Having now been living in Melbourne for just under four months, life has become rather routine, or as routine as I will allow my life to get. Living in the heart of such a large metropolis definitely has its perks (activities, events, drinking spots, homeless people, and homosexuals in abundance), but every so often one finds the urge to want to escape. So to combat this problem, back in January I decided for Leeanna’s birthday I would give her a post-dated trip to Tasmania if you will. So a couple of weeks ago we finally got the details all sorted out and made the trek down to Australia’s version of Keswick, Tasmania.
After ironing out all the details, we decided that we would leave for Tasmania early on a Tuesday morning and return on a Thursday night, as Leeanna had to work on both the Monday and the Friday. This made for some very hectic scheduling, but I being the slice of awesomeness that I am, concluded that this would be an adequate amount of time to see what we needed to see. The plan was to fly into Hobart (the capital city of Tassie), stay there for the first day and night and then rent a car and drive out to historic Port Arthur and up to Launceston (other major city, about 2.5 hours from Hobart) where we would fly out of on Thursday night. That was the plan, yes my great plan for our romantic whirl-wind tour of the exotic island of Tasmania.
But here is how it really played out…
Our flight out on Tuesday morning was scheduled bright and early at 6:00am, which meant waking up before 4:00am in order to catch the shuttle bus to the airport. I was able to grab a few hours sleep the night before, but I’m pretty sure that Leeanna had almost no sleep at all and was quite frustrated. Anyways, we boarded the shuttle bus to the airport and on the way it hit me, “fuck, I forgot my driver’s license”! In my dozy state that morning I had forgotten to pack it, which therefore was going to render it impossible for me to rent a car. This dramatically changed the outlook of the trip and how we were going to get about. The flight to Hobart was pretty uneventful, minus the three Irish guys behind me on the plane drinking beers at 6:30am and taking about the escort service they had just opened up (true story!). After dropping our bags off at our hostel (Central City Backpackers [6.5/10]) in the city centre and grabbing some breakfast, we headed over to the local Information Centre to book a group tour to Port Arthur the next day and a bus up to Launceston the following evening. All of this ended up setting me back a few hundred dollars, although it was all my fault for not packing my license. This trip was decidedly becoming a lot more expensive without that little piece of plastic. So as not to totally empty out my bank account, I decided that we should head out to Mount Wellington for the day to do some nice, casual nature walking. After catching the public bus out there and consulting with one of the local’s about what route to take, we set out on our climb to the summit, which was 1200 metres above sea level. It ended up being a fairly tough 3.5 hour climb almost exclusively uphill and was made worse by the fact that we were ill-equipped as we did not have proper clothing, any food, or any beverages. All we had was each other…oh and an empty paper coffee cup to fill up at the one tap half way up the mountain. Leeanna kept frequently wanting to quit and turn around, but me being the asshole boyfriend that I am made here continue on. She responded by sitting down/stopping every few minutes and trying to thoroughly test my patience. When we finally did reach the top, we were quite gassed and all I could do was laugh because 99% of the people at the top had driven up there, no doubt more than a few of them in their rental cars. After hiking down (with a lot less stops along the way) we finally made it back to the base for a grand total round trip time of around six hours. Both of us had extremely sore legs and would continue to feel the effects for the remainder of trip in Tasmania. That night, we went out for dinner at a place called the New Sydney Pub, which was a fairly typical smallish-busy Irish pub. We were supposed to go to some joint call the Republic Bar that my friend/co-worker Anthony’s dad owns. Since we could barely walk though, we had to opt for the Irish fare close to the hostel. Also, I was a bit sketched out about it being his dad’s bar, as this was Tasmania, and any Aussie worth his weight in salt knows that it was very likely his dad could have also been his cousin, brother, and family pet all rolled into one.
Wednesday morning we got up bright and early to catch our tour bus out to Port Arthur, which can best be described as Australia’s version of Alcatraz. The drive out to Port Arthur was a couple of hours and featured some stops along the way to take pictures of things like cool rock formations, scenic coastlines, and a village where every house had a nametag on it that had the word “do” in it (ie/ Do Nothing, Doo-Doo, Mountain Dew, Douche Bag, etc.). Once Leeanna and I and our tour bus full our senior citizens arrived at Port Arthur we were free to roam about the grounds and give ourselves a history lesson, which proved to be quite a chore for Leeanna and I, as both of us had legs that felt like cement blocks from the day before. Port Arthur was basically a place where they would send criminals who had reoffended in Australia, which was quite a dubious distinction since the whole mainland of the country was made up of criminals at that time in history. Most of the buildings there now are fairly decrepit, but the history behind it all is quite fascinating. We were also given a guided walking tour and a boat cruise around the very scenic harbor, which all added up to one very educational day. After sleeping on the bus the whole way back to Hobart, we hopped on another bus to make the drive up Launceston as that is where our flight was leaving from the next morning. The drive featured a whole lot of nothing, save for some sheep. We arrived in Launceston at around 7:30pm and checked into our hotel (yes, a hotel for once!) (Batman Fawkner Inn [8/10]). Next up we headed over to one of the local establishments that was serving pitchers of Carlton Draught on the cheap. Between and 8pm and 9pm they were $8, between 9pm and 10pm they were $9, etc. Needless to say, a few hours later I smuggled a full pitcher out of the bar that I promptly stashed on a street corner while I went in search of food. After some delicious wedges (cannot actually verify if they were delicious as I was intensely drunk at this point) the girlfriend and I made our way back to the hotel and scooped up my pitcher that was still resting peacefully in the street. And then…BLACKOUT!
Thursday morning, I woke up with one of the worst hangovers of my life. I was buck-ass naked which meant something was wrong as I always wear clothes to bed and felt like I had just been sat on by Rosie O’Donnell. When I finally was able to move a couple of inches, I saw my still full pitcher of beer staring at me from across the hotel room. Sure seemed like a good idea to steal it the night before! I slowly made my way to the shower/toilet and started to try and get ready for the day. During this time, the dude who runs the hotel came to the room and told Leeanna we had to check out, as I had not surprisingly overslept the checkout time. After finally getting my ass in gear, we decided to not follow through on our original plan of doing a tour of the James Boag’s Brewery (one of the more popular beers in Australia). I felt that this was in the best interest of all, as the sight or smell of beer would have been enough to send me into a vomit-inducing state. Instead, we headed over to Launceston’s most popular tourist attraction, “The Gorge” which features the world’s longest chairlift and some gorgeous scenery. Naturally we went for a ride on the chairlift, and I can now knock another thing off my bucket list. Pretty sure “ride the world’s longest chairlift” was right up there with “read every R.L. Stine book ever written” on my list. After walking back to our hotel, we were again thoroughly spent, as our legs were still feeling the ill effects of our mountain hike and I was still feeling the effects of draft beer. We decided to pass the afternoon away in one of the local parks that curiously had a large display of Japanese monkeys that kept Leeanna quite amused. After the monkeys, it was nap time in the park, followed by a trip to the airport and then back home to the comfy confines of Melbourne.
All in all, the trip ended up costing me a lot more money than I had anticipated because of my own stupidity. I can now say a couple of weeks later that I am none the worse for it, and can laugh rather heartily about my time in Tasmania.
Author’s note: No, I did not see any Tasmanian Devils, although I think I may have seen a dead one on the side of the road. We were going to visit the Tasmanian Devil Sanctuary, but this was thrown out the window when I was unable to rent the car.
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