Wilson's Promontory (the Prom)

Before Tassie, and even before exams started Barry another friend Meiko and I went to do Wilsons Prom in a weekend. We probably couldn’t have picked a better weekend as the weather was clear yet not too warm. This is surprising because this whole trip (car, capsite, tent and food) was planned in just under three days. Like the last two trips this one is in bullets:

DAY ONE:
• 2 hours drive from Melbourne east to Wilson prom, the most southerly tip of the Australian continent (excluding Tasmania).
• Wilsons prom is a huge national park, with an entrance at one end, a winding road down the middle to Tidal River, a fairly large camp site, at the other end.
• The prom is the largest coastal national park in Victoria, combining natural wildlife and a mix of sclerophyll and cool temperate rain forrest.
• In 2005, a portion of it (mostly along the east side of mount Oberon) was burnt by a wild fire and the traces of it still exist today, though the green has grown back.
• At the campsite it took a good 45 minutes to set up this new tent Barry had bought from Big W (basically wal*mart).
• After those shenanigans we took a walk up mount Oberon to the lookout point for some awesome views down on Tidal River, and further down to the south where the light house marks the tip.
• The idea was after that to take the walk west of Tidal River to see the sun set along Squeak Beach (that squeaky sand again). We got part way and saw a wild kangaroo and wombat on the way.
• That night we make shifted a barbeque dinner and played some card games into the night.
• Around 11 we took a walk down the beach to try and see some stars (I still haven’t beaten Phillip Island…but I didn’t go to the outback). We ran into about 3 wombats on the way, bringing that nights total up to about 6.
• There was a really awesome warm wind coming off the sea while we sat outside, but later at night that wind turned pretty strong and the tent (which probably wasn’t built right) took a battering
• We got up about three times to readjust tent pegs, the tent at some points was flat on us from the wind.DAY TWO:
• The night before while eating dinner we had talked to a guy and he had suggested we take the trail down to Sealer Cove. The trail goes from about the centre of the Prom, out to the east coast.
• Its also 10 km.
• One way.
• Despite its length, which really wasn’t that bad looking back, the walk was actually really nice beginning in the scorched rock and trees below Mt Oberon down into sclerophyll forest and further down into cool temperate rainforest and alternating between the two after that (shades of Victoria, Australia).
• We saw two wallabies, but that was it despite numerous occasions of rustling in the woods around us.
• There was a cool stream about halfway down (or up depending on which way you see it), which had really clean and cold water which was just one of the spots we stopped for a rest.
• After just shy of 20 km of walking in a day, we fell into the car and collapsed.
• We then had a good hearty meal of Maccas on the way back (I think we earned it).

Tassie: 'The Kind of Photo You Might Use as a Screen Saver'

(Continued from ‘Welcome to Another Beautiful Day in Paradise’)

Day Five:
• The second half of the 6 day tour follows the east coast down to Hobart. As we awoke the Spirit of Tasmania II was docking from its trip from Melbourne.
• After breakfast at the Elizabeth Town Café for breakfast, we exchanged travelers from those doing the west coast for those doing the east coast. With three others doing the entire six days like myself.
• The ETC was about half way between davenport and Launceston. At Launceston we stopped at Cataract Gorge.
• At Ledgerwood we stopped to see the chainsaw carvings of Eddie Freeman to honor the soldiers of WWI (and ‘trim’ some annoying trees for the town).
• Through the farm land we entered cool temperate rainforest again to see St. Columba falls—90 meters of waterfall.
• Out to the coast and to 2009’s Lonely Planet Tourist Destination of the Year, the Bay of Fires. With white sands and bright blue-turquoise waters, countered by the red rocks it’s easy to see why. However it rained the entire time we were there.
• That night we stayed at Bicheno (bick-en-oh), slightly further down the coast.

Day Six:
• The rain hadn’t stopped that night, and the east coast is supposedly substantially better than the west for days of rain a year.
• We stopped quickly at the Bicheno blowhole on the rocks of the shore.
• With rain still coming down hard we arrived on the Fraycinet Peninsular and National Park to see Wineglass Bay (the east coasts most iconic sight). Here it is:• I swear its there…somewhere.
• On our way down the to the Tasman peninsular along the coast we took a short cut through sclerophyll forest, along a fairly good dirt track—it is adventure tours after all.
• We arrived in Port Arthur that night, the most notorious convict station in Tasmania and probably Australia.
• Me and Mary, someone else who was doing the whole six days, took a ghost tour of the supposedly haunted place.
• The Separate Prison was perhaps the scariest place, the doors banging and draft from open windows didn’t help.
• After raining most of the day, it had stopped by the evening, and was clearing.

