However, on Good Friday Jaret, Cindy, Adam and I jammed into the Hyundai Getz we rented and embarked on our journey. We immediately got lost before we even left Canberra and proceeded to get lost several more times so that the 7-8 hour drive to Melbourne turned into a 12-13 hour drive. On the plus side we saw some really beautiful countryside we never would have seen otherwise. But on the negative side we were supposed to pick up Jake and Carlos at the train station at 6:30 pm and we rolled in around 11. Thankfully they were still there. (I have never been so happy to see those guys and probably never will be again. Haha… just kidding.) And if thing weren’t crazy enough already, because we were so late we couldn’t go to the campsite to drop off some people and gear like we had planned. So we had six people and all our belongings jammed into our car for the 1 ½ hour drive from Melbourne to our campsite in Rosebud on the peninsula (This drive would take normal people about 30 mins. but we got lost again). Anyway, if you have ever been in a 2-door Getz you will remember that if you sit in the middle of the back seat you can hang your hands out both back windows and there is about 9 square feet of space in the hatch. At any rate, it’s a really small car. However we arrived safely, set up camp and went straight to bed. The next morning after freezing our buns off in the tent (poor Jake didn’t have a sleeping bag yet and was using a towel as a blanket) we headed off to the festival.
The line-up today included Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars, Taj Mahal, and Ben Harper & the Innocent Criminals. Sierra Leone was so cool. They were loving life; I don’t think the bass player stopped smiling through the whole set. And I can’t even put into words how great Ben Harper was. They rocked my world and there were probably only 15 people in front of us we were so close!
The next day featured Amos Lee, Bela Fleck & The Flecktones, Eugene Hideaway Bridges and John Mayer. We were in the second row for Bela Fleck; it was so cool. I was right in front of Future Man with his drumitar, saw Jeff Coffin play 2 saxophones at the same time, heard a solo from Victor Wooten, and saw Bela’s hand move so fast over his banjo my eyes couldn’t keep up. They were so cool. I was then introduced to Eugene Hideaway Bridges who I can sum up with a quote: “I have travelled all over the world but the only place I wanna be right now… is in your arms.” He taught us that the blues is not always sad. I had very high expectations for John Mayer and was mildly disappointed as he gave me the vibe that he didn’t really want to be there. But I was totally impressed with how good of a guitar player he actually is and his voice sent chills down my spine. Not actually but he was really good, he just didn’t put on that great of a show in comparison to what I had seen already at the festival.
So after the show we went back to camp, packed everything up, piled everyone into the Getz and headed back to Melbourne. Carlos had to be in Melbourne to catch his flight by 4am and it was already 12ish. So, we decided to just go to Melbourne, drop off Carlos and Jake at the train station to catch shuttles to their respective airports (their flights left from different airports on opposite ends of the city presenting a potential disaster if we tried to drop them off there) and sleep in the car at the ferry port. So, we reluctantly parted ways with Jake and Carlos around 3:30am and drove down to the docks for a snooze before we boarded the Spirit of Tasmania ferry and embarked on part II of our journey: Tasmania.
I highly recommend a visit to Tasmania to anyone with an adventurous spirit. And doing it in a rental car is a must. First of all because the ferry is amazing, secondly because you would never want to drive around Tas in a bus without several barf bags on hand, and finally because driving around Tas for a week and living to talk about it is worth a metal of honour. I say this because the term “primary highway” in Tas holds no promise of signs warning you of anything besides wildlife, guardrails, lanes wide enough for your vehicle, or even lines on the road. We came to the conclusion that the only places you find upcoming turn signs or guardrails are in places where there has already been a terrible accident. This theory is based on the observation that signage is otherwise totally random. In some places we saw signs to reduce your speed to 85 km/h around a corner but in other places where we had to go 25 km/h there was no sign at all. At any rate there is a Targa Tasmania road rally for a reason. But don’t worry our car and all passengers made it through the whole trip in tact.
