Tassie: Part 1

I’m finally getting a chance to wrap up my latest adventure! Tasmania was a lot more cold and mountainous than I was expecting, though I’m not sure what I was expecting. I booked a tour, so only when it was time to pack did I do my three minutes of research to check the weather forecast and the suggested packing list from the tour company. I taught my last day of 2023, and headed straight to the airport from school. Packing light meant I could bring my supplies for the trip to school and carry on from there.

Day 0

Flying Jetstar was my first mistake. My departing flight was delayed by an hour, allegedly due to thunderstorms in Queensland. I don’t doubt it, because the East Coast has been getting some wild weather lately, but still. At least I had more time to sit still – one of my favourite parts of air travel is the waiting. Does that make me a weirdo? It’s just so nice to be able to pause.

I flew into Hobart, which is roughly the same distance from the equator as Sioux Falls, SD. It was only an hour flight, so the delay wasn’t awful. I stayed at a hostel for the night, then got picked up at 7:30 am Saturday morning.

Day 1

We picked up the remaining guests, then headed to Salamanca Markets. We had just over an hour to peruse all the vendors that come together at the Hobart waterfront each week. I loved how it was all small businesses, with no MLMs in sight. Come to think of it, I haven’t really seen any MLM-related material since I’ve been here. Another point for Oz! I bought a couple souvenirs, some Tasmanian Tayberries (a cross between a raspberry and a blackberry), a jam-filled doughnut (an Aussie staple), and a wallaby breakfast burrito. The wallaby was good! I’ve found it for sale at my local grocery store, so I will be cooking something with it soon. 

After the market, we were off to the Tasman Peninsula, stopping at the Tasmanian Devil Unzoo. The idea is that you get to experience the animals’ habitat with them, entering the fenced areas they get to call home. Our group got up close and personal with some Green Lorikeets, Pademelons (one of two species of Wallabies in Tassie), and Forrester Kangaroos. I got to feed the Lorikeets and pet the Kangaroos – one of my trip highlights! I didn’t realize this before, but when kangaroos walk, they will use their tail and hands to prop up their torsos to scoot their legs forward. It looks so awkward, but I suppose it works for them!

The Tasmanian Devils were in a more traditional enclosure because they can be more vicious than the other animals. They were fed while we visited, and put on quite a show. They don’t spin like Taz from Looney Tunes, but the sounds they made were pretty close! The two of them were juveniles, so more agile than the mature Devils, though still quite bowling ball-esque and a little (or a lot) derpy. One would run away with the chunk of meat, leaving the other standing there sniffing around like “where’d you go?”. I’m not sure if these guys were a representative sample of wild Devils, as they were rejects from the breeding program that the Tasmanian Government has to save the endangered species from extinction. 

Tasmanian devils are endangered due to a contagious facial cancer (Devil Facial Tumour Disease) that was first detected in 1996. It’s an interesting bottlenecking event, as the less agressive Devils are not as prone to developing it. This is because they do not scrap as much and therefore do not get cuts and scrapes through which the cancer is spread. Counter-intuitive, but evolution works in interesting ways!

We made a lunch stop en route to Port Arthur Historic Site, the best preserved convict site in Australia. We did not have enough time to fully absorb all of the site, which I am disappointed about. I felt very rushed here, and didn’t know where to spend the time I did have to make the most of the experience. 

On our boat tour of the site, we were at a spot where the next land south was Antartica. It may have been 2700 km away, but it was right over there!

After Port Arthur, we drove back to Hobart for our first night. This tour was “self-feeding” meaning that I was responsible for my own meals. It was nice to be able to decide what I wanted to eat, but it did add a lot of time to our stops because twenty people had to go through the line at the cafe before we could move on. 

See you soon!

– Kate