- Starting our Tasmanian trip in Launceston
- The Tamar River Valley
- On the road to Freycinet National Park
- Traveling in the steps of convicts — on the road to Port Arthur
- Hobart and the search for lumber!
- The road to Cradle Mountain — Russell Falls, Lake St. Clair, Queenstown, and Strahan
- Cradle Mountain
- The road back to civilization — Woolnorth, Stanley, Table Cape, Sheffield and trip end
One of the goals of coming to Australia for a year was to mix business with pleasure — working halftime and traveling halftime. One of the places we wanted to see was Tasmania. It’s natural beauty, history, and evolutionary uniqueness made it a “must see” for us. And then, of course, there are the jokes that liken Tasmania to West Virginia — you know, “if you don’t have a date on Friday night, your sister will do just fine!” I guess isolation will generate those types of stories! Given our limited time and knowledge of the area, we ended up taking a 10-day bus tour. This is something we generally don’t (and won’t) do for a lot of reasons, but it ended up working fine for our purposes. We went with Australian Pacific Tours and they operated the tour very professionally.
We started our tour in Launceston, which is the second largest city in Tasmania and one of oldest cities in Australia. It is very provincial with lots of historic buildings, beautiful formal gardens, was one of the first cities to be powered by hydroelectricity. In fact, we spent an afternoon exploring the Cataract Gorge, the site of the hydro dam. While only 15 minutes outside of the city, there are lots of hiking trails, the world’s longest single span chairlift, and wandering peacocks.
From there, we visited the City Park. The entrance probably looks like it did when the park was opened in 1820. We really loved the wisteria growing over the arbors. In addition to the many gardens, one of the big attractions is the Japanese Macaques money enclosure. There are about 20 of them that were a gift from Launceston’s sister city of Ikeda City, Japan. Deb is not a huge fan of monkeys, so we didn’t stay for too long. Being a sucker for wood, we stopped off at Design Tasmania where I was tempted by a number of the furniture pieces there.
Time to head down the road!
This entry was posted in Australia, Tasmania, Travel
I am a traveler and sometimes clay sculptor, following a long career working in consulting. My work allowed me to travel the world extensively and I was hooked. Today, I travel with my wife/best friend to explore new places, meet new people, and learn new things.