So, the ferry was really cool. It was huge! Well it was huge in comparison to any boat I’ve ever been on… it had 10 decks, at least one bar on every deck, a gaming room/casino, 2 restaurants, a live band, and even a mini movie theatre! Very cool. It was unfortunate that I was so tired from the weekend that I slept through most of it. However, I did see a beautiful sunset as we pulled into Devonport, Tasmania. We had bought a $100, four-man tent for the trip to save money (brilliant idea) and set up camp in Devonport right on the Bass Strait for the first night. In the morning we headed off to Launceston to tour Cataract Gorge and ride the world’s longest single-span chairlift. The chair lift was one of those things that are not all that cool to do but really cool to be able to say you did it! After that, we drove down to the historic township of Ross and saw an old female prison and some 19th century convict-built churches. Next we went off the beaten track to Evercreech Forest Reserve. It’s about a half hour drive down a dirt road into the middle of nowhere where one can find the tallest gum trees in the world. The tallest was 91 metres tall! Shortly after leaving the park we discovered the ridiculous Tassie roads. We took a “primary highway” to Bicheno that was more or less a dirt track covered in pavement. The only signs were ones telling us to drive 65km/h dusk to dawn because of wildlife, there were no lines on the road (probably because the road wasn’t wide enough for 2 lanes), and in true Tassie style, the road was ridiculously winding. This all set us behind schedule a bit so we didn’t get to do the penguin tour in Bicheno that was on the itinerary and nor could we find anywhere to camp so we drove to Coles Bay in hope of a campsite but everything was booked up there too. Well actually there was one place that potentially had sites but we had to drive down a very scary-looking dirt road to get there and someone mentioned that this reminded them of some scary movie where tourists are diving down a similar road and are ultimately murdered. So we all got scared, turned around and slept in the car in the parking lot of the visitors centre.
The next morning, we woke with sore muscles and dampened spirits but there was no time to think about that because today was the day we climb Mount Amos in Wineglass Bay. They say it is a 3 hour return hike but with me and my broken foot we anticipated 4. What we did not anticipate was the steep rock face we were going to have to climb up. It was crazy. There were a couple times when I looked up and said “I think this is the end of the road for Dionne” but luckily I had Jaret and his super-grippy hiking shoes to give me a hand in the tricky parts. I’m sure glad I made it to the top though. The view and the sense of accomplishment were well worth the struggle to get to the summit. It was fantastic!
That afternoon we drove down to Port Arthur for a ghost tour through the old penitentiary. It was a really creepy place at night. My favourite story was one about a little girl and her mum who were touring the site one afternoon. They started walking up to the Reverend’s house and the little girl stopped and said “I don’t want to go in there!” Her mum thought that she was just tired and responded “Oh it’s okay sweetie, just one more building and then we can have a rest.” The little girl still wouldn’t go in and her mum asked her why. The little girl pointed at the first window and said, “He’s scary!” Her mum looked at the window and didn’t see anyone. “Who’s scary?” “The big man in the window with the white thing around his neck.” The little girl went on to perfectly describe the reverend who lived in that house hundreds of years ago. There were lots of other scarier stories but that one was my favourite. And all the stories they tell about any incident or any ghost has to have been witnessed by at least three people before they can tell the story on the tours. We went back in the morning to explore the Historic Site in daylight and it was a really cool place. We saw the separate prison were all the really bad guys were kept in solitary confinement (pictured below is their chapel), the hospital, the barracks, and the dockyard… very cool stuff. I could go on forever about this place.
After we filled our brains with history, we got back in the Getz and drove down to Hobart (the biggest city in Tas, pop. about 125 000). Hobart was very exciting first of all because we got to sleep in a hostel! The nights in southern Tasmania are really cold this time of year (around 5° which is pretty uncomfortable when you don’t have mats to sleep on and Australian sleeping bags). I wish we would have had another day to spend in Hobart because there are tonnes of cool things to do there. But alas, we arrived in the early evening and had to leave early in the morning so all we could do was get some groceries and go to a little pub downtown.
