Melbourne
 |
| Royal Exhibition Building |
We were staying in the CBD (Central Business District) and in
probably the dirtiest hostel we’d encountered so far. We spent the first day in
Melbourne strolling round the city, visiting the laneways, including the famous
Hosier
Lane which is covered in graffiti and street art, Federation
Square where street food and entertainers gather, and visiting the
fantastic Melbourne
Museum.
 |
| Grafitti on Hosier Lane |
The next day we hired a car to drive down the Great Ocean Road and back, stopping in Geelong
to catch up with our pal Dan, who we’d met in Goa all those months ago. We
decided to take the highway to the end of the Great Ocean Road and make our way
back to Melbourne.
 |
| Twelve Apostles |
This was mainly to avoid the tourist buses who would have
been doing it the other way round, finishing up where we started, at the
Twelve
Apostles which is large rock formation coming out of the
sea. There are several large rocks – there used to be 9 but one has crumbled
into the sea. We drove down to some other rock formations in the sea including London
Bridge and Lock
Ard Gorge.
 |
| London Bridge |
On the way back we stopped off for lunch and weirdly it was the
exact same place I had been to for lunch when I had done the Great Ocean Road
tour the year before. Baby D chose it even though there were several other
places to eat, and several other towns to stop in, and I had no recollection of
it until I went to the toilet!
 |
| Not sure where this was |
We saw a sign to a lighthouse which was one of the
well-known stops on the route, in Apollo
Bay, but this was before lunch and as it was a 12km drive off the main
road, we changed our minds about 3km along. We did pull over next to a Chinese
family who were koala spotting and they pointed out several wild koalas to us
which was great. There was no way we would have spotted them otherwise. We
then stopped in Lorne to go to the beautiful Erskine
waterfall.
 |
| Erskine waterfall |
As darkness was falling we just had time to stop in Anglesea
where we’d spotted another lighthouse at Split Point.
The light was on as the sun was going down and we got some pretty good
pictures. Turned out this was the lighthouse from the 90s kids TV show ‘Round the Twist’ so we were
proper happy – we’d forgotten that the guide at the lighthouse in Augusta had
told us it was in Victoria, and it was pure fluke we chose not to stop at the
one in Apollo Bay and instead look at the one in Anglesea.
 |
| Split Point Lighthouse |
We finally reached Geelong where we went for dinner with our
friend Dan. It was great to catch up; some of the fun of travelling is catching
up with people we’ve met and travelled a bit with. We were back in Melbourne
around 1am and up the next morning for me to get my hair cut and for Baby D to
go on the free city walking tour
(which I had done in October). We then headed over to Footscray, about 15
minutes out of the city, for a meeting and lunch with a colleague who had just
emigrated from the UK.
We were desperate for an early night, especially with an
early flight in the morning but we wanted to see Dan again before we left
Melbourne, and he met us in the city for some drinks and food. Too much beer
and wine later, we were back at the hostel setting the alarm for 4 hours later
to fly to Hobart,
Tasmania.
Tasmania
 |
| Church in Hobart |
Our hotel was above a pub and a 15 minute walk from Battery
Point which is the centre of the city. Hobart is the capital of Tasmania,
which is an island not much smaller than England about an hour and a half
flight from Melbourne.
 |
| Salamanca market |
Unlike England, the population of Tasmania is about
500,000 and this was really noticeable. We’d arrived in Tassie on a Saturday,
and this was the day that the famous Salamanca
market was on in Hobart.
We mooched around the harbour and the market for a
few hours, before going to a great little fishy pub called The
Drunken Admiral for some oysters and wine, and then going to the Indian
restaurant next door for dinner and more wine. We couldn’t find anywhere to
rent a campervan even though it was mid-winter, so we hired a car and got ready
for a trip around the island.
 |
| Hobart boats |
First of all, we wanted to see Mount
Wellington which was about half an hour’s drive out of Hobart. When we got
to the ‘starting point’ we saw that the road up to the top of the mountain was
closed (probably because of the weather) so we couldn’t drive up.
 |
| Top of Mt Wellington |
There were a
few walks we could choose from instead of driving up, and we decided to do the
full monty and climb to the top. What started as a sedate, leisurely walk with
beautiful scenery, soon turned into a nightmare with strong winds whipping
around us, hard snow and ice, and steep, treacherous trails leading up to the
top. I thought I was sure to be blown off the mountain. During the summer, it
would be a fabulous, easy climb, but in the winter, it was a different story.
We met 3 other guys climbing, all of whom looked like they knew what they were
getting into, and the lack of people on the mountain was probably an indicator
of how difficult conditions were.
 |
| Top of Mt Wellington |
At the top, we were met by hundreds of people
in cars as they had re-opened the road soon after we set off on the hike.
