Mar 2 2005 - Tasmania/Melbourne, Australia - "A devil of a time"

I survived Tasmania.

This is a deceptive statement because Tasmania is actually not that hard to survive. It's not the wild, untamed land swarming with scary devil creatures that usually comes to mind when one hears the name "Tasmania." In fact, the landscape looked a lot like rural California, including the boring small towns that make you think that suburbia maybe isn't too bad. But, ultimately, it was still a lot of fun and different enough - I mean, regardless, everyone has an accent there, right? - and I'm very glad I visited.

[PHOTOS]

First, let me add on to the last email that I sent in which I forgot to mention one of the coolest things I did the first 2 weeks in Melbourne and completely forgot to put in the email... I saw koalas! Even better, I got to see the CUTEST, little baby koala, he was only 10 months old. So tiny and cute and I was really tempted to take him home. This, however, would have been a very difficult thing to do, because you're not allowed to touch the koalas and they have super long sharp claws that he probably would have used against me had I tried to hide him in my backpack. Anyway, I took a day tour from Melbourne to a place called Philip Island to see the nighttime Penguin Parade (more on this in a minute). We first stopped at a cattle farm to have "Devonshire tea" (it was gross and I'm sure totally different from what a real Devonshire tea would be like, though I've never had Devonshire tea so I don't really know... I just think it wouldn't be this inedible) and to pet the kangaroos. I didn't touch the 'roos at this place because they looked dirty and not well-cared for and it was just sad... definitely not the highlight of the day. Then we visited the Koala Conservation Centre, which was, of course, the best part because I hadn't up to that point seen any koalas. They really are as cute and adorable and stoned-looking as one would expect. The koalas at the Centre live in their natural habitat where there are these high-up boardwalks about 15 feet above ground to see the koalas closer up, where they are perched up high in the trees. It was a really hot day, so most of the koalas were sleeping and not moving and hating the heat - much like I wished I could be doing. There I saw the baby koala, he was eating some eucalyptus leaves with his mom. Very cool. Very cute. Last we visited the part of Philip Island that is marked off for the penguins. These are Fairy Penguins, the smallest penguins in the world. Every day they go out to fish in the ocean all together at sunrise and then they all come back in together at sunset every night. So we were there to see them all coming back in at night. The idea with them all going together is that there is safety in numbers. They have natural predators that they are all on the lookout for as they run up the beach in groups of 5 or 6. The problem for us was that not that many of them came back in since the breeding season is pretty much over and most of the chicks were out in the water too so the moms and dads didn't all need to come back in to feed the babies. So, it was a disappointing parade, but the penguins were very cute. It was actually a lot more interesting to see the penguins walking back to their burroughs (holes that they dig in the ground). There was one penguin who was so full of fish that his belly was practically touching the ground and he kept sort of falling forward because it was so hard for him to waddle home with his stomach so full. So that was Philip Island.

TASMANIA (a.k.a. Van Dieman's Land)
I traveled Tasmania as part of a tour group. The tour company specializes in backpacker's tours so we did most of our own cooking and cleaning up. We stayed in their hostel accomodations, thankfully they divided us up boys and girls. Nothing against boys, but everytime I've stayed in a mixed dorm during my other travels, I never got any sleep because there are inevitably two guys that get into a snoring competition in their sleep. Anyway, it was really fun and felt a lot more like we were roughing it because we had to do so much of the stuff ourselves and it keeps the cost of the tour down. There were 21 people on the tour, so it was pretty small and we were all in our 20s or early 30s, except for this older Japanese couple who were probably in their 60s and whom I felt bad for because they ended up not doing a lot of the stuff that we did. There were 8 Japanese, 1 Australian, 1 English, 1 American (me!), 1 Czech, 3 Germans, 1 French, 4 Danes, and a Finnish guy. We were a pretty international group. And, yes, I did practice my French with the French girl. I was actually surprised at how easily it came back to me. Luckily her English wasn't great, so I did get to speak French quite a bit. Plus there was our Tasmanian tour guide who was dressed a little bit like the Crocodile Hunter, except he had on a big hat with feathers in it.

So, I arrived in Tasmania the night before the tour started, in the northern part of the island, in a town called Launceston. This is the second biggest city in Tasmania... and it felt like a ghost town. Apparently there are about 100,000 people here, but I can assure you that most of them have severe agoraphobia and don't leave their homes because there was hardly anyone on the streets, in the restaurants, in the shops, in the parks, anywhere... and this was a Friday afternoon/night! The tour I joined started Saturday morning. We started first at a place called Cataract Gorge. This is a deep gorge with a river running through it and nice views. We had to cross the gorge on a suspenson bridge that wobbles and moves like the rope bridges at Disneyland. Slightly scary, but not too bad. Then we drove to a small city called Ross that has a famous, convict-built bridge and a famous bakery that was used as a model in some Japanese anime films. By the way, when I say small, I mean like 5 houses, a church, 2 bakeries, a convenience store, and a bridge. This place was small. A couple of the Japanese girls on the trip were impressed by the bakery because of the movies it was used in, but since I have not seen the movies, it just looked like a bakery to me. Then we drove some more over miles of bumpy road and past LOTS of sheep to get to a long waterfall, where we made lunch at a campground-type place, complete with a flushless toilet that is only periodically cleaned out by rainwater but which smells surprisingly not horrible. After lunch, during which I impressed my fellow travellers with my burrito-folding expertise, we headed to a wildlife refuge where we got to see Tasmanian Devils. They don't really look like the Warner Bros. cartoon version, but they do sound like that, though maybe even a bit more vicious. We got there around feeding time, so we were lucky enough to be around to see and hear the Tassie Devil eat. The jaws of the Tassie Devil are the second strongest in the world after the Great White Shark, according to our tour guide. The proof was in the pudding, so to speak, as you could practically feel the power of its jaw as the devil crunched through the meat and bones of whatever raw, dead thing it was eating. The reason the Tasmanian Devil is called the Tasmanian Devil is for its horrible growl or whatever that sound might be called. And it only communicates in one volume: loud. When European explorers first came to Tasmania, they heard the growls and thought it sounded like how the Devil would sound, so they called them devils. They bite whatever comes near them or bothers them, so they're fairly dangerous to be around. We really wanted to hear what the devil sounded like, so one of the sanctuary keepers jumped into one of the Tassie Devil's pens and started playing with it! We were all shocked because normally Tassie Devils will bite whatever they can, but this one had been at the sanctuary for 3 years, since it was a baby, so it knew the keeper and was play-biting and making its horrible sound. Believe it or not, it was actually really cute when it was playing with the keeper, though I must admit, I didn't have quite the same urge to take it home with me that I did with the baby koala. In the rest of the sanctuary, there were koalas, wombats, kangaroos, snakes, and kookaburras. Some of the female kangaroos had joeys in their pouches, but none of them came out. We spent the rest of Saturday on the beach.

