Tasmania Finally.
After lots of years of thinking about it. We picked a date, booked the ferry and we were committed. The trip went for a whole 4 weeks, not counting the drive from Adelaide to Melbourne and back, covered nearly 3ooo kilometres while we were touring in Tasmania.
We travelled up the West Coast first into the rugged forest country as this is what we enjoy. The bush environment and the camping in remote areas. Mind you it is not that easy in Tasmania to find those secluded bush camping areas, took a bit of looking for. Really I suppose it takes a couple of trips to a location to know what you want from it. What was really nice about “ Tassy” is the fact that due to its size it doesn’t take long to get from one place to another! What really took me a few days to get used to were the driving conditions, which were up and down steep roads and very windy. And as this the first time towing a camper trailer weighing a bit over a tonne not counting the old Landrover. It was certainly a challenge for a couple of days. I don't think the “Landy” got out of third gear a lot of the time. But then we weren’t in a rush anyway, we were there to capture photos and enjoy the journey. What we enjoyed the most was the camping in the state forests. There were some fantastic locations, hardly anyone around at times just us camping in an area. The one thing I found was there were always people around doing the same as us having a holiday From time to time we did the normal tourist bit visiting places like the Salamanca Markets for one, and the Magnificent Gorge at Launceston. We also went to the Southern most point and the Northern most location. When you look at the collection of images that I have put online I hope they give you a small insight into what we enjoyed.
Mind you, one of the things I missed about being in Tasmania was the wide open spaces that you find travelling about in South Australia and inland in the dessert country. This only became, apparent when we we're driving back from Melbourne on that long stretch of road with all the open paddocks on either side. Most places you drive, due to the native scrub and the hilly terrain seems fairly closed in, or maybe I am just used to wide open spaces.
I tried to capture a variety of images to depict what I thought Tasmania was all about, from the rugged coastline to lovely beaches, then the small inland open spaces and of course the fantastic mountain areas. We also enjoyed many side trips to some of the more tourist type locations.
Cheers Peter
