Described in one American publication as “An island off the south east coast of Australia”, Tasmania is one of the most beautiful places that we have visited and contrary to US belief is part of Australia. Indeed, one might be forgiven for thinking that it’s a distant and far away country considering that we only met a handful of Australians who had ever been to Tasmania and from the sound of it the majority didn’t intend to for fear of having to deal with “slow” and “backward” people. Well – both of us being from East Anglia we thought we’d fit in just swell so decided to give it a shot.
After a boozy weekend in Melbourne with Maggie and Mitch, we head on the Spirit of Tasmania II overnight ferry to Devonport. After a terrible sleep on the ferry we headed west to the comically named town of Penguin. To see a penguin. A big one at that.
- Fran and the penguin, in Penguin
Fran now all excited after the penguin experience, we went to visit a cheese factory for brunch (bear in mind that it’s still only 10:00am by this point). Needless to say, I had to graze through all of the thirty cheeses before I came to the conclusion that Tasmania does indeed make good cheese and thank god, because the rest of the country can’t even come up with a name for cheddar other than “Tasty”. I hate to think what the others taste like.
- Nige and cheese!
We were expecting rain in Tassie and we didn’t have to wait long. The rest of the day it rained, so we paid a visit to The Nut in Stanley (Google it – it’s just a big flat hill) and the following day we head through Cradle Mountain country. Kinda like the Lake District in the UK but without lakes. It was very picturesque indeed and we were beginning to love this place. After the rolling green fields and cows of Cradle Country, we hit the Western Wilderness – a World Heritage area of, well, wilderness. Camping in near isolation by the side of a lake hundreds of km from civilisation was quite an experience considering we’d not been tempted by the mainland outback.
West Coast wilderness
Betty in the wilderness
Lake Burbury
View from The Nut in Stanley
For many the main reason to visit Tasmania, Port Arthur was as close as you can get to cultural history of Modern Australia. Port Aurthur was one of the most gruesome penitentiaries in Australia in the early to mid 19th century. (And there were many prisons, trust me).
Port Arthur penitentiary
Hunter Street Wharf in Hobart
Fran and I spent an interesting day mooching around Port Arthur before returning to Hobart in order to experience the culinary delights that it has to offer. Renowned for its cuisine, Hobart offers the visitor many waterfront restaurants and bars to choose from. Not being able to stretch to the price of many, we opted for a posh sit down fish and chips which was a great idea – turned out to be the best fish and chips that we’d had on the travels so far (beating all of New Zealand’s hands down!)
Still riding the high from our previous nights fishy wonder, we head north along the east coast to the Freycinet National Park – a very heavily visited National Park in Tasmania. We took in a 10km walk around the peninsula, up to lookouts, over beaches and through “face fly hell” to get back to camp. If you’ve ever visited the southern half of Australia in hot weather, you will know about the persistent face flies. (Bill Bryson descibes them candidly in Down Under)
Wineglass Bay from the lookout
Our last day on Tasmania wasn’t so great. A case of hanging around for the ferry, the daunting thought of another night in the world’s most uncomfortable sleeper seats looming over us and playing mini golf to kill time. Despite that, there is no debate that Fran and I thoroughly enjoyed Tasmania – probably our favourite part of Australia and it definately is one of the country’s hidden gems. (We were surprised to find that it was 12 hrs by ferry!)
Upon returning to mainland Australia, we head to Mornington with Miles and Nanna (two friends of my Mums and incidentally Miles was one of the leaders at Bungay Scout Group when I was there!). What we didn’t know is that Betty was starting to suffer from a clutch issue and that we would be staying at Miles and Nanna’s place for rather longer than expected. ABSOLUTELY NO PROBLEM though! They were the best hosts and we can’t be grateful enough for Nanna’s endless cups of tea, the comfiest beds for months (we’d spent months of sleeping in vans by this point!) and the best Danish pastry I’ve ever tasted. Thanks Miles also for knocking up a wonderful BBQ lamb – something you can’t do on the rubbish campsite BBQs.
Mornington peninsula runs to the south east of Melbourne, after St Kilda and on the way to Philip Island. It apparently has about three thousand golf courses and more restaurants than houses. I may be exaggerating, but you get the jist. Seems like a convenient place to chill out with your golf clubs, tennis racket and Ford Carpi. Oh, and occasionally I think Miles went to work 
BBQ at Miles and Nannas!