Day Seven:
• With clear skies in the morning we had a chance to see the dolerite columns on the coast, and remarkable cave (but the trail to it was closed—apparently its remarkable)
• We had time to explore the penal colony known as Port Arthur.
• With only a short time, we had a tour as well as time to look around ourselves with a guide book.
• Lunch back at the ATA accommodation (fittingly named ‘the penitentiary’) before going to see some Tasmania Devils have their lunch.
• Khani says he never misses the devils feeding, and when you watch them you can understand why.
• They’re unbelievably cute marsupials given their vicious nature and the jaw strength second only to the salty crocodile—strong enough to bite through bone.
• Tasmanian Devils are only found wild in Tasmania now, and due to a transferable cancer known as devil facial tumor disease were recently marked as an endangered species (May 2008).• The centre also had a dancing and talking corellas, and hand feeding kangaroos and wallabies.
• As we left it began to rain, and rained the entire trip back to Hobart to conclude the tour.
• That night I walked out along to battery point, on the west side of Hobart.

Day Eight:
• If everything had been right I would have come home on this day, but because of an error by STA Travel quoting six a six night tour instead of 5, I had an extra day in Hobart.
• This was actually good because I didn’t get to see much of Tasmania’s capital city on my first night.
• In the morning the sky was clear again and I went to the Salamanca Market, the most beautiful market in the world. The whole street is lined with tents and stalls, below the sandstone buildings of Salamanca Street and Mt wellington in the background.
• After a good while in the market I went to the Tasmania Museum for a couple of hours.
• Following that I took a walk up to the botanical gardens. I missed the actual gardens the first time through, walking up through the soldier’s avenue, queen’s domain. On the way down (Hobart is built on a hill) I managed to find the actual gardens—much smaller than any of the other state’s.
• Somehow I managed to stumble upon the site of Beaumarie’s Zoo, famously the last place of known existence for the Thylacine (or Tasmania Tiger). It’s now supposedly extinct, though no one can prove either way.
• With that my last day in Tasmania ended, the next morning was my flight with pickup at 7am.

6 nights and 475 pictures and movies later my time in Tasmania was over and I had to head back to Melbourne to finish my exams. The whole trip was enjoyable, but the west coast substantially more that the east. Perhaps it was the weather, the things we did or the other people on the tour, but the west coast was truly spectacular, while the east coast was just good.
Oh, and the names of these two posts come from sayings Khani said pretty much every day.

Tassie: 'Welcome to Another Beautiful Day in Paradise'

Just got back from another quick trip (8 days), during the exam period. With so much time between exams—2 weeks between the last and the next—it was easy to schedule something in between, and something I had wanted to do since starting planning trips was Tasmania. A state of Australia (one of eight), but an island unto itself separated from the mainland country-continent, to its self. Like the great ocean road, ill do all of Tassie in bullet form.

Day One:
• I left from Melbourne around midday
• The flight was unbelievably short, from Melbourne to near the southern tip of Tasmania, Hobart. Just 5 songs on my iPod. And some amazing sights of Melbourne as it was a fairly clear day.
• Hobart wasn’t as clear, with colder temperatures (it was 30 the day before in Melbourne, then around 15 in Hobart) and rain threatening.
• I stayed in Montgomery’s YHA (monty’s) that night, which is a really nice establishment apart from being on the third floor.

Day Two:
• 6.35 pickup and the beginning of the first half of the trip, up the west coast.
• I went with Adventure Tours Australia, which offers a 6 day trip consisting of two 3 day parts (which can be taken singularly).
• The tour guide for the entirety of the trip was Khani, a friendly and energetic guy with stories galore and knowledge to boot.
• First stop was Mt field national park, where we walked through the tour trees and visited horseshoe and Russell falls.
• After a quick lunch, we stopped at Lake St Clair, the deepest lake in Australia.
• Continuing up the west coast we stopped at the second purest water source in the world, the Franklin River.
• Later that afternoon we pushed over the top of the mountain ranges, and down into the mining communities of the west coast.
• We ended the day in the town of Strahan (pronounced ‘strawn’), on the edge of the Macquarie Harbour (larger than the Sydney harbor and home of Sarah Island, a former convict station referred to as hell on earth)
• That night’s accommodation, and the next 4 nights (save one), was ATA owned—this just happened to be the newest and best.
• Khani is also an accomplished didgeridoo player