The next day was action packed. First we drove to Mount Field National Park and walked to beautiful Russell Falls. Then we drove to Lake St Clair and did an aboriginal culture walk. Then we drove to Donaghys Hill lookout point where we had a 360° view of the Franklin Valley and surrounding mountain ranges. We got the just as the sun went behind a mountain and the view was stunning. Next we drove into Queenstown, and old mining town, where we reluctantly pitched our tent and suffered through another freezing cold night.
In the morning we went to the visitor info center in Strahan and booked accommodation at a chalet in Tulluh. No more tenting in Tas for us. After that we went to the Henty Sand Dunes. This was the craziest thing. We drove through dense forests all the way to the parking lot at the dunes and then through the trees you see this wall of sand. Once you climb up this 30metre high wall you seem to be on the edge of a desert. All I could think of was: where did all this sand came from. I still have no idea. I will have to look it up. We bit off a little more than we could chew and decided to walk all the way to the beach. This took about an hour and a half. I thought I was going to die. Walking on sand for that long is not a good idea for a person in a cast. It only took us 40 mins to walk back to the car though because we wanted to get out of that desert so badly. We then drove on to Montezuma Falls. It was an hour walk along an old tramway to the old mine shaft next to the falls. I pulled a railway tie from the trail as a souvenir. The falls were beautiful; 104metres high. And there was this ridiculous suspension footbridge in front of the falls where the tram bridge used to be. I’m proud to say I crossed the bridge three times and didn’t even cry! Hahaha! After the walk back we drove to Tullah where our beautiful lakeside chalet was waiting for us. It was luxurious compared to our tent and cramped car and we slept like the dead that night.
The next day was our last day in Tasmania and we were going to finish with a bang. We drove to Cradle Mountain National Park to climb to the summit of Cradle Mountain. I however could not attempt this 5 hour return hike because my foot was still in a cast and this climb turned out to be twice as hard as Mt Amos. So I did the walk around Dove Lake at the base of the mountain while Cindy, Jaret and Adam went to the top. Dove Lake was pretty but so not as cool as climbing up the mountain would have been. I also got to air out our tent and have a nap while I waited for the others to return. Very exciting stuff. So anyway, when the others came back, we drove back to Devonport to catch the overnight ferry back to Melbourne. The seats we had booked were incredibly uncomfortable so at 1am I moved onto a bench in the lounge area and had a pretty good sleep. We arrived in Melbourne at 7am and by 7:30 we would depart on part III of our holiday.
Part III involved a 21 ½ hour drive from Melbourne to Joe’s farm near Kempsey. We were all tired and cranky but looking forward to the warm weather of the east coast. And I was looking forward to passing through Newcastle where I was to get my cast off. We got to Newcastle at around midnight and discovered that the hospital I had looked up online was closed and did not have 24hr emergency like I was told. The next hospital we found told me I was “certainly NOT and emergency” and basically told me to bugger off and go to the hospital in Kempsey in the morning. I was really upset… I just wanted my foot back. So we continued on and arrived in Kempsey at 4am where we were to call Joe and Maki (an exchange student from Mexico who stayed with Joe for the holidays) to come get us and show us the way to his farm. To get to Joe’s farm you have to drive down a series of deteriorating roads starting on a paved highway and ending on a dirt track that Joe likes to call his driveway. His farm is beautiful. Not like the big grain farms back home but small with green rolling hills all around and cows and horses grazing in the distance. It was amazing. The next day we went to the beach and I finally got my cast off that afternoon!! That night we had a big BBQ and a bonfire to celebrate. I don’t know what exactly we were celebrating but a celebration was definitely in order. Joe had a bunch of friends over and his dad and sister were there too. Joe’s dad is super cool and is exactly how I picture the typical Aussie. As an illustration, Jaret and Adam were going to start doing the dishes after the BBQ and Joe’s dad sees them and says “Are you guys washing dishes?” Jaret told him it was the least we could do for him letting us all stay at his house and whatnot and then Joe’s dad says “Bah… do dishes when it’s work time” as he cracks another beer. It made me laugh so hard when Jaret told me this story.
