Down Under Down Under
Story and photos by Ted Alan Stedman
I’m standing on a wharf in Tasmania’s capital, Hobart, staring out over Storm Bay and the Tasman Sea beyond, trying to fathom that this maritime outpost is the last stop before Antarctica 1,500 miles due south. It’s hard to imagine, considering the day’s warm Austral sunshine and the Bahama blue water before me. Nearby, though, lies irrefutable evidence, a former Russian icebreaker now laboring as an Antarctic research vessel, its prow scarred from icy clashes in the great Southern Ocean.
This may be the edge-of-the-earth – why the British Crown’s most incorrigible convicts were once re-sentenced to this Australian Alcatraz separated 150 miles from the mainland by the treacherous Bass Straight. Yet the felonious past and geographic isolation seem crazily at odds with Hobart’s gentrified character. The streets are spotless, the handsome stone buildings English prim. Woodsy waterfront shops and sleek seafood restaurants are thriving. Hobart’s trendy district of Salamanca Place, with its galleries, fashionable bars and alfresco cafes, is a hip hangout for urban denizens, not salty seafarers. And “Tassies” themselves? The enduring mainland quips I’d heard about Tasmania being an Aussie Appalachia, a backwater, is a patent bum rap.
“Could be a case of envy,” offers Matt Clark, a local tourism agent I met at the Fish Frenzy Restaurant, when I ask him about the well-worn Tassie jokes. Envy? Who knows? But I do know it’s in Aussies’ DNA to tease. My guess is mainlanders regard Tasmania as Americans revere Alaska: rugged, wild and beautiful with bold streaks of independents who are not shy about preserving their more “nature-based” lifestyle. Which perhaps explains why the northern countrymen are hitting Tasmania in droves these days. The climate here is milder – an anti-Outback, really. The coastline drips with nautical New England-esque charm, a far cry from the mainland’s Great Barrier Reef. And the greener, more rural landscape has sprouted a cornucopia of organic farms, world-class vineyards, epic mountain hiking trails and upscale wilderness lodges – the main reasons that brought me.
I quiz Matt about the “Wilderness, Not Woodchips” bumper stickers I’d seen, and the allover “Tasmania: Adventure Island” tourism brochures that lay out adventure options like meals on a restaurant menu. “Yes, we’re an outdoor lot and enjoy open lands,” he says. More than one-third of Tasmania is protected parks and wilderness, and temperate rainforests cover one-fifth of the island. “Plus we’ve got a real cast of characters: wombats, wallabies, ‘roos, Tasmanian devils – tourists love them.”
The next morning I’m set to get my bearings and stretch my legs after the numbing 9,000-mile flight from the States. Matt offers a singular solution for each with an excursion to the top of Mount Wellington, a 4,166- foot sentinel presiding over the compact city, followed by a brisk 12-plus-mile descent on mountain bikes back to town.
Cycling is huge in Hobart and all of Tasmania. During the warmer December through March Austral months, a steady stream of riders with luggage panniers roll through town on island tours lasting anywhere from a few days to over a month. For the less ambitious and time-strapped, however, the Mount Wellington descent qualifies as one of Hobart’s trademark cruises, and local outfit Island Cycle Tours supplies the shuttle vans, bikes and good-natured guides for our day’s fun.
Tasmania is Australia’s smallest state, about the size of Switzerland, so proximity becomes a wonderful convenience for impulsive travel decisions. After the half-day Mount Wellington ride, Matt and I take a quick, easy drive to the Huon Valley for the annual Taste of the Huon food and wine festival. Tassies love a good outdoor wing-ding, and there is a slew fueled by the region’s stellar vineyards, organic produce, seafood, beef and lamb enterprises.
The drive south from Hobart to Huon Valley is bucolic as they come, with an ephemeral mantle of cooling fog hovering over orchid farms, farmhouses, clapboard boat builder cottages and grazing sheep that all appear locked in a 1940s time warp. Just when I can picture myself sipping lemonade on a front porch with a bespeckled farmer in overalls, the daydreaming skids to a stop. “How’s about a jet boat ride, mate?” Matt asks in an affirmative way as we pull up to dock where midget-sized dragster boats take passengers on high-velocity rides up the Huon River. We suit up with floatation jackets, listen to the safety schpeal by our driver who goes by the name “Motorized Madman,” then rocket off for a zigzagging ride where coming that close to sandbars and protruding logs is the object of the insanity.
“We hit 70 kilometers per hour and our draft is only 4 inches,” Madman nonchalantly informs us as we shoot along the tobacco-colored river (translation: about 45 miles per hour on shallow surfaces the thickness of a wet sponge). We survive intact, we depart and we regain our nerves at the placid Taste of the Huon just down the valley. Funny. One minute you’re on a hell-bent river ride, the next you’re enjoying Tassie pinot noir wines, sliced lamb with mint chutney, and melodic acoustic bands in a setting that would make Martha Stewart proud. Only in Tasmania.
