For years, my family had a wish to visit Australia. This year, we finally found a time that
everyone was available. We bought air
tickets to Tasmania in Australia from Dec 14 to Dec 25 in 2012. I was the one who planned the itinerary of
the trip.
Day 1 – Long flight
to Tasmania
On Dec 14 (Fri), we boarded a flight to Sydney at
7:10pm. The flight from Hong Kong to
Sydney was about 9 hours. Sydney is 3
hours ahead of Hong Kong in summer.
Therefore, we arrived at Sydney at ~ 7 am on Dec 15. During the flight, I tried to sleep, but my
sleep turned into several short naps.
At the Sydney airport, I could feel the warmth of air. I could hear a different accent of
English. By looking at people around
wearing shorts and swimsuits to the airport, we knew we were in the summer.
We connected to a domestic flight to Launceston, Tasmania at
11 am. There are only two major domestic
airports in Tasmania, which are in Hobart and in Launceston. The flight took 1 hour 45 minutes, and there
were no time differences. After the
flight, everyone was tired.
We took an airport shuttle to the downtown area of
Launceston. On this day, we only tried
to get acquainted to Australia. Everyone
was tired and would like to sleep early.
However, the sunset time was 8:45 pm in this region. Therefore, after leaving our stuff in the
hotel, we got some lunch and got some grocery.
The food was expensive. I think 1
Australian dollar is only slightly more than 1 US dollar. The restaurant food that we got today was $18
per dish.
After these activities, everyone wanted to go back to hotel
to sleep.
Day 2 – Launceston
Before beginning our journey today, we went to get a rented
car and got some tour tickets in the tourist information center. We began to get used to the accent of the
Australians. The accent seems to sound
more like British, but there are some differences. For example, “10 am” sounds like “10 im”. In the information center, we got a national
park pass that allowed us to visit any national parks in Tasmania for 8
weeks. It costs AU$ 60 for a car. We also got the Bicheno night penguin tour
tickets, since the tour was popular in summer and needed to get tickets in
advance.
This day, I also needed to feel comfortable in driving on
the left. Our first stop was at Bridestowe
Lavender Estate, which is a lavender farm that is 40 minutes away from
Launceston. There were many more
roundabouts than in the US, and many parts of the roads tend to be narrower. Like the US, animal road kills in Australia
are quite common. The first kangaroo
that we saw was a dead one on the road.
The number of dead kangaroos on the road in Australia was like the
number of dead squirrels in the US. On
the road, we once saw a spiky animal crossing slowly on the road. We thought it looked like a spiky
turtle. Later, we found out that this
animal is called echidna.
At the lavender farm, we were amazed by the purple sea of
lavender. We took a lot of pictures at
this place. In the gift shop, most of
the items around were purple in color.
There were some teddy bears that released lavender fragrant after
soaking with hot water. In the café, we
had lunch there. Many foods in this
place were added with lavender as spice.
There were also recipes available in the café.
After lunch, we returned to Launceston and went to Queen
Victoria Museum. This is a museum that
displays multiple topics. In one area,
there were displays showing the history of Australian transportation. In another area, there was a kid-friendly
area that introduced games to show scientific facts. The most interesting area was a small area
that showed Australian wildlife. I knew
that Australia has some animals that would not be found in other
countries. However, animals in Tasmania
are especially exotic. Several animals
in Tasmania can only be found in Tasmania!
Some of the interesting animals
are platypus (look like a 2-dimensional duck), echidna (look like a duck with a
lot of spikes on its spherical body), wombat (black fat teddy bear), and
Tasmania devil (look like a black cute cat with long sharp teeth).
 |
| Platypus |
We went to Cataract Gorge that was only 5-minute drive from
Launceston downtown. We took a short chairlift ride to look at the gorge. Then, we walked along the gorge. During our walk, we saw several
peacocks. One of them had 3 little
ducklings following it. We also saw an
echidna on the trail, walking slowly to find ants for food. Some locals
introduced us about this animal. One of
them used a stick to poke it, and let us see how echidna reacted with
danger. Echidna would stop moving and hide
into its spiky body.
 |
| Echidna |
We went for dinner at a restaurant near the Tamar River at
Launceston. Seafood in Tasmania is
famous, especially fresh oysters.
Therefore, we had to try some. Then,
we got some grocery and went back to hotel.
By that time, the sun was not set yet.
The sunset time here was ~ 8:45 pm.
