Less musing, more amusing! Minimum philosophy maximum photography! Words are for birds! You can’t beat an overseas trip to perk up the blog, and so especially for you I hopped over the Bass Strait to the island of Tasmania for a long weekend, where tas meets mania and all is well with the world and, mostly, the weather.
Things kicked off on a splendid, warm sunny flight from Canberra on Saturday morning, arriving at a splendid, warm sunny Hobart, where the Salamanca markets were in full flow and fish and chips beside the harbour were always on the cards. Taking advantage of the fine weather after lunch I decided to test the hire car out to see how lame it really was by driving the incredibly dramatic road up to Mount Wellington, a hulk of rock rising up 1271 metres from Hobart and offering views of southern Tasmania.
Amongst the many bays and clumps of land in view was Bruny Island, destination for a couple of nights, and reached by a round about way via ice cream at Hoonville and a suprisingly large ferry from the smaller town of Kettering. The island lived up to everything I hoped for... tranquility and nature working in perfect harmony for the most part, though with such a sparse population, eating options were limited on the first evening. Thankfully the only pub on the island served food which was easily surpassed by the location on Sunset Bay.
Which was, suprisingly, not the place I watched the sun disappear. Instead this was appreciated from the hummock, an oversized sand dune which affords views of the thin strip of land linking North and South Bruny. A beautiful place many fairy penguins call home.
The sun thankfully re-emerged the next day, sneaking through
some early morning haze at Adventure Bay campground, staying in the luxurious end of town a stone’s throw (okay, it would need to be a pretty impressive throw) from the beach. An ideal place to take a pre-breakfast stroll and attempt to use a fishing rod. Webinar from Dad required I think.
After discovering a pleasant little breakfast spot, the rather too sensible and sluggish silver Nissan Tilda was used and abused on the alternating sealed and dirt roads of the island. The logical place to start is at the bottom, down at Cape Bruny which, in the buffeting wind, was one of those edge of the world type places that I rather like a lot for some reason. It could be my upbringing on an extremity of the British Isles which makes such a spot, reminiscent itself of other extremities of the world, somewhat alluring.
That’s not to say it was all gale force winds, plunging cliff faces and white bird poo everywhere though. Sure, there was a fair bit of this, but turn a corner, take a dirt track a couple of kilometres and you can easily find yourself in one of the many sheltered bays providing shallow waters and white sands to at least test the temperature of these southerly seas.
All this sea air makes you hungry, so I believe, especially when it has been a few hours since breakfast and a cheesemaker happens to be one of the few man made attractions on the island. In a country which likes to think it is sophisticated in the munching of cheese, and generally is despite the prevalence of the Coon cheese brand name and excrutiating absence of Reblochon, Tasmania happens to be la creme de la creme. The Bruny Island stuff was pretty good, lacking some mould in places, but other than that providing quite a diverse selection.
With body fat elevated to near 95%, something had to be done, and it was now clearly time for a decent bushwalk back near Adventure Bay. The steady hike from sea level to the top of Fluted Cape must have burnt off at least one of those small wedges, and the views over precipitous cliffs as you struggle to stay upright walking back down a few more. Despite being at times frustrating and a little scrambly, it was at least a bit of an adventure in Adventure Bay and provided a few stomach lurching moments (or was that the cheese?) looking down the full 300 metres to the brilliant blue sea.
By this stage, I had hit that holiday road trip style mood, a kind of self satisfied feeling of not really having much of a care in the world, living in the present and enjoying nothing else but being slightly disconnected from reality. Adventure Bay was a great place, lacking a cafe or takeaway perhaps, but a beautifully peaceful location where all you really needed was the world outside.
On Monday morning it was back over to the big island, a brisk return to comparative civilisation, off the ferry at Kettering and amongst the traffic of Hobart in 30 minutes. At least food choices were aplenty, and a supermarket was forthcoming to make some bird rolls for lunch. Now all that was needed was a suitable picnic spot, provided an hour further up the road in Mount Field National Park.
This is home to Russell Falls, a place I had been three years previously but worth visiting again, encapsulating the incredibly lush green western half of Tasmania, and offering good, rewarding walking. You can’t beat some solid wooden decking winding through a tunnel of giant ferns.
Sadly it is a pretty solid fact that waterfalls need water and the first rain of the trip arrived as forecast and meant a twisty drive further up to the alpine environment around Lake Dobson yielded little other than wet jeans and the need for a cupcake to compensate. The western half of Tasmania was living up to its reputation as a rain magnet.
Never mind, all in all, mother nature had been pretty kind to me on this trip and there was one last pleasant surprise on my final morning in Hobart before returning to the airport. With an hour or so to spare I ventured over to the eastern side of the city across the broad channel of the Derwent River.
