The Blister Blog: Tasmania - Out Back of the Outback

On January 5th, after having driven over 1200 miles, I returned the "hire car" to Sydney, popped out to the airport and caught an afternoon flight to Hobart. Upon arrival, I hired another car (the airport is a ways out of the city) and sought accommodations for the night. The drive into the city wasn't like the drive from DIA. There was very little traffic and almost no buildings, much less housing.

The Tasman Bridge. Electronic signage changes the directionality of the six lanes to accommodate greater traffic flow into or out of the city. Cheaper and faster than setting concrete barriers, and people seem to adjust to it without much difficulty. There was a surprising amount of traffic leaving the city at the end of the workday. With the paucity of housing I saw on the way in from the airport, where the heck were all the people going???

I hadn't made room reservations ahead of time, and as luck would have it the two hostels I found in the phone book did not have openings. So I stayed in a motel, which wasn't that far over my budget. The next day, I toured the city a bit, and on the second day began a 1400 mile round trip through several national parks.

On the way to taking the picture of the bridge, I passed Government House. Where the Governor lives. The grounds were marked "Private," but the gate was open and people were driving in. It is located very near to the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens, so maybe they were looking for parking.

The Hobart harbour is surrounded by hills. The streets, therefore, are some of the more unique I encountered. Driving on the left, to get to a house on this street you go downhill on one side of the street, and to return you go uphill on the other side. Literally. I should have taken a picture of another street which cut across the hill, rather than following it down and up. Each side of the street was on a different level, with a fence between the lanes.

The harbour area was a good place to find food and tour boats. One of these tall ships sailed into Wineglass Bay when I hiked there (picture later).

Tasmania is pretty much one huge national park. Virtually the entire southwestern portion of the state is wilderness. A two hour drive north of the city is Freycinet (fray-shih-NAY) National Park, one of the first for Tasmania and one of the most popular (probably because of its proximity to Hobart). The Park campground was full, as is usual at this time of year, so I was directed to a free camping area a ways north at Friendly Beach. I got there early enough to be able to watch the surf for a few hours before sunset. The first shot is of one of the beaches inside the park proper.

The view from my campsite at Isaac's Point on Friendly Beach.

When the surf pounds the beach, sand is stirred into the foam. This creates a rather long-lasting "bubble bath." On the eastern coast of Australia, the storms offshore were so severe in late November that the foam was over 6 feet thick, and moved with a wave action all its own. Lifeguards had to chase people out of it because of its depth and the fact that you can't swim in foam.