Typical. We could either climb the couple of km back down the mountain (not a cat
in hell’s chance of that happening) or we could walk the 5.5km down the road.
We were completely numb by this point so we cadged a lift off a nice couple,
after one guy trying to charge us $10 each, and another guy pretending he
wasn’t going down the road (there was no other way to go). When we had
defrosted, we set off to Port
Arthur, on a peninsula south east of Hobart.
 |
| Looking across Tasman National Park |
There are a number of interesting places to see round Port
Arthur, in Tasman National Park – a lot of the sights are similar to those on the Great Ocean Road, such
as the Devil’s
Kitchen, the Blowhole
and the Tasman Arch. A weird phenomenon there is the tessellated pavement which is where the coastline has a tiled effect after millions of years of erosion of siltstone.
 |
| Tessellated pavement |
After stopping at the various spots along the way, we
went to the Unzoo.
This is a wildlife park for Tasmanian devils, kangaroos, wallabies, birds and quolls.
We got to feed the kangaroos and we saw the devils and the quolls being fed
which was pretty savage.
 |
| Feeding time |
They are all marsupials, but the devils and the quolls
(which both look super-cute) are meat eaters and they soon turn aggressive in
front of a bit of dead wallaby. Tasmanian devils have been suffering from
facial tumour cancer which is spread through saliva mainly, and is fatal.
Because they are aggressive over food, they bite each other on the face and
this is how it is spread.
 |
| Tasmanian devils in the Unzoo |
The cancer has massively knocked the numbers of
devils on the island but thankfully it appears to have been eradicated on the
Port Arthur peninsula. Interesting fact about the devils, their gestation
period is 21 days and their offspring is only 4mm! Only a few of them will make
it to the pouch though and the rest die off.
Tasmania was originally a convict island, and there is a
famous historic
site in Port Arthur illustrating this, but it was too expensive for us ($39
each) after spending $35 each to get into the Unzoo.
 |
| Wineglass Bay |
Next stop in Tassie was Wineglass
Bay further up the east coast. This beautiful spot is in the shape of the
bowl of a wineglass, but no one is sure how the name came about – it might be
the shape, or it might be the fact that the sea off the coast was often red
wine coloured with whale blood as this was a big industry in days gone by.
 |
| Oysters |
We
visited some of the beautiful sites along the way including Coles
Bay, stopping off at a place in the middle of nowhere for oysters.
Further
down the road I spied a tiny wooden structure on the side of a road which was
like a large bird house. On further investigation, we noticed that it was
actually a dinky library with about 10 books in it.
 |
| Mini library |
Once we got to Wineglass Bay, in Freycinet
National Park we had to hike about 3km to the top to get the best views.
 |
| Bay of Fires |
That evening we carried on up the coast to the Bay
of Fires, stopping in St
Mary’s for the night.
 |
| Bay of Fires |
We got up early the following morning to catch
sunrise over the Bay, heading to Binalong
Bay.
 |
| Sunrise over Bay of Fires |
We just about made it before the sun appeared, and even though there were probably better
viewing points, we found a tiny deserted beach to watch the sun come up. We
spent the morning in the Bay of Fires, so-called because of the red rocks that
make up the coastline, caused by red lichen. We were absolutely loving Tassie
by now, it was stunning.
 |
| Bay of Fires |
As we didn’t have long on the island, we wanted to squeeze
in as much as possible so we drove on, to a place called Sheffield,
about 50km from Cradle
Mountain, which was where we were off to on the following day. The B&B
we’d booked was lovely, it was a proper house with a living room and real fire,
and there was a family of 4 sharing with us. It was so nice to stay somewhere
cosy and homely for a change.
 |
| Start of Ronny Creek |
 |
| Cradle mountain view |
Cradle Mountain is about 1500m high and there are several
trails to walk if you don’t want to climb the mountain in its entirety. We took
the shuttle bus to Ronny
Creek and did a 6km circuit up to an altitude of about 1200m. It was a
fairly easy walk with some steep parts and en route we saw several lakes, a
waterfall and hundreds of wombats finally.
Back to Hobart for the night before heading to Cairns
via a quick change in Sydney, to dive the Great
Barrier Reef.
Tasmania used to get a bad rap – it is the butt of many an
incest joke (how do you tell if someone's from Tassie? Look for the scar on their neck where they've had a head removed) but it is a beautiful island with so much to see and a
tiny population living there. We will definitely be back and for longer than 5
days.
#melbourne #hosierlane #melbournemuseum
#greatoceanroad #twelveapostles #lockardgorge #splitpoint #erskinewaterfall #tasmania #hobart #portarthur #wineglassbay #cradlemountain #salamancamarket #mountwellington #bayoffires#unzoo
No comments:
Post a Comment