The next day we drove up to Byron Bay (I drove almost the whole way!) for a couple days of fun in the sun before the drive back to Canberra. I loved Byron Bay. It was such a neat little town. Very touristy though. But because it’s so touristy there was lots of good shopping. So we did some shopping, some beaching and then sadly had to say goodbye to our holidays and embark on the 12 hour drive back to Canberra. We got back here at about 3am Saturday morning and the Getz told us we had driven over 6500km in two weeks. Some people still think we are crazy to have done the trip we did but boy was it worth it!!!
So after the show we went back to camp, packed everything up, piled everyone into the Getz and headed back to Melbourne. Carlos had to be in Melbourne to catch his flight by 4am and it was already 12ish. So, we decided to just go to Melbourne, drop off Carlos and Jake at the train station to catch shuttles to their respective airports (their flights left from different airports on opposite ends of the city presenting a potential disaster if we tried to drop them off there) and sleep in the car at the ferry port. So, we reluctantly parted ways with Jake and Carlos around 3:30am and drove down to the docks for a snooze before we boarded the Spirit of Tasmania ferry and embarked on part II of our journey: Tasmania.
I highly recommend a visit to Tasmania to anyone with an adventurous spirit. And doing it in a rental car is a must. First of all because the ferry is amazing, secondly because you would never want to drive around Tas in a bus without several barf bags on hand, and finally because driving around Tas for a week and living to talk about it is worth a metal of honour. I say this because the term “primary highway” in Tas holds no promise of signs warning you of anything besides wildlife, guardrails, lanes wide enough for your vehicle, or even lines on the road. We came to the conclusion that the only places you find upcoming turn signs or guardrails are in places where there has already been a terrible accident. This theory is based on the observation that signage is otherwise totally random. In some places we saw signs to reduce your speed to 85 km/h around a corner but in other places where we had to go 25 km/h there was no sign at all. At any rate there is a Targa Tasmania road rally for a reason. But don’t worry our car and all passengers made it through the whole trip in tact.
So, the ferry was really cool. It was huge! Well it was huge in comparison to any boat I’ve ever been on… it had 10 decks, at least one bar on every deck, a gaming room/casino, 2 restaurants, a live band, and even a mini movie theatre! Very cool. It was unfortunate that I was so tired from the weekend that I slept through most of it. However, I did see a beautiful sunset as we pulled into Devonport, Tasmania. We had bought a $100, four-man tent for the trip to save money (brilliant idea) and set up camp in Devonport right on the Bass Strait for the first night. In the morning we headed off to Launceston to tour Cataract Gorge and ride the world’s longest single-span chairlift. The chair lift was one of those things that are not all that cool to do but really cool to be able to say you did it! After that, we drove down to the historic township of Ross and saw an old female prison and some 19th century convict-built churches. Next we went off the beaten track to Evercreech Forest Reserve. It’s about a half hour drive down a dirt road into the middle of nowhere where one can find the tallest gum trees in the world. The tallest was 91 metres tall! Shortly after leaving the park we discovered the ridiculous Tassie roads. We took a “primary highway” to Bicheno that was more or less a dirt track covered in pavement. The only signs were ones telling us to drive 65km/h dusk to dawn because of wildlife, there were no lines on the road (probably because the road wasn’t wide enough for 2 lanes), and in true Tassie style, the road was ridiculously winding. This all set us behind schedule a bit so we didn’t get to do the penguin tour in Bicheno that was on the itinerary and nor could we find anywhere to camp so we drove to Coles Bay in hope of a campsite but everything was booked up there too. Well actually there was one place that potentially had sites but we had to drive down a very scary-looking dirt road to get there and someone mentioned that this reminded them of some scary movie where tourists are diving down a similar road and are ultimately murdered. So we all got scared, turned around and slept in the car in the parking lot of the visitors centre.
