Dirty Little Devils, Down in Tasmania.
No Tasmanian Devil spottings on this trip but we did see one of these little guys!
A Quoll. A skitterish little creature we spotted jetting across the road in the evening causing two Americans to squeal/yell with excitement because HAVE YOU EVER EVEN HEARD ABOUT ONE OF THESE?! "White with black spots!" "No! Black with white spots!" Thankfully it gave us something to talk about the rest of the drive and even though we have smart phones and could have settled the issue, it was much more fun to debate.
I think this story will be best told with pictures. And the occasional video. Mostly because I'm exhausted and have a few other important things on the mind :) HERE WE GO!
Our plane landed late and we luckily caught the end of Dark Mofo, an event put on by Hobart to get the city buzzing in the dead of winter. It was awesome! First up was this GIANT beam of light shining high into the sky! 10 miles or something, folks! Anyway, rad stuff so we drove the car directly towards it and figured we'd go from there. Totally worth it:
I'm beginning to wonder what I was thinking putting the entire trip into one post. Le' sigh. I'm now writing for myself at this point! ;) Anyway, off to Chris' parents house (one of David's coworkers, and thank you for the hospitality!) for a chat and rest before kicking off tomorrow.
We spent the night in Queenstown, rolling in late and finding ourselves in a TINY, old mining town. Talk about hanging on by a thread. You can see how it would be a bustle in the summer, but middle of winter this place was a graveyard. Anyway, next morning we zoomed back up the mountain the way we came because we had a feeling the view would be rad. It was! :)
Still on our way to Cradle Mountain and the frost was THICK! You could tell the sun hadn't hit some sections for days causing this man to look like it may as well be a Christmas scene! It's the shirt. :)
It was a wonderful little hike around the lake that borders the mountain and we spent the afternoon toodling around making silly noises and dreaming of bigger mountains :) Nah, it was actually really neat and more than once talked about how lucky we were to be there and how much we missed you guys. So here's a homage TO YOU:
Back in the car on our way to Launceston, a town which turned out to be my favorite of the trip and one of David's as well, we drove through some of the most beautiful countryside not unlike Montana and New Zealand. There seems to be a reoccurring theme there for us :) I wouldn't have minded camping up in this neck of the woods for the remainder of the trip one bit!
After that blimp, we happened across a beautiful gorge that was not unlike the Spokane river and Columbia Gorge all in one. Of course we must hike up it! At the top of the river is a huge swimming hold complete with a suspension bridge and the original gazebo put there by the community way back in the 1800's. All the pictures of the original garden parties are on exhibit there and you can feel yourself step back in time...
Next up, going in to our last full day, we hit Wineglass Bay. Rated in the Top 10 Beaches by CNN, we felt pretty stoked to be there and spent the night in the nearest town just because.
A Quoll. A skitterish little creature we spotted jetting across the road in the evening causing two Americans to squeal/yell with excitement because HAVE YOU EVER EVEN HEARD ABOUT ONE OF THESE?! "White with black spots!" "No! Black with white spots!" Thankfully it gave us something to talk about the rest of the drive and even though we have smart phones and could have settled the issue, it was much more fun to debate.
I think this story will be best told with pictures. And the occasional video. Mostly because I'm exhausted and have a few other important things on the mind :) HERE WE GO!
Clockwise was the theme here. Starting down in Hobart and working our way around and back down again!
A couple weeks ahead of the trip we were spending our nights reading all the Lonely Planets that litter our bookshelves and set about finding what exactly we wanted to see in Taz. I think we pretty much did it all! Minus Port Arthur, but it's close enough to Hobart that if we ever go back we'll be able to skip over there pretty quickly. Not knowing if we'd ever be back there we set an itinerary that everyone told us was too ambitious but we wanted to see it all!
