Tasmania Part 1

If you hadn’t guessed from the delay since the last post we’ve been pretty busy having fun! We’ll likely try to keep the posts shorter in the future as it takes oh so much time to type up and, mostly to blame, to collate and prep several sources of images.

Without further ado, the first half of our Tasmania journey!

Day 1: Launceston

An early start and a cosy drive in a Kia Picanto with 4 sets of luggage, 4 passengers and 4 pieces of hand luggage we headed back to Melbourne airport for our flight to Launceston, Tasmania. We rented this interesting-looking camper from Auto rent but it was perfect in the end, and the 4WD came into good use on a 20km gravel road!

Our first stop in Launceston was the Cateract Gorge. A “short walk” from the Big4 campsite but on a hot and sunny day the uphill walk to the gorge felt brutal! We started by taking the cable car up the mountain side, over the top of the swimming pool and lake. Some beautiful views and at the top we saw our first wallaby! Oh and some peacocks…! From there we went up to a view point over the gorge before taking the ZigZag track towards town. We saw some crazy people jumping into the gorge from about 6m up but none of us were brave enough to do it too!

Once we made it to town, and after a stroll along the rivers edge, we made to our first (of many?) brewery stops - Du Cane Brewery. The beer was so good mum fell of her chair!! The raspberry sour would have made the beer label book if it wasn’t simply printed onto the can. We finished the day with a wander back to the campsite via the supermarket, and a dusk we were treated to a troop of Tasmanian Pademelons roaming the campsite.

Day 2: Launceston -> Bay of Fires

We began our roadtrip in earnest by travelling from Launceston to the Bay of Fires with several stops along the way. Our first stop was at the Lilydale falls - a teaser for mum and dad of the amount of walking we would make them do! We were treated to two small waterfalls, no more than a few metres high each, and a little wallaby carving on one of the sets of stairs.

Our second stop of the day was at the Bridstowe lavender estate, no purple flowers in sight but an intense smell of lavender was present. The heat took over and we each had a delicious lavender-infused ice cream while walking towards the estates pond which promised possible sightings of the incredibly elusive platypus… No platypus was seen… the platypus saga begins!

We attempted to stop at Lake Derby’s floating sauna for some R&R. It turns out you really need to read up about bookings to places, so a lesson was learnt nice and early into our trip! We did find a cool suspension bridge at our lunchtime stop off though so at least it wasn’t a fully wasted drive.

Our final stop of the day was the Little Blue Lake - a former mining area with such a high aluminium content that the water turns vivid blue. Little, blue, and a lake, 5/5 for description! We made our way towards Cosy Corner North for an overnight stop in a picturesque free camp, and nearly led mum and dad-s poor campervan down 20km of gravel road! Thanks for the heads up Georgie! Cracking little spot to stop for the evening.

Day 3: Bay of Fires -> Freycinet National Park

When you wake up on the east coast there is only one thing to do - watch the sunrise. That’s exactly what Chloe did while catching up with her mum and dad on a call. Dad, also an early riser, was surprised to find a set of tracks on the beach already which led towards Chloe. While Mum and I had a ‘much needed’ lie in those two explored, and after some brekkie in the van we all went for a walk along the beach and over the incredibly orange rocks giving Bay of Fires its name.

Our journey along the east coast took us to the East Coast Nature World. The coastal views were quite lovely, but some plonker managed to put a grainy black and white filter on their camera at the Orange Rocks so enjoy some artsy “old fishing village” vibe photos…

The ECNW gave us the chance to see all the animals Tassie had to offer, although Dad didn’t take a shine to the Tasmanian Devils. The feisty creatures are struggling though with a type of cancer which has destroyed 70% of the population on Tasmania so there is a lot of research into how to mitigate the transmissible facial tumours. While at the park we also got to feed Forrester Kangaroos and Albino Wallabies - definitely a highlight thus far for Chloe. In typical Mikey fashion I made friends with the talking Long-billed Cockatoo in the park!