At Rosny Park, the lookout yielded views as promised, but it was down in nearby Bellerive that I happily stumbled upon a sweeping sandy bay, with lovely views back to the city and Mount Wellington beyond. Happy that pretty much my last footsteps in Tassie were in the sand.
Things kicked off on a splendid, warm sunny flight from Canberra on Saturday morning, arriving at a splendid, warm sunny Hobart, where the Salamanca markets were in full flow and fish and chips beside the harbour were always on the cards. Taking advantage of the fine weather after lunch I decided to test the hire car out to see how lame it really was by driving the incredibly dramatic road up to Mount Wellington, a hulk of rock rising up 1271 metres from Hobart and offering views of southern Tasmania.
Amongst the many bays and clumps of land in view was Bruny Island, destination for a couple of nights, and reached by a round about way via ice cream at Hoonville and a suprisingly large ferry from the smaller town of Kettering. The island lived up to everything I hoped for... tranquility and nature working in perfect harmony for the most part, though with such a sparse population, eating options were limited on the first evening. Thankfully the only pub on the island served food which was easily surpassed by the location on Sunset Bay.
Which was, suprisingly, not the place I watched the sun disappear. Instead this was appreciated from the hummock, an oversized sand dune which affords views of the thin strip of land linking North and South Bruny. A beautiful place many fairy penguins call home.
The sun thankfully re-emerged the next day, sneaking through
some early morning haze at Adventure Bay campground, staying in the luxurious end of town a stone’s throw (okay, it would need to be a pretty impressive throw) from the beach. An ideal place to take a pre-breakfast stroll and attempt to use a fishing rod. Webinar from Dad required I think.
After discovering a pleasant little breakfast spot, the rather too sensible and sluggish silver Nissan Tilda was used and abused on the alternating sealed and dirt roads of the island. The logical place to start is at the bottom, down at Cape Bruny which, in the buffeting wind, was one of those edge of the world type places that I rather like a lot for some reason. It could be my upbringing on an extremity of the British Isles which makes such a spot, reminiscent itself of other extremities of the world, somewhat alluring.
That’s not to say it was all gale force winds, plunging cliff faces and white bird poo everywhere though. Sure, there was a fair bit of this, but turn a corner, take a dirt track a couple of kilometres and you can easily find yourself in one of the many sheltered bays providing shallow waters and white sands to at least test the temperature of these southerly seas.
All this sea air makes you hungry, so I believe, especially when it has been a few hours since breakfast and a cheesemaker happens to be one of the few man made attractions on the island. In a country which likes to think it is sophisticated in the munching of cheese, and generally is despite the prevalence of the Coon cheese brand name and excrutiating absence of Reblochon, Tasmania happens to be la creme de la creme. The Bruny Island stuff was pretty good, lacking some mould in places, but other than that providing quite a diverse selection.
With body fat elevated to near 95%, something had to be done, and it was now clearly time for a decent bushwalk back near Adventure Bay. The steady hike from sea level to the top of Fluted Cape must have burnt off at least one of those small wedges, and the views over precipitous cliffs as you struggle to stay upright walking back down a few more. Despite being at times frustrating and a little scrambly, it was at least a bit of an adventure in Adventure Bay and provided a few stomach lurching moments (or was that the cheese?) looking down the full 300 metres to the brilliant blue sea.
By this stage, I had hit that holiday road trip style mood, a kind of self satisfied feeling of not really having much of a care in the world, living in the present and enjoying nothing else but being slightly disconnected from reality. Adventure Bay was a great place, lacking a cafe or takeaway perhaps, but a beautifully peaceful location where all you really needed was the world outside.
On Monday morning it was back over to the big island, a brisk return to comparative civilisation, off the ferry at Kettering and amongst the traffic of Hobart in 30 minutes. At least food choices were aplenty, and a supermarket was forthcoming to make some bird rolls for lunch. Now all that was needed was a suitable picnic spot, provided an hour further up the road in Mount Field National Park.
This is home to Russell Falls, a place I had been three years previously but worth visiting again, encapsulating the incredibly lush green western half of Tasmania, and offering good, rewarding walking. You can’t beat some solid wooden decking winding through a tunnel of giant ferns.
Sadly it is a pretty solid fact that waterfalls need water and the first rain of the trip arrived as forecast and meant a twisty drive further up to the alpine environment around Lake Dobson yielded little other than wet jeans and the need for a cupcake to compensate. The western half of Tasmania was living up to its reputation as a rain magnet.
Never mind, all in all, mother nature had been pretty kind to me on this trip and there was one last pleasant surprise on my final morning in Hobart before returning to the airport. With an hour or so to spare I ventured over to the eastern side of the city across the broad channel of the Derwent River.
At Rosny Park, the lookout yielded views as promised, but it was down in nearby Bellerive that I happily stumbled upon a sweeping sandy bay, with lovely views back to the city and Mount Wellington beyond. Happy that pretty much my last footsteps in Tassie were in the sand.
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