We landed in Tasmania at the start of the day, to find grey clouds and rain. After a brief trip to pick up our ride for the next week, we headed straight to MONA (Museum of Old and New Art). This featured in a lot of example itineraries we’d read about Hobart, and had come highly recommended from a few people we met in Fiji. Having been to our fair share of museums on this trip, we thought that this was probably just a lot of hype.
We were wrong.
MONA is possibly the greatest museum of all time. It has been carved into Hobart’s stone cliffs, and it’s exhibits are displayed in three cavernous floors underground. Even it’s bar looks like a work of art.
The corridors between exhibits are tunneled sound scapes. We later discovered from our host that it was set-up by an eccentric gambler who’s objective was to blow people’s minds (and evade tax). It’s collection of exhibits easily achieve this, each one is either reality-bending or unbelievably cool. It includes a waterfall that spells out Google searches, a room full of oil that makes you feel suspended in space and a giant working cochlear that you can walk into and hear visitors speaking from the surface.
Minds splattered all over the floor, we headed home to digest what we’d seen and have an early night, because he next day we headed up to Mount Field National Park.
Tasmania seems like one big national park, and Mount Field was our first exploration into it. There were a multitude of walks available, but since we had all day we decided to opt for he longest one ‘Three Waterfalls’. This, you may be astonished to learn, is a walk around three waterfalls through some picturesque forest (and some spooky forest that has been involved in a fire).
On our way back home we headed up Mount Wellington (in the car this time) to get a view over Hobart. The very top was clouded over (as always seems to be the case when we get to the top of mountains) and icey cold, but there were still some stunning views a few metres down.
We hopped on a ferry to nearby Bruny Island the next day – well, it was actually more like a car park on a barge, but it did its job. Having been on our fair share of organised day tours by this stage of the trip, we thought we’d have a crack at making our own, and we didn’t do to badly. First stop on the tour was The Neck in the middle of the island connecting north and south.
After that we drove down to the lighthouse for a quick seaview lunch.
Then we popped over to Adventure Bay for a little walk around.
We finished the day off with some local oysters from ‘Get Shucked’. We’d had to skip the company at Victoria Market, so were very glad to get a second chance to try them.
The very final stop was to Bruny Islands Cheese, Bread and Beer shop. We bought a beer for the road, and while at the counter Frances got talked into buying a ‘meat pie’ for our dinner- apparently an Australian delicacy.
Our 4th day in Tasmania had us saying goodbye to Hobart, and joining Tasmania’s Great Eastern Drive route for the next few days. The plan for the day was to go to Freycinet, to visit the National Park, but we decided to make an impromptu stop at Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary on the way.
One gory detail we’ve left out of the blog so far is the amount of roadkill in Tasmania. It’s alot. The local wildlife are littered over the highways, and it seems like it’s a fairly major problem for their populations. Most of the animals come out at dusk and get hit, and the problem is then compounded by other animals trying to eat the roadkill and meeting a similar end. We’ve been fortunate not to be involved in an incident yet, but we were very glad we chose the max cover for the car within the first road we drove.
Out of all this death, Bonorong has emerged. It’s a wildlife hospital/sanctuary that specialises in rescuing hit animals, or their orphaned offspring, to rehabilitate them. Their residents include lots of Tasmanian devils, some brain damaged that can only walk in one direction, a pair of wombat orphans, a collection of quite lazy kangaroos and lots of screechy birds.
We also saw an intubated parrot have his wing operated on. Andrew got carried away by all the animals and decided to buy a roadtrip mascot for our car, Tazzie.
Tazzie now sitting front and centre, we carried on our journey to Freycinet. In Freycinet we went for a walk to Wineglass Bay, during which we encountered some wild wallabies, for yet more picturesque views.
We left Freycinet the next morning, heading for the Bay of Fires, stopping by the Bicheno Blow-hole on the wave. It’s a rock formation that spouts water out when a big wave hits.
It was wet and windy that day, which was good for blow-hole viewing, but not ideal for the rest of our activities. It was also less than ideal that we’d forgetten to bring any lunch with us, and even less ideal than that, was that Andrew had staged a TimTam intervention on Frances in the shop that morning, so we also snack deficient. A couple of makeshift crisp sandwiches later, we started speed dashiny in and out of the car at various scenic lookouts around the bay. All of which we still very impressive.
We drove on to Launceston that night, where we discovered the truly least ideal fact of the day – we’d misread the AirBnB when we booked, and there wasn’t a kitchen.
This actually turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as it forced us into sampling one of Launceston’s restaurants Cataract. This was one of the most interesting and delicious meals so far. Our main was served to us on a super-heated volcanic rock, with strips of meat that we cooked to our own liking.
We then followed it up with two puddings – all the profits were going to the bushfire relief, so we obviously couldn’t say no.
For our last day in Tasmania, we headed over to another national park – Cradle Mountain. The weather had improved drastically, and this was probably our favourite bit of Tasmania. We enjoyed another walk around the lake and the base of the mountain.
We ran into trouble on the way out as we discovered our car had been blocked in by some of the locals, but after sorting that headed to drop of our beloved car.
We’re now in Sydney, and are currently writing this outside our AirBnB – which started with a bit of a faff because the smartlock system is broken. We’ll start heading up the east coast in a few days time, but are going to explore a bit of the city before this.
There & Back Again 