After a busy morning, we were all ready for some lunch and the Lobster Shack in Bicheno was recommended. We had a FEAST with a lobster roll, and two fisherman’s platters to share, we wish we had taken a picture, but we were too hungry! To waddle off the food we went for a stroll to the Bicheno Blow holes. They may not have been as incredible as the Tongan ones we saw in December 2024 but it was still pretty cool and the walk over rocks following white painted arrows was unique too - pretty sure it wouldn’t be allowed in the UK.

A quick stop at the supermarket and another brewery - Bicheno Brewing, we made our way for a 2 night stop in Freycinet National Park. The campsite was as close to the beach as we could get and so we couldn’t resist a little dip before bedtime before a very short sleep….

Day 4: Freycinet National Park

To quote my wonderful wife: “BEST HIKE EVERRRRRR”. To quote myself and my dad: “we’ll forgive you by lunchtime”.

Chloe had been watching Instagram posts of Australia-travellers for many months before our trip, and high up on her list of must-dos was a sunrise hike to the top of Mt Amos. This meant a 3:30am start for Chloe, dad, and I with sunrise around 6:28. (mum smartly decided she’d stay and prepare breakfast for 8.30 am). The mountain range in Freycinet park is known as The Hazards. They are said to be named after a local whaler called Richard Hazard, but my alternative theory is that they are named after the pitch-black rockface scramble we undertook!

We had a refreshing 50 minute walk along the road from our campsite to the base of Mt. Amos, with the only other awake creatures being several chunky possums and a single pickup truck that passed us on the road towards the base (we weren’t the only fools to attempt the walk at this time!). We needed our torches and would do until we reached the top just in time for sunrise.

The return loop to the top was only 5km, with an altitude difference of about 450m, but it soon became apparent that it wasn’t your run-of-the-mill hike. The track was composed of a few dusty dirt track sections, but mostly rockface scrambles and boulder hopping up the hazards themselves. If we’d seen it in the light beforehand, we might not have done it by torchlight alone! Below are some before sunrise/after sunrise photos for comparison, although locations are very approximate as there wasn’t much reference for where I took the original photos!

Eventually we reached the top of Mt. Amos in time for sunrise and tucked into a few celebratory bickies. It turns out that the pickup that passed us earlier in the morning was a father-son duo, one of which was a professional photographer trying to capture the sunrise too. The views from the top were stunning. Despite actual sunrise being scuppered by clouds on the horizon the sun did peak through 10 minutes later leading to some cracking shots and selfies. We just about forgave Chloe for the crazy scramble too! We made our way back down the mountain in daylight, and we cadged a lift of the pickup truck back to the campsite in time for breakfast.

We had a fairly easy rest of the day: we walked over to the nearby Coles Bay for an afternoon ice cream and a bit of shopping, a bit of swimming and snorkelling on the beach (not much to see except two small stingrays), and we had pasta for dinner with salmon done on the campsite BBQ hotplates. An early night for us all. The hike was worth it.

Day 5: Freycinet National park -> Port Arthur

We packed up our camper vans and continued our journey down the east coast from Freycinet to Port Arthur. We stopped off en-route at Triabunna to catch a ferry and spend the day on Maria Island – strongly recommended by several friends!

We’d been promised that you were pretty much guaranteed to see a wombat on Maria Island, and even on a very warm summers day, which wombats detest, we were not disappointed! Within the first 5 minutes we’d seen a snoozing wombat, a grazing wombat, and even a little bandicoot. A little bit later we even saw a wombat scratching itself against the base of the old historical buildings on the island!

The easiest way to get around the island quickly is on bikes and so we rented some. Quite a few of you will know that bikes are not, ehem, my forte, but I persevered despite the hills, gravel and walkers. We visited the fossil cliffs, had a quick picnic lunch, went to the painted cliffs, and had one final explore of the historical buildings before we departed back for Triabunna.

Once back on the main island we continued driving down to Port Arthur, successfully leading our parents van (dubbed Big Bertha) down a stretch of unsealed road. By the time we reached the “4x4 recommended” sign we had lost all phone signal to warn them…oops! All went well though and we even spotted a snuffling echidna by the side of the road before finally reaching the Port Arthur campsite.

Part 2 of our Tasmania trip to follow soon!