Experience Tasmania

• Home
• Experiences
• Follow on Twitter
• Become a fan on Facebook

From the second I landed in Tasmania, there was something in the air that told me I was going to like it here. Quite literally, I think it may have been the air itself, because as I walked down the tarmac I couldn’t help but take in deep breath after deep breath of air, filling my lungs beyond their capacity with the crisp, cool Tasmanian oxygen.

I had been couped up in an airplane for fifteen hours on my flight from the States to Australia, then during my layover I sat under a screen, which for eight hours bathed me with the constant flickering glow of the arrival and departures of flights to other far-off lands and capped it all off with another two hour flight from Sydney down to Hobart. Needless to say, by the time I strolled off that plane I was ready to be invigorated by what Tasmania had to offer me and she did not disappoint.

I’m not sure if it was the size of the airport or the warm smiles of Megan and Kylie, the representatives from Tourism Tasmania who were there to greet me and help me get started along my Tasmanian adventure, but I had the overwhelming feeling that I had been here before, in a weird way, I kind of felt at home. Of course I had never been to Tasmania before, I’d been to Australia a few years back, but this was my first time here, to this mysterious little island far to the south, which was once known as Van Diemen’s land.

Hobart is the capital of Tasmania, Australia’s second oldest city and was to be my base camp for my first few days in Australia. As Mark, from The Lark Distillery explained to me a few days later, Hobart’s a country city; It may be the biggest place in Tassie, but it’s still got a small town feel where you can be downtown one minute and in a forest on a bush walk the next. It only took me about a day in the city to start to understand that feeling along with the many other aspects that Hobart has to offer. When your hear someone use the phrase “island time”, you conjure up a vision of a person sipping on a “mai-tai” as they watch the sun dip below the horizon on a warm tropical beach. Hobart might not be that exact place, but the mentality of island time still exists deep in its inhabitants subconscious and it’s a beautiful thing.

I confronted this mentality for the first time as I descended back down Mt. Wellington, the highest point in Hobart. It had been a foggy morning and I had admired the countless number of cyclists I had passed on my way up the mountain, braving the steep incline, fighting through the cloud covered windy roads. After reaching the top and unable to see anything further than my hand in front of my face, I decided to begin my descent back down where a few minutes later I was stopped by a rather official looking gentleman in the middle of the road telling me I couldn’t go any further.

“Sorry mate, you’re gonna have to hold here for a few minutes” He told me, “Hold here? how long?” I responded, a bit confused but also a bit curious as to why I was going to have to wait. “Not sure, half an hour, maybe forty-five minutes, an hour… yeah I’d say an hour mate. It’ll take them probably an hour to pass.”

As I parked my car to the side of the road, I couldn’t help but think about who had to pass? I was still in my hometown mentality, I had things I needed to do, places to be… I couldn’t afford an hour parked on the side of a road!

As I soon found out, I was driving back down Mt. Wellington in the middle of the first leg of the “Tour of Tasmania”, the annual premier international cycle race of the island. What started out as a hindrance in my mind, being stuck on the mountain indefinitely, soon turned into quite an adventure. I made friends with Dieter, the man who had stopped me, and soon we were cheering along the 14 different cycle teams as they powered to the top of the mountain all while he told me about some of his favorite restaurants to eat at and a few other must see places while on the island.

Small interactions like that became the norm over my next few days in Hobart. A scheduled visit to the Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary, where I had my first face to face encounter with the Tasmanian devil turned into an invitation to join Kyle, the Sanctuary manager and a few of his mates for dinner at a local pub.  A chance encounter with a duo playing folk music, turned into a stimulating conversion with Sue, a professor at UTAS (University of Tasmania, Australia) about the reasons why Tasmania is so unique and it’s often forgotten about aboriginal history. Then there was Mark from the Lark Distillery, who left a gathering with his good mates to take the time to talk to me about all things Tasmanian until we ended up sampling various whiskeys together.

It’s hard to say what’s going to happen over the next two weeks while I make my way around this island, but  I think it’s safe to say that if it’s anything like my first few days here, then it’s going to be a bloody good time.