There’s a slight irony when a former convict settlement that housed the worst of the worst criminals becomes a beloved sanctuary for endangered wildlife and native forests, and a near paradise for solitude-seeking hikers wanting to see it all. That, in essence, is Maria Island, an 8- by 12-mile mountainous islet off Tasmania’s east coast that’s become the Crown Jewel of its National Parks system. Aborigines living there were met by English sailors in 1789, then European sealing and whaling camps had the run of the place until 1825, when Maria became a penal settlement. As environmental sensibilities kicked in during the 1960s, the island became a protected national park with relatively few visitors.
I’m learning all this during the one-hour ferry ride across the Mercury Passage. Day trippers can snag a permit and explore Maria Island National Park on their own, but I’ve opted for a more extensive walkabout through the four-day Maria Island Walk tour. Earlier, I’d met Ian Johnstone, the outfit’s owner, who has the sole concession with the Park Service to operate the guided hiking tours. “You’ll find it’s a bit of a Noah’s Ark there,” he said, citing the wombats, wallabies, pademelons (miniature wallabies), kangaroos, Cape Barren geese and other Australian critters thriving in Maria’s protected isolation. “And I think you’ll like our like our wines, too,” added Ian, alluding to the plush backcountry perks in store.
Our group of seven – two Aussie couples, me, and our feisty, thoughtful guides Emma Rowell and Andrew Bissett – land by dory on the beach of Chinaman’s Bay. The scene seems Utopian: a calm, absolutely azure ocean; a paper-white beach strewn with hordes of rainbow colored seashells; the island’s three peaks of Mt. Maria and duo Bishop and Clerk, jutting over 2,300 feet into bands of mist; and an inviting Down Under landscape shaded by a lush forest canopy. It’s Tahiti with eucalyptus trees.
We’re all fitted with lightweight backpacks carrying our personal effects, while Emma and Andrew do the heavy hauling with fresh foods and other necessities they ferry to each of the three permanent tent camps we visit. Our first night’s quarters, the dreamy Casuarina Beach Camp, has all the trappings of a better African safari camp, with cozy tent-like cabins and a large galley tent where recounting the day’s events by candlelight and hoisting numerous cheers provides merriment well into the night. But there’s no mistake this is utterly Australian. Bounding kangaroos, wallabies (the opossum crawling on my tent) and some raucous pre-dawn “koo-koo-koo-koo-koo-kaa-kaa-kaa” choruses by Australia’s laughing kookaburra birds all see to that.
For four days we feel like Robinson Crusoe clones on our own private island, walking, exploring the quirky character – and characters – of this island apart. An overland hike near the island’s southern terminus to Haunted Bay has us following an abruptly vertical trail through a fairy penguin rookery, where miniature penguins pensively stare back from their burrows. At the water’s edge, crusty lich
ens called xanthoria have turned boulders the color of salmon roe. The next day we dip our toes into the sea at Riedle Bay before crossing a narrow isthmus and hiking along five fabulous beaches of Shoal Bay, passing middens – ancient shellfish trash heaps – where Aborigines had once lived.
From our second night’s encampment at White Gums Camp, we walk along the aptly named Painted Cliffs and the mosaic of brilliantly colored natural stone gargoyles. Emma and I break from the group to climb the steep conjoined peaks of Bishop and Clerk. Kangaroos and wallabies are everywhere, and the rare, intimidating Cape Baron geese hold their ground and fend off intruders like us with their formidable three-foot stature and hissing neon green beaks.
We scramble up the peaks’ ramparts and gaze out over the Mercury Passage and the Tasman Sea from our 2,326-foot roost. I see the former convict settlement of Darlington, where we’ll spend our last night on Maria in the restored Victorian dormitory used by prison guards. Along the Tassie coast I make out my next destination, the Freycinet Peninsula, where I’ll kayak and walk one of the world’s reputed Ten Best Beaches at Wineglass Bay. Way to the north of Freycinet, I’ll go overboard at Bicheno, one of the world’s best temperate water diving locations, and explore the luxuriant underwater kelp forests.
I turn my gaze south. Not a boat, not a plane, not a contrail – nothing in sight but the endless ocean. I can almost imagine the curvature of the earth and the Antarctic beyond. “Do you see something?” Emma asks, noticing my squinting eyes searching for something that isn’t there. “No, just the edge of the earth,” I muse.
More info: You'll find everything you need to know about how to get to Tasmania, where to stay, what to do there and much more by visiting Tourism Tasmania, www.discovertasmania.com. Note that visas are required, and U.S. citizens can obtain free electronic visas through the ETA (Electronic Travel Authority), www.visabureau.com/australia/assessment/eeta/Default.aspx.