Day 3 – Nature and
wildlife
 |
| A summary of where we have been on this day |
When I saw the sky getting brighter, I felt like I would
like to wake up. Then, I realized that
it was just 6 am. The sunrise time here
was ~ 5:45 am.
Before we left Launceston, we found that one of the tires in
the car went flat. We drove to a gas
station (they called gas as petrol, though) and asked a mechanic to patch the
tire. In the end, we learned that a nail
punctured the tire. It was good to
repair the flat tire before leaving Launceston.
If we found it on the country road, we would not find a place to fix
it. It was also good that patching a
tire was not as expensive as I thought.
The service only cost AU$27.
Our first stop was a salmon farm in Deloraine, which is a
drive about 40 minutes west of Launceston.
We only made a brief stop and bought a large piece of salmon for
dinner. There was a tour in this salmon
farm, but the tour would take too much time for us.
We drove another 15 minutes to a honey farm. The “farm” was only a store for honey
products. We stayed there briefly to
test taste different kinds of honeys (including Manuka honey). Then we drove about 5 minutes to the Trowunna
Wildlife Park.
I really enjoyed this wildlife park. During a tour, the guide first introduced
wombats to us. They looked like grey fat
bears and looked peaceful. We were
allowed to carry a wombat for pictures, and the wombat did not struggle much
when carried by any tourists. In fact, they are herbivores. One interesting thing that I learned about
wombats is that koalas and wombats are relatives. However, only wild wombats are found in
Tasmania. Koalas can only be found in
Australia mainland.
 |
| Wombat |
The second animal spotlight is on Tasmanian devils. These devils can only be found in Tasmania
and not even in Australia mainland. They
looked like little black bears and could look cute if they kept their mouth
shut. They looked fierce when their
mouths were opened. Even so, I still
think they appeared to be fierce. They
are opportunistic carnivores, which probably means they only find killed
animals to eat and do not hunt by themselves.
They could be very noisy when they fought for food from one another. They are classified as endangered
species. About 15 years ago, a disease
wiped out ~80% of their population. Some
may even think they will be extinct by 2015.
Hopefully such timeline will not happen.
 |
| Tasmanian Devil |
I also had opportunities to see echidnas and kangaroos. For echidnas, I learned that when they are
threatened, their bodies will hide into the spiky balls, like turtles hiding
their bodies in their shells. For
kangaroos, I saw a baby kangaroo in a pouch of a large kangaroo.
I hoped I could see a platypus in this park, but the park
did not have it. During the entire
Tasmania trip, I had confirmed to see several wild echidnas. I guessed I had seen several black animals
running into the forest from the roads.
I thought they were Tasmanian devils but not too sure. I did see several dead Tasmanian devils on
the roads. Since the trip to the
wildlife park, I did not see a wombat or a platypus at all. We saw a few kangaroos sometimes, but we saw
more domestic animals, especially sheep.
There were so many in Australia.
We continued our drive to the west and stopped by the Marakoopa
Cave. Nobody in my family was interested
in paying ~AU$ 20 per person to get into the cave because everyone already had
some experiences in seeing the cave environment. Therefore, we continued to head west for an
hour to get to the Cradle Mountain.
Cradle Mountain is part of a national park in NW
Tasmania. Around this area, there were
many trees that looked dead. We walked
on a Dove Lake trail, which is a 3-km easy trail that has a good view of Cradle
Mountain. The weather was not that
great. We hiked under foggy and rainy
conditions. Adding the barren landscape,
the place may look a little bit scary.
If someone likes long hike, there is a trail called Overland
Track in Cradle Mountain-St Clair National park, which I think it is about 70
km long and passes through Cradle Mountain (~1500 m) and Mt. Ossa (~1600 m, the
tallest mountain in Tasmania). I hoped I
could take this challenge in the future.
Our family stayed a night in Cradle Mountain. The room that we reserved had a kitchen. We cooked our own dinner. We slept in a cold night (2 C). The place that we stayed is about 900 m above
sea level.
Day 4 – Small town
tours
The drive of this day was long, travelling from NW Tasmania
to E Tasmania. We stopped at several
small towns.
The first one was Sheffield, which is ~40 minutes NE of
Cradle Mountain. Sheffield is called the
Town of Murals. Some 20 years ago,
Sheffield struggled with the finance of the town. Then, the town people had an idea of
organizing mural competitions every year.
The town gradually got the reputation of the murals, attracting people
around the world to come to this town.
