour is included in the price and takes us past two islands. One is the cemetery known as the Isle of the Dead whilst the other used to be the Boys prison. One boy was sent there all the way from England for stealing a hanky. We remind Ruby how easy she has it these days and she quietly ponders this but sadly only for a moment. We also pop in on the commander’s house, the prison itself and the asylum where the innovative commander was actually trying to cure people with mental problems rather than just lock them up. Sadly it didn’t work as his methods were worthy of some of the inmates, still it was the first ever ‘loony bin’ so hats off to the guy for effort. It’s almost dusk so I have to step on it to try to beat the marsupial curfew (a speed limit of 30 kms after dark). We actually see the most wildlife yet: echidnas, wombats and probably a tassie devil or two. I say probably as it’s sadly all roadkill. Still been there done that…..

On Monday we don our fluorescent ‘workers’ jackets and head down through the vineyards to the Coal River for some oyster harvesting. Amazingly you can just pick them out of the rocky river (none in the sandy bits as they need something to cling to). To be more precise it is Karen who wades in even though she can’t stand oysters as I don’t want to get my shoes wet (who says chivalry is dead?). Once back at the cottage it takes me ages to open the buggers without a schucker. I eventually manage to prise open half a dozen massive molluscs with the texture and colour of a severe head cold. By the fifth dark greeny-brown bogey I start to gag, still it’s fun living off the land.

In the afternoon we decide to drive up to the top of Mount Wellington which at 2000 metres is Tasmania’s highest peak. The temperature drops from 19 to a chilly 9 degrees and disappointingly the summit is covered in cloud. It’s quite an eerie place with low clouds scudding in over the summit past an odd spaceship shaped pole to mark the highest point. We still manage to get some good views halfway down.

I get dropped off at the Hobart Real Tennis Club for part two of my Australian sports challenge. This time it’s doubles and my partner and I get trounced which is a bit depressing. It later transpires that the opponents are playing off 15 and 21 whereas my partner is 27 and I’m off 37. Despite thinking the guy off 15, who knew everyone’s handicap, was a bit of a plonker for not playing with me to make it close, I am cheered up and put the whole experience down to good practice for the third and final leg in Melbourne.

We are sad to leave Hobart and especially the beautiful scenery and comfy cottages at Riverdale. We head up to Launceston via the East coast past the pretty Maria Island and Freycinet National Park. Apart from a hell of a lot of forest, very expensive petrol and a half decent Bay of Fires Pinot Gris for lunch we don’t have much to show for our rather extravagant detour. Still it only took two hours longer than going back the way we came which is nothing for the seasoned travellers that we have become. After a strange night in a motel on a huge slope, we decide to spend our last day in Tassie at the Cataract Gorge. This attraction is apparently the home of the longest single span chairlift in the world over a ‘stunning gorge’. It turns out to be not that amazing but maybe we’re getting a bit blasé after so much stunning scenery. We take the kids on a trip to the ‘Eagles Nest’which is about 20 minutes walk according to the chairlift attendant. Forty minutes later I realise that maybe the Eagle’s nest wasn’t the summit after all but rather the lookout point we passed 20 minutes previously. Still we press on to a very uninteresting summit with a few trees and no view. Oh well at least the kids showed some backbone getting to the top even if we did have to bribe them with extra long stories.

After a scrummy lunch I drop the rest of the family off at the airport and drive on the remaining 100 kms to Devonport for the return ferry to Melbourne. In the queue for the Spirit of Tasmania I overhear a bloke bragging about his old car with 3 million kms on the clock and still with the original clutch. This makes me feel much better about old Percy who’s now only clocked up a mere 310,000 kms. After a couple of movies and a half decent sleep, I rouse myself at 6am and head up to the top deck to witness a beautiful, and for me rare, dawn arrival at Melbourne. The CBD looks fantastic as the sun rises slowly behind the horizon highlighting the early morning balloonists in a full spectrum of pinks, reds and purples before finally the orange orb emerges sheepishly above Red Hill in the middle of the Mornington peninsular.