Eleven weeks in Tasmania

We thought we would have oodles of time, eleven weeks (77 days!) sounds like a long time to visit a (relatively) small island. But time flies when you are having fun and it was time to return to the ferry all too soon.

We drove 4755 km, spent 29 days on multi-day hikes (see below), another 8 days doing shorter walks, 4 days of mountain biking, 4 days on Maria Island and 8 days on the rafting trip. That left ‘only’ 24 days of other activities, which included spending a day in Hobart to work out which tent we would buy, catching up with many friends and even some wine and whiskey tasting.

Jon enjoying a whisky tasting in the wine bar in Geeveston

we criss-crossed across most of the island in our eleven weeks

Jude also spent time looking for birds, although mostly this was done whilst on the hikes. There wasn’t much dedicated time to look for birds. She was very happy as she added 14 new birds to the list (still checking photos); ground parrots, striated fieldwrens, pink robins, bassian thrushes, a spotted quail-thrush, painted buttonquails, a couple of grey (or clinking) currawongs, strong-billed honeyeaters, a few beautiful firetails, quite a few dusky robins, several yellow-throated honeyeaters, scrubtits, Tasmanian thornbills, a swamp harrier, an olive whistler, and a few 40-spotted pardalotes.

We heard the Tasmanian boobook call several times. And on Maria Island Jude even saw one briefly, but as we didn’t manage to get a picture, it doesn’t really count. But we did manage to record some of its calls, maybe that counts? The jury is still undecided on that…

One night we stayed up late to watch the little penguins come back to land after a day of feeding out in the ocean. As Tasmania is so far south, it didn’t get dark during our first weeks there until 9pm and it was getting a little bit nippy whilst we were waiting. But they are so incredibly cute and totally worth waiting for.

one of the little penguins coming in from the ocean in the evening, he’s on his way to his burrow

Whilst we were staying down in Geeveston with Mark and Floss, we went packrafting on the Huon River. As we now had two vehicles, we were able to do a car shuffle, perfect. We left Cerberus (their 4wd self-built camping truck) at the put-in point and drove Lara to the end. It was only about 9.3 km on the river, but still took us three hours, we enjoyed taking our time and even stopped for lunch. It was great to actually test our packraft on some flowing water. Our put-in point was at Blackfish Creek about 8km down the She-Oak Road after you turn onto it at Judbury, and we ended the paddle at the bridge where the road crosses the Huon River at Judbury.

the map of our section we paddled on the Huon River

And of course we needed time to drive to the start location of each hike, prepare for the multi-day adventures (groceries, measuring food portions and packing), clean up after our hiking (laundry and removing mud from our gear), sorting out the many photos we took and writing the blogs.

doing our chores, hanging up the laundry

it’s hard work doing the laundry if you have a washing machine

As we boarded the ferry back to the mainland (this time we had the night ferry and a much better experience), we were a bit sad to leave the apple isle, but were very happy with everything we managed to do in our time there. We’re looking forward to the day we return again, Tassie is awesome.

Here are all our activities that we have written about from our eleven weeks in Tassie:

• Frenchman’s Cape (hiking)
• The Labyrinth (hiking)
• Western Arthur’s Traverse (hiking)
• Tasman Peninsula (hiking)
• Devil hunting (exploring Maria Island with Kerry, Erica and Corinne)
• Feathered and furry felons at Freycinet (hiking)
• Leeaberra Track (hiking)
• Mt Anne circuit
• Walls of Jerusalem (hiking with Karen, Blake and Tristan)
• Day hikes in Tasmania (hiking)
• Lake Rhona (hiking)
• Mountain biking in Tasmania (mountain biking)
• Floating down the famous Franklin (packrafting)

catching up with friends in Hobart – Tristan, Karen, Kim, Jude, Gary and Sean

catching up with Matt and Cynthia in Tullah, Tasmania

catching up with John, Celia, John and Ann in Ross for lunch