The next morning, we woke with sore muscles and dampened spirits but there was no time to think about that because today was the day we climb Mount Amos in Wineglass Bay. They say it is a 3 hour return hike but with me and my broken foot we anticipated 4. What we did not anticipate was the steep rock face we were going to have to climb up. It was crazy. There were a couple times when I looked up and said “I think this is the end of the road for Dionne” but luckily I had Jaret and his super-grippy hiking shoes to give me a hand in the tricky parts. I’m sure glad I made it to the top though. The view and the sense of accomplishment were well worth the struggle to get to the summit. It was fantastic!
That afternoon we drove down to Port Arthur for a ghost tour through the old penitentiary. It was a really creepy place at night. My favourite story was one about a little girl and her mum who were touring the site one afternoon. They started walking up to the Reverend’s house and the little girl stopped and said “I don’t want to go in there!” Her mum thought that she was just tired and responded “Oh it’s okay sweetie, just one more building and then we can have a rest.” The little girl still wouldn’t go in and her mum asked her why. The little girl pointed at the first window and said, “He’s scary!” Her mum looked at the window and didn’t see anyone. “Who’s scary?” “The big man in the window with the white thing around his neck.” The little girl went on to perfectly describe the reverend who lived in that house hundreds of years ago. There were lots of other scarier stories but that one was my favourite. And all the stories they tell about any incident or any ghost has to have been witnessed by at least three people before they can tell the story on the tours. We went back in the morning to explore the Historic Site in daylight and it was a really cool place. We saw the separate prison were all the really bad guys were kept in solitary confinement (pictured below is their chapel), the hospital, the barracks, and the dockyard… very cool stuff. I could go on forever about this place.
After we filled our brains with history, we got back in the Getz and drove down to Hobart (the biggest city in Tas, pop. about 125 000). Hobart was very exciting first of all because we got to sleep in a hostel! The nights in southern Tasmania are really cold this time of year (around 5° which is pretty uncomfortable when you don’t have mats to sleep on and Australian sleeping bags). I wish we would have had another day to spend in Hobart because there are tonnes of cool things to do there. But alas, we arrived in the early evening and had to leave early in the morning so all we could do was get some groceries and go to a little pub downtown.
The next day was action packed. First we drove to Mount Field National Park and walked to beautiful Russell Falls. Then we drove to Lake St Clair and did an aboriginal culture walk. Then we drove to Donaghys Hill lookout point where we had a 360° view of the Franklin Valley and surrounding mountain ranges. We got the just as the sun went behind a mountain and the view was stunning. Next we drove into Queenstown, and old mining town, where we reluctantly pitched our tent and suffered through another freezing cold night.
In the morning we went to the visitor info center in Strahan and booked accommodation at a chalet in Tulluh. No more tenting in Tas for us. After that we went to the Henty Sand Dunes. This was the craziest thing. We drove through dense forests all the way to the parking lot at the dunes and then through the trees you see this wall of sand. Once you climb up this 30metre high wall you seem to be on the edge of a desert. All I could think of was: where did all this sand came from. I still have no idea. I will have to look it up. We bit off a little more than we could chew and decided to walk all the way to the beach. This took about an hour and a half. I thought I was going to die. Walking on sand for that long is not a good idea for a person in a cast. It only took us 40 mins to walk back to the car though because we wanted to get out of that desert so badly. We then drove on to Montezuma Falls. It was an hour walk along an old tramway to the old mine shaft next to the falls. I pulled a railway tie from the trail as a souvenir. The falls were beautiful; 104metres high. And there was this ridiculous suspension footbridge in front of the falls where the tram bridge used to be. I’m proud to say I crossed the bridge three times and didn’t even cry! Hahaha! After the walk back we drove to Tullah where our beautiful lakeside chalet was waiting for us. It was luxurious compared to our tent and cramped car and we slept like the dead that night.