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| Dark Mofo = rad, small community event, with a lot of tasteful sponsorship. Good stuff, folks. |
Our first day we headed to MONA (The Museum of Old and New Art) to get a taste of what everyone was talking about. Some people go to Tasmania JUST for MONA. Seriously, they'll fly into Tasmania in the morning, visit the museum, and then fly home. Nutso. At any rate, a quick 1:30 of some of the neat/weird stuff we saw. The bit at the end was our favorite exhibit :)
THIS IS A KITTEN. Made into a rug. And that's a man enjoying himself on an indoor trampoline that plays music with every bounce! And what follows is some art.
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| Where's the Lorax?! |
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| Standing in a dark room looking up into a mirror. |
We sell Moo Brew in the bottle shop, and David and I had a DELICIOUS porter of theirs the night before, so when we saw that the brewery was out at MONA, we did our civil duty and had a tasting. YUM. Then I fell in love with an all too expensive cook book and was advised by our server to take photos of my favorite recipes to avoid being sad for never being someone who spends $50 on a cook book. Done and done, thank you sir. And thank you David for your phone :)
With two breakfasts, a beer tasting and a museum under our belts, we headed out West to begin our tour of Tasmania! The roads are small, just like New Zealand or Montana. Two lanes and WINDY. Not wind, but wind. No whipping currents of air. Just curves in the road that cause you to drive incredible slow making what looks like a 3 hour drive = 5. Anyway, all the sudden we spot these HUGE pipes and decided to follow them to THIS:
See the ones across the canyon as well?! By the time the water in these pipes reaches the bay it has generated power EIGHT times. Awesome stuff!
I can't believe I'm not out of the car. It was freezing and I was content taking in the scene from my warm pilot's chair. A captain must never abandon his ship!
The sun was hitting the horizon around 4:30 because of the Winter Solstice and luckily we just happened down a small road that led us to Lake St. Claire. Holy hell, we cashed in on some karma here! Either that or I'm just ridiculously good at noticing small roads and deciding to drive down them because David likes water and a sign said something about a lake. Either way, BIG WIN for us!
Back into town and off again on our way to Cradle Mountain. Only one wrong turn that caused us a 40 minute delay, but the radio was on and we managed to find dried bread and cold bacon sandwiches at a small "cafe" along 200 miles of road. SERIOUSLY.
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| Cool mining carts! |
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| Our first Tasmanian mountain range! |
We see signs for "Cradle Mountain", but we aren't sure if we see Cradle Mountain...
However, pretty soon, we don't care because we got to see a WOMBAT!
And then we found Cradle Mountain :)
It was a wonderful little hike around the lake that borders the mountain and we spent the afternoon toodling around making silly noises and dreaming of bigger mountains :) Nah, it was actually really neat and more than once talked about how lucky we were to be there and how much we missed you guys. So here's a homage TO YOU:
Back in the car on our way to Launceston, a town which turned out to be my favorite of the trip and one of David's as well, we drove through some of the most beautiful countryside not unlike Montana and New Zealand. There seems to be a reoccurring theme there for us :) I wouldn't have minded camping up in this neck of the woods for the remainder of the trip one bit!
After that blimp, we happened across a beautiful gorge that was not unlike the Spokane river and Columbia Gorge all in one. Of course we must hike up it! At the top of the river is a huge swimming hold complete with a suspension bridge and the original gazebo put there by the community way back in the 1800's. All the pictures of the original garden parties are on exhibit there and you can feel yourself step back in time...
Next up, going in to our last full day, we hit Wineglass Bay. Rated in the Top 10 Beaches by CNN, we felt pretty stoked to be there and spent the night in the nearest town just because.
Had a run-in with the local riff raff in the parking lot....
That night we cleaned out the snacks in the car with a sunset picnic on the beach and wondering what we were going to do the rest of the night because it was only just 5 o'clock and the town is ASLEEP!
I'm pooped! It's sort of lame to leave you with nothing for the best part of the trip, but I have got to get some shut eye! We woke up early to make sunrise down at Wineglass Bay and were treated to an amazing moon-set and rad sunrise clouds. The hike down to the beach took about an hour and we spent at least 2 just enjoying ourselves collecting shells, putting our feet in the water and watching the kangaroos hop around. ROUGH! :)
I touched my first piece of coral. It was awesome! And squishy. Night kids!