Sunday was the big hiking day at Wineglass Bay. About a third of the people in the group were really experienced hikers who climbed to the top of Mt. Amos. Most of us just hiked halfway up to the lookout and then down to the beach. It took me about 35 mins to hike up to the lookout and then about 45 to hike down to the beach where we ate lunch. The hike back took a little bit longer. Needless to say, I was pretty tired, hot, and sweaty afterwards, but I was glad that I did it. It was my first official hike where I had to bring along water and food and walked for a couple of hours total, so that was fun. After Wineglass Bay, we stopped at a place called Kate's Berry Farm and had the most amazing homemade ice cream. The ice cream was great and refreshing after the hike, and the farm was interesting because I guess it's on some list of "100 things to do before you die" for Dutch people. I'm not sure why. But, if I were Dutch, I'd be able to cross at least one thing off the list. Then we drove some more (A LOT of driving over bumpy roads on this trip) to a rainforest walk, where we got to see tree ferns that were several hundred years old and smell sasparilla leaves - the plant used to originally make root beer. I don't remember too many of the facts our guide told us about the rainforest as I was still recovering from the Wineglass Bay lookout hike - as in feeling really sleepy - and was starting to come down with a cold. Then we drove some more. We eventually arrived at our hostel accomodations for the night in Port Arthur. The hostel was clean, comfortable, big, and beautifully situated next to... a graveyard. This was made even more exciting by the fact that 10 of us were going to be leaving soon to go on a night ghost tour of Port Arthur, a horrible convict prison settlement established in the mid-1800s and closed down in the late 1870s. This place would have definitely invited scrutiny by human rights organizations if it were still in operation today and is said to be the most haunted place in Australia.

The ghost tour was great! I didn't necessarily see any ghosts, but we think that two of the girls from our group got photos of ghost-like things. They're going to send their photos to Port Arthur and we'll see what happens. I don't know if I believe in ghosts or not, but it's still fun to think what might be out there. Nothing creepy happened on our tour, but we got lots of good stories of weird things happening on other tours and we got to visit some of the buildings at night, with no light but what was provided by 3 kerosene lanterns. It turned out that our tour guide is a descendant of a murderer that was already a convict at Port Arthur when he killed another man with pick-axe! The next day we went back to Port Arthur to visit the rest of the buildings and at each place I asked the attendant if they'd had any "experiences" of their own. Each of them said they had and told me their stories. They all were really sincere and seemed to truly believe what they were telling me. In the Comandant's house, I asked the attendant about her experiences. She told me that once, when she was giving a night ghost tour, there was a very skeptical German man who demanded to see a ghost. Right after he demanded to see a ghost, the tour guide felt someone grab her shirt sleeve and basically throw her out of the building, but there was no one there! When she finished her story, I jokingly said, "I want to see a ghost. I demand to see a ghost!" Then I looked around me to see if anything would happen. Nothing did, of course, but then the attendant said, "Okay," turned off the alarm, took my friend and I to a back bedroom and let down the guard rope that keeps people from touching all the furniture and told us to go in. This was the room of one of the nannies. The attendant told us that if the ghost wants us to know that she's there, we would be able to feel unexplained cold or warm spots. So we waved our hands around in the room and somehow both managed to find the same warm spot near the end of the bed. It felt like if you put your hand over someone else's arm and you could feel their body heat. We both agreed that we're not sure that meant that we really experienced a ghost, it could have just been that we wanted to feel heat, so we psychologically made ourselves feel it. Who knows...

Finally, the tour was coming to a close. Of course, after Port Arthur, we drove some more. We stopped for a short time at Remarkable Cave, which wasn't what I would have called remarkable, but which was still interesting for it's split interior. Then we drove some more and eventually ended up at our final destination, Hobart, the capital of Tasmania. Before we were dropped off at our various hostels, we drove to the top of Mt. Wellington and got great views of the bay, islands, and peninsula. We also got to fill our bottles from a little waterfall of fresh rain water that is so pure they don't even need to filter it before they bottle it up. I was both surprised and not surprised to find that Hobart was only slightly more active than Launceston had been. Here there were at least some people out at night on the streets, but not nearly as many as you'd expect of the largest and capital city of Tasmania. Overall, I'd have to say that Tasmania is a remarkable, beautiful, vast, sheep-filled, roadkill-covered, gently wild place to visit... but I wouldn't want to live there. However, if I could be guaranteed a ghost-sighting, I'd definitely go back.

More to come next week when I head to Hong Kong and possibly my first venture into mainland Asia...