We stayed in this town for a while to look at a mural
competition area. There were 10 murals
drawn. During the time of competition,
we were allowed to vote which one was the best.
At the back of one of the mural, we found what my sister would like to
see. A Hong Kong singing artist, Eason
Chan, had been here to draw a mural. We
found it and took a picture.
After that, we bought some postcards and sent one of them to
our own addresses. We also saw more
murals on the walls of buildings.
The next town that we went was Longford. The town is not far away from Launceston. We went to Brickendon historical farm. We could get close to many kinds of
livestock, including sheep, donkeys, horses, and chickens. We got a large, filling, but inexpensive
quiche for lunch in Longford.
Then, we headed south to the town of Ross. Ross was regarded as the midway between
Hobart and Launceston, the two largest cities in Tasmania. There is a famous bridge in Ross that shows
the distance to these two cities. There
are also some nice historical buildings around this town, as well as the Ross
Bakery. Legends said that the bakery
shop in “Kiki’s Delivery Service” was inspired by this shop. I thought Kiki was in the town with an ocean
view, but Ross is in the middle of Tasmania.
I am not sure if the legend is true.
Finally, we headed east to a coastal town called
Bicheno. This was the town that we
stayed for a night. In the Tasmania east
coast, there were some good seafood restaurants. We got a dozen of oysters from the Bicheno
Sealife Centre, which had good reviews on oysters. We visited a blowhole on the coast, seeing
seawater shooting upwards from the rocks.
We also saw some rocks tainted with red near the ocean.
One reason that we stayed in this town for a night was the
night penguin tour. At 9:30 pm, when it
just got dark, we were brought to a protected beach to watch small penguins
coming back to land. The tour guide
explained a lot about the behaviors of penguins. One interesting fact was that penguins tend
to move onshore as a group. They choose
themselves a leader when moving, but none of penguins wants to be a leader, so
they push one another at a spot for a while.
Once there is a leader walking, a group of penguins will follow. (Sorry that there is no pictures for penguins. Photography is prohibited in the penguin tour)
The place that we stayed this time also had a kitchen, and
had a great ocean view!
Day 5 – Tasmania
Ocean Shore
We had a lot of driving on this day. We also planned leaving a little bit late (~
9 am) because of the penguin tour last night.
The aim was to get to Hobart in the evening, and there were several
stops along the Tasmania east coast.
Our first two stops were in the Freycinet Peninsula. We went to Freycinet National Park and took a
short hike to get a view of the Wineglass Bay, which was said to be one of the
most beautiful beaches in the world.
Besides hiking, one can take a boat tour or a helicopter tour to view
the Wineglass Bay.
We backtracked to Coles Bay.
There was an oyster farm in this area and we tried fresh oysters in our
third time. We thought we liked the
first two oyster experiences more, though.
However, we also ordered mussels and we enjoyed them a lot.
Then, we drove to Swansea, which can view Freycinet
Peninsula from the other side of a bay.
There was a famous Kate’s strawberry farm in this place. It attracted a lot of tourists to buy their
strawberry desserts.
After that, we had an hour and a half drive to Hobart. After hotel check-in, we familiarized
ourselves around the city. We walked to
Mure’s for seafood dinner. We found a
supermarket called Woolworth for grocery.
At this point, we found our first free Wi-Fi hotspot.
Day 6 – The Prison
We slept in Hobart for the rest of the Tasmania trip. This day, we also had a lot of driving. From Hobart, we drove 1.5 hours to Port
Arthur, which is at the SE corner of Tasmania.
Then, we drove NW to the town of Richmond. Finally, we went to Mount Field National Park
to see Russell Falls, which is 1 hour NW of Hobart.
Actually, our first stop was at a fruit farm in Sorell,
which is ~ 15 minutes from Hobart. There
were many kinds of berries that could be taken, if we paid for the admission
fees. However, we knew that we had a
busy schedule today, so we only stayed in the fruit farm briefly.
 |
| So many berries that I have not heard of |
Then, we drove more than an hour to Port Arthur. If we had time, we should spend the entire
day here. Port Arthur was a prison for
the early Australians who committed crimes.
Australia was once a place where convicts from Britain were sent to in
the 19th century. However, if
people in Australia continued to commit crimes, Port Arthur was the prison to
send to.
There were several things that we could do in Port
Arthur. Each of us got a bronze pass,
which included a guided tour and a boat ride, as well as the admission into
Port Arthur historical site. In the
exhibition hall near the entrance, there were many displays that showed
examples of convicts’ lives when being transported to Australia and lives being
in Port Arthur. We were given a playing
card at admission. The card corresponded
to one of the convicts in Port Arthur.
