April 21st, 2006 - Spirit of Tasmania

After a busy work week of last minute details and planning, we cleaned our appartment head to toe and funded the Salvation Army for a year with our generous donations of work clothes and other excess baggage. Friday night it was off to the docks where we got on the nicest boat I've ever been aboard. It was a great smooth ride until the bass straight and by then we were slightly tipsy from the bar and couldn't tell whether it was the James Boags Tasmanian Ale or the rough waters. Sleeping on the floor and waking up at 4:30 to dock at 5:30 are not my idea of a pleasant voyage, although the experience was memorable!
We flew through Devenport after a quick breakfast stop and then it was off to the Nut; Stanley. A random outcropping of Rock on the Northern Shore with a chairlift and walking trails. Next it was off to Cradle Mountain. Regretably, the weather was foul and never cleared, despite countless anti-rain dances by my roommate Ben and sheer neglect by the rest of us. We wandered the edge of Dove Lake in the mountains and were absolutely drenched by the time we got back to the car. That night we arrived in Launceston and discovered a quaint little town with some nice scenery. We didn't have too much time to explore and were out before our heads hit the pillow.

The next day it was Freycinet National Park via the scenic route. The windy roads led to several pit stops, one of which was a cheese factory, where we had fresh cheese and crackers for lunch in the mountains and where a woman yelled at me for wanting to refrigerate cheese; it should be kept at 14'C! Wineglass Bay and the rest of the park were stunning. I was like a kid in a candy shop, climbing all of the huge outcroppings of rock and trying to travel uncharted land. The views were great and the large red rocks left tons of caves, crevices and cliffs; the only thing I like better than light houses and lookouts are big rock cliffs!
We left the park and on the dusk drive to Hobart, we saw a Tasmanian Devil munching on some roadkill by the side of the road. Unfortunately, that was the best it got! No more Tasmanian devils the rest of the trip, unless they were stuffed in tourist shops. Hobart was a nice town that was surprisingly big, we wandered the waterfront and explored some restaurant menus for our night out the following night to see off our friends to New Zealand before we meet again in London the following year.
The next day we set off for Port Arthur, one of the original penal colonies and oldest historical cities in Australia. There was a harbor cruise and plenty of historical facts. In 1996, there was a masacre at the tourist attraction where roughly 30 people lost their lives... a little spooky. That night we returned to Hobart and treated ourselves to a nice meal with our good friends Ben and Amy whom we look forward to meeting up with in London. They're great people and we each wished each other Bon Voyage and gave each other tips about the next leg of their journey of which we're doing backwards - they're headed to New Zealand and we're headed to South East Asia.