My Map of Tasmania

So I dropped Joy, Hussey, Amanda and Jess off at the Hobart airport with a luxurious 17 minutes until departure time. (They made the flight.) Now was the transition from exciting ultimate team weekend to relaxing adventure weekend.

My flight back to Melbourne was at 5:00 PM on Monday, since Monday was Labor Day in Victoria and I had the day off from work. (In some ways, Australia is more federated than the US and many of the holidays are not public holidays. Labor Day in Sydney is some other date. Most of the country did not have a holiday.) So I had about 21 hours to explore Tassie before returning to Hobart for my flight back to Melbourne on Virgin Blue.

I had spent a couple of hours looking at a Tasmania Atlas and asking Tassie locals at the tournament what to do with my extra day. The island is basically the size of Ireland. It is about 1/3rd national parks. Obviously, I couldn’t see everything. I decided to focus on the east coast of the Island and go see the resort town of Biecheno and Freycinet National Park with picturesque Wineglass bay.

Looking at my atlas, Biecheno was an easy 2 hours on Tassie’s biggest expressway, the Tasman highway, and one of the largest cities on the island. I decided to do the drive that night at 9 PM, so I could get up and have a decent day of site-seeing before having to head back at 3 for my flight. I didn’t have a reservation anywhere, but I planned to find a hotel once I got to town. (Foreshadowing implemented.)

Chanting my driving mantra "Stay on the left! Stay on the left!" (to the tune of 3 blind mice) I exited the airport parking lot and got on the Tasman Highway. About 2 km from the airport the Tasman highway went to 2 lanes and had no street lights. This was not the easy highway drive I was expecting. The road was narrow and winding. Tasmania is filled with suicidal, kamikaze Possums. They are cute and have stripes and remind me of cats. Their carcasses lined the highway. I had to swerve to avoid them every few minutes. I was pretty stressful, but in the end I made it without taking any lives human or marsupial.

The drive took me longer than I thought and I pulled into booming Biecheno just before 12. The town had 1 street light and no traffic lights. There were some bed and breakfasts, (dark and locked up tight) but not the Holiday Inn or Ramada I was expecting. Dorothy, we are not in Kansas any more. There were no humans anywhere. I rang the night bell at a couple of places to no avail. I remembered Mike Kellyism #428: “If you ever have the choice between sleeping in a car and sleeping in a tent, sleep in the car.” I didn’t have a choice, but the endorsement made me feel a little better. I was starting to question the genius of this plan and I was jealous of my teammates who were back in Melbourne by now. I parked in a parking lot for beach access and reclined my driver's seat.

I was pretty tired and I slept okay. One thing about sleeping in a car, you have low incentive to sleep in, so I was able to get up early and get in a pretty full day. Maybe I should try sleeping in uncomfortable places at home. I saw a beautiful sunrise on the shore if Biecheno and hunted in some tide pools. On seeing the sunrise, I no longer regretted not flying home on Sunday, or staying in Hobart and driving up in the morning. It was very peaceful and beautiful. (I’ll post pcis of all this on Flickr soon. I took 33 photos.)

Getting hungry, I decided to check out the local cafes to see if there were any good hearty breakfasts to be had. The Australians think about holidays a little differently than we do. All the café’s in town had signs that read something to the effect of, “Closed Monday for Labor Day.” Oh.

Luckily, I still had some of my own tournament food, since the tournament had provided so much. I ate some almonds and a power bar and got back in the car headed towards Freycinet National Park. With the sun up, the driving was much easier and the landscape was truly impressive. I was about 20 minutes from the Park.

At the park by 8 AM, I got a map and headed to the Wine Glass Bay hike. It’s a 3K hike that takes you up and over a hill on the way to the beach. I cannot tell you how much I enjoyed this. On the way I saw colorful birds I have never seen before. I saw a kangaroo. (I was really excited about this until I saw more in the parking lot later, hoping for tourists to feed them and realized this was not such a rare occurrence. Still, he was pretty cute.) On the hike to the beach there is a good lookout to take pictures. The bay gets its name from being the best sand to make wine glasses out of. That is a lie. Of course, it is the 'distinctive shape of the bay'. The lookout was breathtaking. The beach was beautiful and serine. The most beautiful place I have ever been is Calebra in Puerto Rico, this beach rivaled that one, and got extra credit for its remoteness.

[Lynn, I got you a shell. It is a big cat’s eye. I also found a nice olive, but there was a hermit living in there, so I had to let him go. I also got some little shells that are like limpets, but a little flatter.] After a while on the beach I did the return hike to my car.

By the time I was on my way back from the beach, the trail was filling up and the trip would have been ruined by the voices of other hikers. Once again, glad for the early start. Next I checked out some other highlights of the park, like the immense Oyster Bay and Honeymoon Bay. Both were really great. I’m running out of exhalations here, but it was a wonderful place and a perfect day.

Around 1 PM I left the park craving some real food. I found a nice café just off Oyster Bay that serves the fresh catch of the day. The place was adorable and filled with locals. I had a huge portion of spicy seafood chowder. I finished lunch around 2 and took my time on a leisurely drive back to Hobart. The ocean was on my left the entire drive and the views were spectacular. I stopped a couple times to see more great beaches.

I was psyched to get back to the Airport and return to Melbourne, but I was sad to leave Tassie after just one day of real site seeing. If I had the time, I happily could have spent two weeks on that island. Maybe I'll go back, but I have a feeling there are a lot of places here that I'll enjoy seeing.