The next day was our last day in Tasmania and we were going to finish with a bang. We drove to Cradle Mountain National Park to climb to the summit of Cradle Mountain. I however could not attempt this 5 hour return hike because my foot was still in a cast and this climb turned out to be twice as hard as Mt Amos. So I did the walk around Dove Lake at the base of the mountain while Cindy, Jaret and Adam went to the top. Dove Lake was pretty but so not as cool as climbing up the mountain would have been. I also got to air out our tent and have a nap while I waited for the others to return. Very exciting stuff. So anyway, when the others came back, we drove back to Devonport to catch the overnight ferry back to Melbourne. The seats we had booked were incredibly uncomfortable so at 1am I moved onto a bench in the lounge area and had a pretty good sleep. We arrived in Melbourne at 7am and by 7:30 we would depart on part III of our holiday.
Part III involved a 21 ½ hour drive from Melbourne to Joe’s farm near Kempsey. We were all tired and cranky but looking forward to the warm weather of the east coast. And I was looking forward to passing through Newcastle where I was to get my cast off. We got to Newcastle at around midnight and discovered that the hospital I had looked up online was closed and did not have 24hr emergency like I was told. The next hospital we found told me I was “certainly NOT and emergency” and basically told me to bugger off and go to the hospital in Kempsey in the morning. I was really upset… I just wanted my foot back. So we continued on and arrived in Kempsey at 4am where we were to call Joe and Maki (an exchange student from Mexico who stayed with Joe for the holidays) to come get us and show us the way to his farm. To get to Joe’s farm you have to drive down a series of deteriorating roads starting on a paved highway and ending on a dirt track that Joe likes to call his driveway. His farm is beautiful. Not like the big grain farms back home but small with green rolling hills all around and cows and horses grazing in the distance. It was amazing. The next day we went to the beach and I finally got my cast off that afternoon!! That night we had a big BBQ and a bonfire to celebrate. I don’t know what exactly we were celebrating but a celebration was definitely in order. Joe had a bunch of friends over and his dad and sister were there too. Joe’s dad is super cool and is exactly how I picture the typical Aussie. As an illustration, Jaret and Adam were going to start doing the dishes after the BBQ and Joe’s dad sees them and says “Are you guys washing dishes?” Jaret told him it was the least we could do for him letting us all stay at his house and whatnot and then Joe’s dad says “Bah… do dishes when it’s work time” as he cracks another beer. It made me laugh so hard when Jaret told me this story.
The next day we drove up to Byron Bay (I drove almost the whole way!) for a couple days of fun in the sun before the drive back to Canberra. I loved Byron Bay. It was such a neat little town. Very touristy though. But because it’s so touristy there was lots of good shopping. So we did some shopping, some beaching and then sadly had to say goodbye to our holidays and embark on the 12 hour drive back to Canberra. We got back here at about 3am Saturday morning and the Getz told us we had driven over 6500km in two weeks. Some people still think we are crazy to have done the trip we did but boy was it worth it!!!
6 comments:
Wow - that sounds like a great adventure! I' glad you lived to tell the story! Did you sample the famous pies in Kempsey?
Sounds like you had a wild and crazy time! Hooray for getting the cast off!!!! That's awesome. I can't believe doc didn't ream you out for writing "base guitar" when talking about Victor Wooten... Maybe he's waiting for you to come home so that he can lecture you. Just for the record, it's "bass guitar" haha.
Haha... I know that lol... for the record that's typo not stupidity lol
Wow sounds like you had a great time! I could have told you about the disappointment of John Mayer though. Me and Antony went to see him in concert on Valentines Day 4 years ago....and although he is talented, he is definately not a good performer. Glad that all the other perfomances were good atleast. Can't wait to see all your pictures when you get home.
xoxo
holy crap! to tell you the truth, i was lost less than half way thru, so many things were going on! It sounded action packed and oh-so exciting! no wonder you were sick when you got home, you must have been exhausted!
Well! I can tell you that My life here in Saskabush is almost as exciting. If I climb the two sets of rugged stairs up to the tropical bathroom I can turn the tap on for a fantastic waterfall and splash around in the tub..I mean "lake" :p lol Maybe if I keep telling myself that i wont be craving a holiday so much! Stupid working all summer!
Post a Comment