We could learn about this specific convict in the exhibition hall.
The boat ride was also a tour that showed parts of Port
Arthur that were better visited by boat.
There is an island in Port Arthur where the dead convicts were buried.
The guided tour told us the history of Port Arthur. The guide gave us a lot of interesting
information. We learned about the type
of prison Port Arthur was. For example,
this was one of the few prisons that did not have walls and could keep convicts
from escaping successfully. The reason
was that Port Arthur only connected to the mainland by a narrow strip of
road. This narrow strip was of course
heavily guarded. By that time, escaping
by sea was not favorable because most convicts did not know how to swim.
Moreover, there were some experiments in Port Arthur to see
if the prison could turn the convicts into good men by putting the convicts
that repeatedly behaved badly into silent rooms and dark rooms. Now we knew the experiments were failures,
since a lot of these convicts were turned into mad men. An asylum was therefore built for these mad
men.
One funny thing in the tour was that when the prison of Port
Arthur was closed in late 19th century, most convicts were allowed
to leave, but they preferred staying in Port Arthur because they could not find
any jobs outside. The prison, as a
government establishment, provided food and bed for the convicts without
charges. Therefore, the convicts were
likely not happy with the prison closure.
The prison reopened as a tourist area after a year of closure, though. Then, some convicts returned to the prison as
tour guides to earn money. Hopefully,
the tourists did not know the identities of these tour guides, and hopefully
our tour guide was not one of them.
In the historic site, we walked through many buildings in
ruins and learned about the functions of these buildings. Some of the houses were preserved better and
we could go inside to see these houses in 19th century. From the tour, we knew that only ~30% of the
buildings in Port Arthur that we see now were the actual prison buildings. Many buildings were burnt in the previous
fires and some buildings were built later for tourism.
I think people can spend the entire day in Port Arthur for
various tours. There is a Port Arthur
ghost tour every evening that shows the historical buildings in the dark. The tour guide will give ghost stories during
the tour. Although we did not take this
tour, I think this tour is recommended.
When we left Port Arthur, it was already 3 pm. We drove an hour back through Sorell and
drove to Richmond. The town had a famous
bridge and an oldest church in Australia.
We also went to a bakery that served inexpensive and tasty breads and
pies. We left Richmond at 5 pm.
We drove another hour to Mount Field National Park. From there, we walked 15 minutes to visit the
Russell Falls. I hoped the waterfall is
spectacular, since we drove for an hour to only look at the waterfall. In the ends, even my parents also enjoyed
looking at the waterfall and the walk to it.
My parents were very picky about scenery places. In this trip, a cave that needs to pay to get
in (e.g. Day 3 in Marakoopa Cave) would not interest my parents because they
visited many caves before. The forest
looked primitive, liked the forests millions of years ago that turned into coal
now.
We drove back to Hobart after that. The sky began to get dark when we got back to
the hotel. We also got the Wi-Fi
opportunity by visiting the same supermarket in Hobart.
Day 7 – Huon Valley
We woke up on this famous day of the end of the world
without any problems. Because the
itineraries of the last few days were long, we had a shorter trip on this
day. We drove to the south part of
Tasmania, passed through Huon Valley, drove more than 20 km on a narrow road
inside a forest, and got to Tahune Airwalk.
In this area, there are many tall trees.
An airwalk was built so that we could look at the tall trees at a higher
level. The hike in this area, including
the airwalk, was quite nice. Many tree
trucks are so thick that they need more than 3 people to surround them. There were also two swinging bridges that
crossed two rivers. According to my
sister, although the color of the water in this Huon River is brown as tea, the
water is generally safe to drink.
Then we drove back to Huonville and looked for an apple
museum. There was nothing much
interesting in this museum, so we did not go in.
We drove east to the Peppermint Bay. From there, we could view Bruny Island on the
east. We did not include Bruny Island in
this trip. However, we knew that there
were boat tours that cruised around the island and showed rock features around
the island. In Peppermint Bay, there was
a restaurant in which the Tasmanians thought it was the best restaurant in
Tasmania. Therefore, we had dinner
there. We got several dishes, including
seafood. After the meal, we thought the
quality is as good as what we had heard from reviews. This restaurant is highly recommended to
visit.
We went back to hotel and then went to the same supermarket
for internet, only finding that the internet was down. Look like we would not have internet access in
the next two days.
