FIRST HOLIDAY FOR 5 YEARS

 The Old Girl and I are used to travelling. We have great memories of trips in New Zealand and overseas on business and on holiday. We have our favourites (France and Italy) that we go back to but are not averse to experimenting with lots of other locations.

Over the last few years there have been some changes.

• My giving up my job put paid to the business travel (and a lot of discretionary income).
• The Old Girl changed jobs from International marketing to Domestic marketing.
• We had some personal tragedies.

This November we finally got around to having a trip away together. 9 days in Tasmania. The first holiday for 5 years.

Why Tasmania?

We have both, separately or together, travelled through Australia and have loved it. I used to do a lot of business there which took me to Western Australia, South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales on a very frequent basis. The Old Girl used to travel to Queensland, Victoria and New South Wales on business a lot too. We have holidayed a lot in those states as well but had never been to Tasmania.

My dad had talked about Tasmania years ago. I don't think he had ever been there but its possible that some ancestors had been. His father, my grandfather, was born in Victoria. His parents, my great grand parents, had settled there after moving from Nova Scotia. Their parents had gone to Nova Scotia from Torridon on the West coast of Scotland.

Loch Torridon. Looks a lot like the view out of my window in Whangarei Heads New Zealand. Weird genetic memory or what?

The family farmland in Victoria was named Tullamarine, now the site of Melbourne airport.

THEN

NOW

My only other knowledge of Tasmania was the 1996 massacre at Port Arthur near Hobart when a madman named Martin Bryant murdered 35 people and wounded 26 (men, women and children). I was in Adelaide on business at the time and remember watching it on TV News. I didn't know at the time but a friend of mine, Jason Winter a New Zealand winemaker was one of the victims, shot dead in front of his wife and child.

I had no desire to go to Tasmania for many years after that.

Now though, we just wanted to visit somewhere quiet and unassuming. Tasmania has that to offer in spades. It was like New Zealand was 30 years ago or more before we were hell-bent on catching up to the rest of the world.

Tasmania, although being part of a much bigger and busier country has reconciled itself to not having to emulate USA, Europe and the mainland. It just conducts day to day activities at a sensible pace.
New Zealand could learn a lot from this.
Sure it has its problems, but friendliness, courtesy, relaxation and quality of life was much more in evidence than I see here.

A friendly local

But like anywhere I guess it doesn't pay to upset them.

I just told him Whangarei Heads is just as beautiful as Freycinet Peninsular

OK. Now that I have captured you, to follow is a slide show of our trip.

Only 350 slides.......






........... just kidding. I'll save that for when you visit.

Here's a 'snapshot' of our trip:

Travel

Air New Zealand and Virgin Australia. Auckland/Melbourne/Launceston out
Hobart/Melbourne/Auckland back.
Unfortunately no direct flights and no really cheap ones either.

Rental car

Europcar. Really cheap - AUD180 for a week although it was a tiny Holden Barina that hardly went up hills. The roads in Tasmania are narrow though so a small car was adequate.



Accommodation

Convent in Launceston. Old and quaint which matches us. Was great for 3 nights.

The Old Girl on the balcony outside our room. Note that I kept well away in case a bolt of lightning struck her down

Cottages in Swansea for 3 nights. Really nice with plenty of room.

Serviced apartment in Hobart for 2 nights. Right in the centre so handy but a bit noisy.

Activities

Beaches and coast

Blow-hole at Bichenau

Wine Glass Bay at Freycinet

Spikey Bay at Swansea

Wildlife

Wombat (The Old Girl's favourite animal. She likes fat ugly things ....hey she says she likes me too!)

Tasmanian Devil

Koala

Cheeky parrot

Friendly wallaby

Beautifully coloured parrot

Tiger snake. This one was in an enclosure but you can find your own by walking in the brush and bush.

Albino peacock. Well this is Tasmania after all. I suppose the coloured ones were relocated to Flinders Island along with the aborigines.

Unusual sights

Carved trees at Legerwood.
A great story this. To commemorate family members killed on the battlefields in France after WW1, pine trees were planted, one for each of the fallen.
After 80 plus years the trees were rotting and the council decided to cut them down. The locals objected and so commissioned an artist to make sculptures on the still living stumps. He used a chainsaw!
The figures (dozens of them) represent things about the dead person - job, family, hobbies, interests etc. Each tree stump has a plaque telling of the soldier, where he died, what awards he won etc and there is a gravestone memorial at the foot of the tree.

That's all that google blogs will let me upload.



I might bore you later with the river cruises, canyon walks, Freycinet Peninsular walks and the outstanding MONA gallery at Hobart