Tazzie!

When you have a car for only 9 days you really need to plan, especially when everyone has a different wish. As you might have heard Tasmania suffered badly from bushfires. Especially around Port Arthur, Mt Field NP, and Freycinet NP. For that reason we did not take any risks and stayed in the south. As nobody had a clue, I steered into the direction of Tahune Forest Reserve. This forest consists of Australia’s tallests tree: the swamp gum. Like most of these forests the best way to see them is from elevated walkways. These are famous and expensive, but we arrived after closing time, so we had a free walk around. The Huon River snakes silently through the forest and from hanging bridges and nice paths we got some of the finest views.

As temperatures remained high (41 degrees) and bushfires were still sweeping around the state we decided to stay another day in the south. We headed to the beautiful South Coast which is part of the World Heritage Area. We walked to the southern most point of Australia and to a spectacular coastline. These were defintely one of the most pristine coast lines I’ve seen in Down Under. Camping went also fine. My travel mates were so amazing. Funny, sense of humour, smart, and environmentally concious. It made it all very easy going.

The wish for going to the northern part of the World Heritage was growing and Abraj had only until 10 January to travel with us, so we went to Cradle Mountain – Lake St Clair NP (CMLS NP). We all hopes to see a platypus in Lake St Clair, but we had no luck. It was also pretty windy. Despite that we did two small hikes around the lake. Next day we went to Cradle Mountain which is the biggest tourist draw of Tasmania. When we arrived it was snowing! We couldn’t fins a camp site and the park office was already closed. That meant we had to camp in the wild close to the entry of the park. My tent survived that storm with snow and rain. The weather for out hiking day was quite similar as the night before. We had to change our plans. Cradle Mountain was cancelled. Instead we did some other hikes around lakes, rainforests, waterfalls, and the impressive Cradle Valley. Now I can tell you how gorgeous it all was, but I think the photos are of better help. We got lucky as during the afternoon the sun showed itself more frequently. Wildlife became active now too. We spotted numerous birds and a wombat with a baby! I’m not surprised that this is a tourist destination. It’s a must see. The same afternoon we camped just outside the Alum Cliffs. Here I got rewarded with amazing views into a gorge. My travel buddies were always in a good mood. After so many jokes and photos we finally went back to the car. We had to get to Launceston before 1pm, since Abraj was going to the bus back to Hobart and we were getting a new travel buddy: Marco. An Australian guy who is ultra smart, well traveled, and a person who brought so much calmness in the group. I noticed that immediately. The last wishes of Julie was visiting the Bay of Fires and Wineglass Bay.