I’ve been on the road nearly a month now and it’s feeling very normal!
Between leaving Chiangmai in October and arriving in Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, at the beginning of November, I spent time in Melbourne where I was able to share in a lovely wedding and toured Tasmania – travelling on my own for the first time in about ten years.
The wedding was a very happy occasion- two young people clearly ‘together’ and sharing a group of friends who were genuinely happy for them. There was no stuffiness and a minimum of formality – just a very sincere sharing of a commitment for life. The ceremony was a fitting mix of traditional and non-traditional, formal and informal and was a real attempt to involve everyone there: what wedding have you been to where the guests are expected to make the first vow of the day, responding to the couple’s command that they vow to ‘enjoy the day with us’ ? Another stage in their journey..
It wasn’t until after the wedding that I really began to plan what would come next! There were very few fixed points and I knew there would be time to do all that I wanted. First step was to book flights and car hire in Tasmania. At the same time I booked the first three nights’ accommodation and the next day I was off, flying Virgin Blue from Melbourne to Launceston (Brits, please note it’s pronounced Lorn-ces-ton). Apparently, the city is so famous architecturally that students from the US are brought to see the variety of its buildings. I enjoyed the countryside nearby more than the city itself, with the Tamar and the Tamar Valley vineyards high on my list of places to recommend. I had been quite lazy in Melbourne and was energized by being somewhere new, so the first day saw me driving along the Tamar Valley Wine Route – much of Tasmania seems to have been divided up into tourist routes and it’s very easy to get around and see places as a result. Attracted by the name, my first stop was the Leaning Church Vineyard: great views, amazing bubbly and lovely Sauvignon Blanc. It was too early for lunch so I carried on through gorgeous rolling hills past Georgetown and Lilydale to Piper’s Brook where, in addition to a nice Sauvignon Blanc, they had trout on the lunch menu: it was good!
From there I drove to the Bridestowe Lavender Farm and was astounded by the distance covered by lavender plants: a month from now when they’re in bloom it will be quite a spectacle, as it was it was lovely as the grey-green of the plants complemented the brown soil and were interspersed by shade-giving trees. So many aspects of Australian life which are highlighted for tourists are derived from England…
The Tamar River Cruise was well advertised and I decided to do it the next day. It would be a good way to see the famous Cataract Gorge. Sailing to the sea at Low Head was calm and there were opportunities to take in the scenery on either side of the river: not many settlements, but a number of farms and vineyards and one or two large houses. We passed ships in Launceston’s shipyard and the marina which had been brought from Sydney after the Olympics. It’s now a feature of a very trendy housing development on the quay where there is an excellent sea food restaurant. Sailing up the Gorge took me back to the Yangtze: and, once again, I was amazed at the way in which geographical features are the same all over the world and give me those instant flashbacks to other happy memories.
Next day I set off to drive to Cradle Mountain. As in the Tamar Valley, the drive took me through many towns named after communities in the UK but so much different in character – I was particularly struck by the difference between Sheffield with its murals and rural farms and my images of the very industrial town of the same name in England! And there were many times when I had the rolling hills of the Home Counties on one side and the roughness of the Highlands or the Alps on the other.
Much of Tasmania is designated National Park and the Cradle Mountain-St. Clair National Park is one of the most famous with its iconic mountain accessible only on foot. On my only full day there I opted for the ‘Park Explorer’ Tour and found myself having the luxury of a guide all to myself. That meant taking photos was OK and didn’t hold others up, so that meant I did actually listen to the history of the park – quite a romantic story! It was a wonderfully warm, clear day just right for enjoying the park with its forest and craggy mountain.
I loved having wallabies coming up to my room in the evening and the typical Australian eucalypts that surrounded me as well as the freshest air. There was the added bonus of the photo gallery in the hotel! I was really quite sad to leave but it was the drive to Strahan that began to make me realise how sparsely populated Tasmania is. It was a lovely drive and I longed to be able to take photographs along the way – but every time I thought about it I would probably have caused an accident: amazing how there are so few cars on the road and they’re always there at the wrong time!!
After two lovely days in the park, the time had come to move on to Strahan and continue my enjoyment of local seafood and the exhilaration of being on a boat…
Living the Journey 