Day 8 – Hobart
We did not drive too far on this day, since all the places
that we visited on this day were in Hobart area. We drove to the peak of Mt. Wellington. This is a mountain that is 1200 m high and
next to the city of Hobart. Although it
was cool on the mountain, we had pretty good view of Hobart and the surrounding
seashores. We could see as far as the
peninsula of Port Arthur, as well as Bruny Island.
We then spent a brief time in the Royal Botanical Garden in
Hobart to see some Sub-Antarctic plants.
They were in a very small room, but we learned where these plants came
from.
We drove back to the hotel and walked to the Salamanca
Market. This is an open market that only
opens on Saturday. We spent about 2
hours walking through the market and got some snack food along the way. Some location had performances in which some
of them were worth staying to watch. For
this kind of markets, I liked to find if there were any interesting items. For example, I found a toothpick holder that
looked like an echidna when there were toothpicks on it. This place was also a fairly good place for
buying gifts.
We stopped by the historic brewery factory in Hobart and a
Cadbury chocolate factory near Hobart, but both places were closed, so we only took
pictures of these places.
In the afternoon, we visited MONA, which is Museum of Old
and New Arts. There were several
modernly stylish buildings around this area.
It looked like there was a concert there on that day, and there were
many people sitting outside. This museum
was a nice place to stop by.
We got more fresh oysters at Barilla Bay Oyster, which was
near the Hobart airport. The food was
fairly good, but no food can match the one we got in Peppermint Bay.
This concludes our trip in Tasmania.
Day 9 – Sydney
We left Hobart in the early morning. When we arrived at Sydney, it was almost
noon. The weather in Sydney was quite
different to Tasmania. Sydney in
December is truly a summer. The
temperature was around 30 C when arriving at the airport.
We stayed in my parent’s friend’s place in Sydney. After settling down, we went to Sydney city
area for the rest of the day. We visited
Chinatown, Darling Harbour, Queen Victoria Building, and Hyde Park. Then, we visited the famous Harbour Bridge
and Sydney Opera House. We took a ferry
from the Circular Quay to Manly Beach and watched the high waves of this
beach. Basically, we spent most of the
time taking pictures.
We also got Chinese food for lunch and dinner. We got dim sum in a Chinese restaurant for
lunch. The dim sum tasted well! This place made me realize that there were so
many Chinese in Sydney that the Chinese restaurant looked very authentic. The dinner gave me a similar impression. The fried rice, noodles, and congees were
exceptionally good. My parents thought
the food was even better than in Hong Kong.
This probably also reflected the numerous Chinese people in Sydney.
Day 10 – The Mainland
Pacific
This day was even warmer.
We were with my parents’ friends to go the places south of Sydney. We visited a wildlife park in which we saw
exotic animals like emus, koalas, kangaroos, dingoes, as well as wombats and
echidnas. Comparing koalas to wombats, I
still liked wombats more. We were also
allowed to feed kangaroos with the given shredded grasses.
 |
| Koala |
 |
| Emu |
Then, the car went south to Wollongong. We stopped at the sea cliff bridge and took
some pictures. In the past, there was a
road next to the cliff. Since the rock
on the cliff is unstable and falls down on the road frequently, the road was
closed and a bridge was built to keep the cars away the cliff area. At Wollongong, we walked around a lighthouse
and the beach nearby.
In the evening, we went to another Chinese restaurant that
had authentic Chinese food. After that, we went a house to watch Christmas light decorations. There was rain and mixed with some thunder.
Day 11 – Christmas
On the last day in Australia, which was Christmas, we stayed
in my parents’ friend’s home. The
weather was not so great. It was raining
heavily, mixing with thunder. We had a
Christmas dinner in this house. Some
foods, including mussels and salmon, tasted fresh.
We got to the airport at noon. We arrived at Hong Kong at ~ 10 pm.
Final thoughts
I have heard from several people that Tasmania is boring,
but I think I am very happy with the trip.
If I could spend more time in Tasmania, I would do it. Tasmania is a place with superb natural
scenery and fresh seafood. During this
trip, we went to several tours, hiked several trails, and ate in many
restaurants. We had seen many animals
that we had not seen before. Tasmania is
one of the best islands that I have even been.
The last time that I gave such comment was probably the island of Puerto
Rico.
I was also glad that we only spent a couple of days in
Sydney. It looked like spending a day or
two was enough for visiting the city of Sydney.
