I'm back in Australia, back at work, back to having fun travel(!) after some very necessary, very healing months in the US, and re-reading my last blog post was a smorgasbord of feelings. I was right: the only guarantee is change. And from my seat planning the trip in June, I couldn't have known that going to Tassie wasn't the end of the roller coaster ride.
The time spent in Tassie at the beginning of July was sustaining. It made me feel like myself in some really critical ways and, I think, gave me some strength going into the biggest roller coaster drop I ever hope to experience. My vision for the trip was: if I'm going to cry because so many things in my life are unexpectedly changing, I may as well do it in front of a waterfall... maybe people will think it's rain on my face. Whether or not my posturing worked I couldn't say, but I do know that breathing in the cold air of a rainforest, climbing up to the snowline at Cradle Mountain, taking in the unexpected and sometimes bizarre art at MONA, sipping hot drinks in every bar I checked out, all of it made me feel like I was nourishing something important inside myself. So even though my life was turned completely upside down 3 days after my return to work, Tassie deserves a blog post. It's 9 months late, but I've had a few things on my mind.
The trip didn't even really begin in Tassie, it began with two nights in Perth, hanging out with my two favorite colleagues from my new job (the one I started last April!) at the casino til 5am. I was staying at my friend Winnie's and we were fresh off of night shift; sleep patterns were askew. Instead of taking a nap and risking a poor night's sleep (God forbid), we just opted into staying up for 38 hours like any sensible person would. You know? Obvious. At 11pm when our second wind (or, more realistically, the third or fourth) hit, Winnie suggested the casino. So up we got, dressed and ready, and hopped in a cab. And then after getting back to her house around daybreak, we slept all day anyway and had to do it again the next night with our friend Ayden. We had promised!
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| At The Lucky Shag on the Perth waterfront |
My flight to Hobart was scheduled for 6am Saturday, so it really only made sense to stay up all night. Again. Shift changing back to daytime hours was not going well, but friendship and joy and laughing were. I abandoned them around 3:30am so I could make my way to the airport and head on my merry way to Tasmania!
An important housekeeping note for my non-Australian readers: Tasmania is a state in Australia, it just happens to be an island state off the southeast coast. So while I do have to cross some water to get there, I don't have to bring my passport (though some Australian readers might beg to differ on whether that should be required! There's a lot of playful competition among the states here, and the joke is that Tasmania is like the backwards, country cousin - think West Virginia).
Even though it was a very early morning flight to Hobart, being the middle of winter (just a few days past the solstice), and the latitude being quite low, the sun sets early. By the time I left the airport just past 5pm, the sun was well down and I got to enjoy the last vestiges of color in the sky and the city lights of Hobart. My Airbnb was a gorgeous old home that the owner was in the midst of returning to her former glory - all high ceilings and ornate wood carving in the windows and stairway bannister - and located an easy walk from the city center.
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| Street art everywhere |
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| A video would have captured this better, but I loved the every-changing lights of this sign/reminder |
I spent the weekend wandering around Hobart, taking in the city. I quickly discovered that it's not a place that hibernates for winter. Salamanca Place is one of the big tourist centers, a pedestrian-friendly stretch along the riverfront filled with bars and shops and home to a bustling market on Saturday mornings (which I missed out on with my late arrival). Those venues don't stop trade once the famous markets wrap up though - it seemed like each one had live music going, with warm beverages for anyone who braved the chill to be there. Hot toddys, mulled wine, warm apple cider, hot buttered rum - all of it was on offer and all of it was delicious. I just hopped about from place to place enjoying the warm drinks and could have happily done just that all weekend. But I'd been told for years about the wonder that is MONA - the Museum of Old and New Art - and how I needed to visit. So I booked my ferry trip upriver (the recommended travel mode to start one's MONA experience) and away I went.
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| Mulled wine at Franklin Wharf |
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| Simple: this bar was basically a garage with someone's Grandma's furniture filling it (amazing), but check out the native flora/fauna mural as decor! |
Now the first thing to know about MONA is that it's An Experience. The billionaire owners are committed to Hobart's (and Tasmania's) art, but they're also the breed of billionaire that is perfectly happy to rock the boat if they deem it necessary. My gut says they are the Unsinkable Molly Brown of the modern age. A bit counter-culture, a lot outspoken. One half of the couple is a performance artist herself, so the design of MONA very intentionally has an experiential aspect - they don't want you to just look at art, they want visitors to interact with it. All of that begins at the wharf where their two ferries are docked, before you've even climbed aboard the vessels.
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| Did you buy a ticket for the "Posh Pit" with included flute of champagne for the voyage? Nah? Then join the Pleb line! |
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| Not the kind of art with "don't touch" signs anywhere - kids were riding these sheep the whole trip |
The museum is designed with movement in mind. Visitors begin the visit by climbing up that staircase, and walk into an extensive outdoor playground of still more structure and art. Gardens, overtly strange rooms with walkways through the air and seemingly no purpose, rusted out old vehicles. It becomes apparent as you traverse MONA that the journey is the destination throughout. There are no simple hallways inside. Everything is art. Each room, each transition, all of it. And then, the expected art - the paintings, the pottery, the weavings.