Day Three:
• It had been cloudy the day before, and we awoke to rain filled skies. Not surprising as the west coast of Tassie get about 300 days of rain a year.
• We took a walk to another waterfall that morning, Hogarth falls; 20 mins inland through cool temperate rain forest.
• After that a quick walk around Strahan, especially the wood centre (Sarah island convicts initially harvested the prized and old Huon pine)
• The Macquarie harbor’s entrance is narrow and shallow, and referred to hells gates. We went there next for a walk along the sand to the channel and look out to the southern ocean.
• A quick lunch in Zeehan then further up towards Cradle Mountain.
• By then the clouds were clearing and the clouds were lifting. With the west coasts reputation of 1 out of 7 nice days, we took the opportunity to get a good photo of Cradle Mountain across dove lake—Tassie’s most iconic land feature.
• We stopped at Waldheim, Gustav Weindorfer’s cottage. From there and on the way out of the park we saw 15 wombats, which is a record.
• Accommodation that night was in cabins inside the cradle mountain park.

Day Four:
• The weather held (in fact it was better) and in the morning we were able to take the more adventurous walk up to Marion’s Lookout from Dove Lake for an unobstructed view of Cradle Mountain.
• It had snowed (yea, in Australia) a couple of days before and there was still snow on the ground at Marions Lookout and up to the summit of Cradle Mountain.
• After lunch in Cradle Mountain we headed further north through the town of murals, Sheffield.
• The next town over was the town of topiary, Railton.
• The penultimate stop of the day was at Anver’s house of chocolate in Latrobe.
• Finally in Davenport we went to the coast to look out over the bass straight, staying in ATA accommodation to end the first half of the tour.
• As the sun set, the Spirit of Tasmania I, pulled away from dock for its trip to Melbourne.

AusTour 17: Kangaroo Island

aka the most unplanned and inefficient part of the entire trip. I had decided to go to kangaroo island on a whim—it was in the vicinity of Adelaide and was relatively easy to get to. What I didn’t decide on was how exactly I would get around such a large island. Most people rent cars or take tours to see the entire island. Me, I didn’t. Regardless of this deficiency I decided to treat Kangaroo Island as a day to relax, to take it slow for once on the trip.
The day began with a 6:45am bus from Adelaide bus terminal to make a ferry at 9. The bus and ferry were run by the same company, sea link. The bus driver was friendly even for such an hour and gave some pretty good commentary coming out of Adelaide and down through the valleys and wine (and olive) valleys. I’m sure it was interesting but I don’t remember much about it, partially and mostly because it was SO GAWD DAMN EARLY IN THE MORNING. Anyway when the bus got to the 45 min ferry line I saw the high and rough seas, groaned and took a travel sick pill before hiding in the centre of the ship away from anything that proved just how much we were rocking. Arriving in one piece and without any spillages, I disembarked to find a place to drop my stuff. Id seen the YHA from the ship so knew it wasn’t far and when I got there I found my key on the counter and let myself into my room. The owner of the hostel sprang up from nowhere after about five minutes and she was really nice and helpful. With my bags stowed in my room of six for one (!) I went ‘into town,’ what I mean by that is I went into the two roads that run parallel to form Penneshaw. The lady at the info desk was entirely unhelpful and arrogant so I left with little more than a map. With it only being about 11am I went into the only café in town, ordered a cup of tea and sat down with the days paper (how Bill Byrson!).
The owner of Kangaroo Island YHA had told me about a track along the coast and out to the ruins of a house. I decided I would walk that, having nothing else to do and no way to get anywhere else. The walk was pleseant and quiet, the sun was warm and the sky clear. I stumbled upon a group of wallabies and spent a while with them (probably most to their distress). It was a very casual wonder up and along the cliffs, in no hurry and stopping often to sit and look out to sea or across the hills. There was no hurry that had existed in the past 10 days, so it was entirely relaxing just to be able to go as fast or slow as I wanted. On the way back I saw some dolphins just off shore and watched them before they disappeared.
Back in Penneshaw I sat on the beach just taking in the atmosphere and basking in the sun for the remaining part of the afternoon. Again, incredibly relaxing atmosphere. After dinner there was a walk around the little penguin’s habitat for incredibly cheap. Unfortunately their colony has been decimated by seals eating the returning penguins so they weren’t nearly as loud or numerous as their Phillip Island cousins. After that I went across the road back to the YHA where I talked with 2 of the 4 other people staying there for a good while in the sitting room before heading to bed to depart the next morning at 11 back to Adelaide.
Kangaroo Island: the Complete Review
Yeah, I didn’t do anything really, but that was good. In the end that’s what I really wanted—not another action packed adventure. It’s definitively worth a visit if you do it right, there are lots of attractions on this quarantined island, they’re just spread out. With that in mind ill have to plan something better and come back to really explore the island.

