Last year about this time I was heading back to Brisbane, QLD from Tasmania. Tasmania is an absolutely amazing place. Thinking Australia, automatically people think it's going to be warm; but, Tasmania stays around the same temperature year round, which actually isn't all that warm, I ended up having to buy an extra long sleeved shirt while down there!
It was one of my favourite parts of the working holiday I did though. Besides being able to meet and stay with family in Brisbane of course. Tasmania was fun though because it is quite the quiet place and reminded me much of home, not in the wildlife or scenery, but the people and general air of the Australian state.
While there my friend and I did a tour of the island with "Adventure Tours Tasmania." We hiked a trail on Cradle Mountain, which we couldn't see through the rain; but, I trust it looked like its postcard. In fact I think it rained almost every day we were there. This didn't dampen the experience whatsoever.
While at Cradle Mountain I discovered my absolute favourite animal... well I think it might be tied with a tapir, but I've never seen a tapir in person, so the wombat has become my favourite animal. While walking along various paths around the campground we were staying in we came across this animal simply waddling along with not a care in the world. It crawled up and onto the walking path, so along with a few other people; we followed it along to a grassy area. I took a close up photo of it, which to the best of my description is a cross between a dog and a pig... it doesn't sound that cute, but it truly is.
Other neat animals we got to see included an echidna, which is somewhat like a porcupine but vastly different at the same time. It lays eggs, but is a mammal and the spikes covering its back stay in place they do not release like a porcupine. They are quite cute as well with their anteater like nose.
We saw a bunch of wallabies, similar to a kangaroo only much smaller and they have less of a prominent jaw. And, of course, we found Tasmanian devils. These are endangered animals and only come out at night, so we had to go to the Tasmanian devil sanctuary to actually get to see one. Did the Bugs Bunny cartoons ever get it wrong! They're black and white, not brown, and though they are quite fast do not spin.
We went to the Bay of Fires, which is quite beautiful. The bay is covered by rocks with this vibrant red growth on them, lichen. Lichen, a fungus, we were told by the tour guide only grows where the air is free of pollution. It had the neatest affect, making the rocks actually look like they were on fire.
Tassie had a number of interesting land features including these huge sand dunes. Here we jumped off of a number of sand dunes and came across animal tracks. Our tour guide pointed out Tasmanian devil tracks and kangaroo tracks, telling us how you could tell how fast the animal was moving based on stance and tail imprint as kangaroo's use their tails for balance.
In addition to the amazing beaches were beautiful forests, which we were told are thicker than those of the Amazon. This is because Tasmanian forests grow vertically, like normal trees, but also horizontally making areas impassable. This characteristic made the island a perfect spot to build Port Arthur, a penal colony.
Being as I absolutely love history, Port Arthur was one of the highlights of the trip. It was first built as a timber station, but soon came to be home to a number of criminals sent over from Britain. The criminals were then made to do the hard labour of forestry and ship building. It was the perfect spot for a penal colony because there was really no chance of escape. The thick forests were practically impassable and as Port Arthur is located on a peninsula it was surrounded by very cold waters travelling from Antarctica.
The craziest story of an attempted escape included one man's quite imaginative idea. George "Billy" Hunt disguised himself as a kangaroo. He had used a kangaroo hide and covered himself attempting to cover the distance between the penal colony and past the guards along the strip of land connecting the peninsula to mainland Tasmania. As he made his way, hopping like a kangaroo, he was mistaken as the animal and prison guards raised their weapons to fire. Upon seeing this he threw off his disguise and surrendered choosing punishment over possible death.
We toured the sight during the day, but an interesting twist was the ghost tour we went on. Some of the stories were quite creepy and it was a lot of fun to learn about the different ghosts there.
If anyone is considering going to Australia at any point in time I strongly suggest making the trip down to Tassie to have a Cascade and just enjoy the atmosphere there.