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| Art? Or just seating along a long, long corridor filled with furniture? |
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| A hallway |
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| Another hallway |
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| Still one more hallway |
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| Turn a corner and there's a chair. But wait, those are LIVE GOLDFISH? Yes, yes they are. |
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| Art on the walls, art on pedestals, but then someone's living room? Sit aspell, and take a look. |
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| Picasso made ceramics |
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| Underground, but with natural light due to... |
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| ... clever portholes built into the hardscaping up at the top level. |
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| Sculpture art outside |
By the end of my visit, I had
started to grasp the importance of accepting the unexpected and recognizing that Why Not? is a far better question to apply to the museum than Why?
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| Even the construction barricading makes casual references to the Why Not attitude of the billionaire owner, David Walsh |
I really loved MONA, I really loved warm drinks in cool bars, I really loved Hobart, but I wanted to see more of Tassie in this trip. So Tuesday morning I was up and out, on my way into the center of the state and Cradle Mountain National Park which is located there. I'd booked a few nights in an historic hotel there, but was unprepared for how charming and old fashioned it would be. My bed had an electric mattress pad heater (far superior to electric blankets - less smothering), the bar downstairs had a decent selection of dark beers to drink on the chilly winter nights, and the whole place was high ceilings and stained glass for the sake of it. Beautiful. Waratah was my base for the next few days of exploration, and it was perfectly located for me to get a taste of the waterfalls and dramatic rainforests I'd heard about.
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| He visited with me during a stretch-the-legs stop on my drive to Waratah |
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| Nelson Falls |
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| Waratah Falls, across the street from my hotel |
My first full day I made my way to the National Park. I'd done almost zero research, but just enough to know you can't drive into the park - your ticket includes access to a bus that drives you in and will drop you at various points in the park. I went right to the end, out to Dove Lake, thinking I'd best soak up as much of the place as I could. I didn't get an early start, but who cares? I wanted to see it all!
The hike was incredible, with patches of snow setting off the dramatic mountainside, lakes and ponds scattered about, and the promise of wombats keeping my eyes engaged even if it hadn't been for the dramtic landscapes. I didn't want to miss those furry wonders! So I was trotting about, keeping a vague eye on the time as I realized a fairly critical bit that had been neglected in my planning: the last bus had a final time at which it would arrive. And if I wasn't on that bus, I'd have quite a walk on my hands. So that was right at the forefront of my mind as I approaced Ronny Creek, right up until I finally spotted a wombat when I was within eyesight of the road, on the final stretch of my walk.
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| Off he toddled into better grazing pastures |
I'd been out walking for 4 or 5 hours at that point, and he was my FIRST WOMBAT! I was stoked! So excited! The other hikers nearby also were excited and taking photos, but then they grew some sense and skedaddled... and I did not. And that is how I came to be watching a different wombat (once I saw one, I saw, like, 4) as I glanced up and saw the last bus pull into the station... and then carry on. Without me on board. Whoops.
At that juncture I felt some concern. Better to wait in hopes of one last hurrah shuttle? Or recognize the sun's setting was gonna happen sometime and I'd sure rather not be trekking through the park with only my phone's flashlight setting to guide me. Lighting concerns won the day, and I decided I'd best hop to it - the walk wasn't going to get any shorter.
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| Cradle Valley Boardwalk |
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| Getting dark, but still spotting wombats on my trek |
Now I'm surely not the first person to have made this error, so I soon discovered that there's a FANSTASTIC boardwalk trail that swoops and rolls with the landscape, all the way back to the ranger's station. It ended up being my favorite part of the whole day's walk, which was a good thing because it was another 5.5kms to the ranger station. And once I made it to the ranger's station, I still had to walk along the unlit road out to the visitor's center. I was fortunate that there was still light on my trek to the ranger's station, but then I just plum ran out of daylight. By the time I made it to the carpark it was DARK, but on the way I saw a possum! So, win win I think. My feet decided that one day of trekking at Cradle Mountain was gonna do the trick after that near-disaster, so the next day I took myself on some shorter walks close to my hotel and took photos of the many, many, many mushrooms that seemed to be everywhere I looked. I basically just spent the day trying to get up close and personal with fungus.
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| Bischoff Hotel in Waratah |
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| Misty morning over the Waratah Falls valley |
The misty, murky weather left room for surprises on my drive north that day... including a FULL ON DOUBLE RAINBOW!
I was making my way north and west, with a plan to drive up through the Tarkine, a region in Tassie. It was a stunning drive, and spat me out on the rugged west coast. I took a brief side trek to poke my head into a tiny village called Corinna, home to a car ferry. I wanted to know what the deal was - it didn't look like a big body of water on the map and it was just a bit out of the way to investigate. And I'm nosy. So that gave me the chance to appreciate the local humor of the long-suffering ferry operators in Corinna!