AusTour 12: Sydney Day Three

Over exhausted and possibly with a mild case of heat exhaustion the next day dawned. The good news was it was going to be a nice day again—in fact it was going to hit 30 degrees centigrade. Our first stop was 2 hours on bicycles around Manly. Manly is a short ferry ride (one of Sydney’s 11 ferries named after the 11 ships in the first fleet to come to Australia in 1787—thanks Rocks tour!). In fact most of the locations outside Sydney are accessible by ferry either run by Sydney Ferries or the faster HabourCat’s. Manly is decidedly a beach culture; a thin strip is bordered on both sides by beaches and is a popular destination for Sydney day trippers. I should mention that it took us a good amount of time, a tour of Manly’s Ocean World (mucho insignificant compared to the Sydney aquarium we had seen the night before), a conversation with an old lady and a trip to the visitor centre before we actually found the bike place. There was no hassle to rent the bikes though and we made our way out along a suggested route by the bike shop man (a web designer/marketing student in uni…sounds vaguely familiar…). This route though was uphill most of the way, and by the time we got the top of the hill it was about time to go back down hill. After some creative directions by myself we got a quick tour of most of the city streets in Manly and visit to the beaches on both sides. After the ferry ride back from manly we made some impromptu decisions after missing the next schedule attractions (Barry’s fault for getting the location wrong) and got on the ferry to Darling Harbour. Essentially there are two sides to Sydney, the main harbour or circular quay where the Rocks, Opera House and Bridge are, and the secondary harbour (darling harbour) home of star city, plenty of clubs and restaurants, the aquarium, the national maritime museum and our next attraction Wildlife World.

Wildlife World is essentially the home of all critters Australian in Sydney (possibly apart from Tonga Zoo). Kangaroos, wallabies, spiders, snakes, koala’s, birds, and nocturnal’s (fact: there are more animals active at night in Australia than at day) etc. following Wildlife World we had some down time (thank god) before a night-time observatory tour at 830. The one hindrance to this was we needed to eat, and no where was open/ or even existed. It was absurd how we could be walking for 45 mins straight without passing a single restaurant open on a Sunday night. We would eventually settle for hungry jacks—fast food yum!

The observatory started with a free walk through the museum part of the observatory with some of the old telescopes and time keepers. There were some really fascinating objects in its collection but before we had time to see it all we were rounded up for a look at the stars. The observatory has two telescopes. The first was an old-fashioned one, hand adjusted through which we looked at Jupiter rising into the sky. The second was a more high-tech computer adjusted telescope which allowed us to see the double star that’s part of the Southern Cross. It was in this dome enclosure we found that the acoustics were just right now hear the person directly across from (even if they were whispering) you as if they were standing just behind you. It was bizarre and Barry and I had some fun with it before I said something too loud next to tour leader where he explained it and everyone caught on. The final part was a 3D star experience which proceeded to show just how small you were in comparison with the rest of the universe. I think I fell asleep near the end.

I eagerly embraced the bed when we returned that night before getting up for our fourth and last day in Sydney.

Cairns

Although my time in Cairns was short lived (due to my insane travels described below) it was a good time. Originally scheduled for a 3 day orientations weekend, with trips to the Great Barrier Reef and the rainforest, I only spent 1 and a half days missing the Great Barrier Reef. I did get to go to the rainforest though, to a place called Rainforestation that was literally 20 minutes outside cairns. Cairns is a cool place in that you can be inside the city with 10+ story buildings, nightclubs, malls and restaurants then 10 minutes outside be surrounded by sugarcane (and sugarcane toads—which it’s the law to kill on sight) and 10 minutes further and up a mountain to be in the rainforest. With a zoo-like animal sanctuary, actives like how to throw a boomerang and play a didgeridoo with aborigines, and army duck tours through a rainforest set-up it was a quick immersion into Australia and Australia’s wildlife and plant life. The wildlife park was probably the best part of the day with kangaroo’s up-close, koala’s, wombats, barramundi, crocodiles, cassowary, snakes, and a lot of the other animals in Australia that can and will kill you (and the signs made sure you knew it). I spent the rest of my brief time in cairns touring the small town/city enjoying the cultural intricacies of Australian life. Oh, and I saw Dark Night with a bunch of people (yeh, 2 days before its release in America).