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| The ferry |
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| The ferry instructions |
By the time I made it to the end of the Tarkine Drive and to the coast, I was ready to stretch my legs a bit. It was dramatic, beautiful, stark landscape, but I needed to get out of the car! So I popped down to the beach at Couta Rocks and went for a barefoot stroll... and then realized that maybe barefoot wasn't my best idea.
I noticed a splash of bright blue amidst the washed up kelp on the beach, and then another... and another... and another... and then realized the whole beach was strewn with bluebottle jellyfish (AKA Portuguese Man-'o-Wars!). Ack! After having a too-close encounter when snorkeling in Exmouith a few years back (and by too-close, I mean its tentacles wrapped around my neck and hip and left me with welts from the stings and I shrieked underwater when I felt its sting because it HURT), I decided to maybe get off the beach and get some shoes on, regardless of whether the things were alive or dead.
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| They're an incredible color |
I made my way along the coast a bit further and ended up at the Edge of the World, a really hectic stretch of coastline with seas to boggle the mind. You're standing on these cliffs overlooking the sea, watching the flotsam and jetsam in the water, churning about, and then suddenly you realize that the flotsam is ENTIRE TREES, roots and all, that have been picked up by the raging waves. The driftwood piled up on the beaches isn't piles of branches, but entire forests, stripped of leaves and brances with just massive trunks left behind after the beating from the waves.
Onwards I went, with the goal of getting as far into the northwest corner as I could. I understood there was a stretch of private property up there, but that stretch of NW Tasmanian coast has the literal cleanest air in the world. I wanted to know what that smelled like. So I made my way towards Woolnorth and just accepted that I'd eventually meet a fence and get turned back... but figured I'd see how I went.
Turns out, that privately held land also holds privately owned cows. And they mustn't get very many out of town visitors, because when I opened up my car window and started chatting with them, they all started wandering over to visit. So I sang to them a bit, and all of a sudden I had the better part of a herd of cows mooing at me. And then I really did need to get going - the sun was on its way down and I still had a fair drive to get to Stanley - but the cows had decided that I was one of them, and they started trotting alongside my moving car.
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| First it was just a couple cows paying me mind... |
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| ...then a few more... |
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| ...and then they were all visiting! |
The sunset was absolutely breathtaking, the cows were friendly, and the air was as fresh and clean as it gets. It was a perfect end to my driving day. But I still needed to get to my Airbnb for that night.
I spent a chunk of the next day exploring. My Airbnb was an adorable little granny flat on the mainland just off of Stanley, and I was still close enough to the Tarkine to go in for hikes and exploration. I wanted to see more of it up close, so away I went!
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"This is a bad place for a diet - Critics not welcome"
love that energy |
Stanley is magical and there is a definite part of me that wants to move there.
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| Penguins nest on the beach in Stanley, and there's a boardwalk built to make it easier to see them without disturbing their burrows |
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| Commemorating the kidnapping of the last Aboriginal family in Tasmania, in 1842, and their sale to the Van Diemans Land Co for a 50 GBP bounty |
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| The Nut - a rock formation at the end of Stanley that you can climb for amazing panoramic views! |
There was a little whisky tasting room in Stanley, called Angel's Share, and I decided it would be silly for me to not call in for a visit. So that's how I got to spend two hours (to drink the water afterwards!) hanging out with the old fella who runs the place. Due to the whisky, and to doing myself in with all the rainy walks in the morning, I was early to bed. Which meant that when the next day dawned with blue skies, I headed straight back into Stanley (to the same cafe I had soup the day before) and actually walked the Nut!
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| A pademelon I spotted hiding in the scrub |
A little drive around the area took me to a couple of cool scenic lookouts, including the former convict barracks and a photo frame for the Instagram era.
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| Convict Barracks overlooking the Nut |
I had to hit the road again - my accommodation that night was far to the east in Launceston - but there were still sights to take in along the way. Including all the penguin art in the town of Penguin!
Launceston was very cool. The laundry set up at my Airbnb was ingenious (and they had a good selection of books to read and cheese to eat so I could have a night in), I found the best pizza I've had in Australia at DuCane Brewing, and it was an easy city to go wandering about in. City Park has an enclosure of Macaque monkeys just hanging about. Right in the middle of the city! I loved it.
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| DuCane Brewing |
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| City Park |
I bopped from cafe to park, strolling about and taking in the city. I was also trying to communicate with work because I got a call that day that MAYBE I wasn't going to be flying to work in 2 days after all, MAYBE I was going to be chilling in Perth through the weekend. So between fielding those calls and the strolling, I also took myself for a pedicure. Self-care as I neared the end of a whirlwind trip, in the midst of the normal sort of confusion that surrounds working in the mining industry.
My last day was spent closing the loop; I had to get myself back to Hobart for a 6am flight to Perth to make my way back to work. So I made the journey from Launceston south to Hobart, and realized that I just hadn't had enough time. Only one thing for it: I'll just have to go back!
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