Monday
We had a nice long, uninterrupted sleep and awoke about 7 feeling nice and refreshed. We had breakfast included with the room so we wandered down to the restaurant area and helped ourselves. It was fairly simple, toast, cereal, juice and tea or coffee. We filled up and went to the room to get our things together. We dropped them off to the car and went to say our thanks to Don, the wonder. We was very nice and wished us a pleasant trip. When we were sat in the car it was only then that we could relax. We were. Still convinced the place was probably haunted. We had read on a place mat that it was Australia’s oldest continually licensed pub. Apparently Dame Nelly Melba had also stayed there once upon a time. We were only 20 minutes drive from Hobart, so we set out early to get there at a decent time. Along the way we took a diversion to the small town of Brighton just so I could get a photo in front of the “welcome to” sign in my Brighton shirt. Due to the slightly confusing road system, we struggled to get out of town and ended up heading in the completely wrong direction. Eventually, we got back on track and made our way into Hobart along with the Monday morning rush hour traffic. If the roads outside of Hobart were confusing, the ones inside were an absolute maze on one ways and “no right/left”. After a bit of a struggle, we found the tourist information centre and then found a parking space. The sign with the parking information was so confusing, it may as well have been written in Chinese. We guessed we had 15 minutes parking, so tried to make it a very quick visit to the tourist information. When we saw the crowds we weren't confident though. We squeezed ourselves in and joined the snaking queue heading towards the desk. It went quicker than we expected and we were asking our questions within a couple of minutes. All we needed was where we could get some long term parking for a reasonable price and where we could get some free wifi. The multi storey car park and library seem like obvious answers but when confronted with a new city, they aren't always that easy to find. The lady pointed them out to us on the map she provided and we headed off. We found the central car park, ignored the sign that said full and headed in to find a space. We found one fairly easily and parked up. Parking was free for the first 90 minutes (which is something Worthing could do with!) but we reckoned we'd be slightly longer than that. The library was just a block away, we wandered in, found a comfortable seat and logged on to the wifi. This was the first decent internet we had had since arriving in Tasmania so we checked up on news and contacted home first. Then, we got to searching for accommodation, as we still didn't have anywhere booked up for Hobart. While I was looking that up, Charlotte looked up the Bush Inn, which we had stayed in last night, just for laughs. It didn't really surprise us that it was well renowned for being haunted and had had ghost hunters over to check the place out. Apparently, there is the ghost of a young girl in room 6, which was a couple of doors down from the room we stayed in. There was even a brief interview with the owner Don, who had been so nice to us during our stay. What did surprise us was that it wasn't mentioned at all while we were there. Don didn't even ask us how our sleep was but that was all done with now. We found a few places to stay but decided walk there and book rather than do it over the Internet. Wedding the Hobart Hostel slightly out of town on a corner, not looking a million miles away from the Bush Inn. We shrugged our shoulders, went in and got a room sorted for a couple of nights. After the receptionist showed us to our room, we started to walk back in to town. We were starving by this point and decided to find a café or restaurant for lunch. We were resigning ourselves to Subway when we noticed a fairly busy place behind us. It was called Shamrock Hotel. We walked in, threaded ourselves through the packed out bar and found a table in the restaurant area, which was just as busy as the bar. The menu was really cheap and pretty extensive, so we took some time deciding what we fancied. I plumped for a burger and Charlotte went for a Steak and Kidney Pie which was on the specials board. We didn't have to wait long to presented with a large plate of food each. We were pretty full afterwards and pleased we'd managed to find somewhere so reasonable for lunch in a city. We digested for a few minutes and then set off to retrieve the car.
When we'd found it, we pondered what to do with the rest of our day. It didn't take long to decide we would head up to Mount Wellington. The mountain towers over Hobart and there's a road right to the top. We struggled through the one way system and out of the city and then got tricked by the complicated road system again. With no warning, we veered off to the left and got stuck on the highway heading south. It was 8km before we could come off and do a u turn. Heading back north, it was slightly easier to find the turn off. We came off the highway again and weaved up the side of the mountain. It got to a point when we were so high, it turned our stomachs to look down the mountainside to Hobart. We really were up in the clouds. Fortunately, it was a pretty clear day and the views from the summit were absolutely spectacular. We could see all of Hobart, some of the Derwent Valley, Bruny Island to the south and the Tasman peninsular to the east. There were a few man made viewing platforms which gave us different perspectives and we moved from one to one whenever we happened to be joined by the coach load of Chinese tourists that had just been dropped off. There was also a small building packed full off information about the mountain. The local Hobartians use it as a weathervane. They look up at the mountain in the morning and it will pretty much tell them what it is going to be like for the rest of the day. It also protects them from the worst of the weather the Southern Ocean throws at Tasmania and keeps the city fairly mild during the winter months. After an hour or so at the summit, we jumped back in the car and weaved our way back down the mountain. We stopped on the way back to the hostel to pick up some food and drink and then found the route back. Unable to find a parking space near the hostel, we had to make a few trips back and forth in order to take in everything we needed for the 2 nights. We were in desperate need of some clean clothes, so we got some washing done before dinner. We also had wifi at this hostel, so could finally keep in contact with home for a few consecutive days. We put together some chicken, rice and veg for our dinner, in the fairly busy kitchen.
Tuesday
We were up fairly early as we were heading south for the day to do a couple of walks that were in our book. We had our Crunchy Nut and then got stuck talking to someone who was also staying at the hostel. In the politest way we could, we excused ourselves from the conversation, as we needed to move the car before the traffic wardens of Hobart clocked on. We followed the same route we had the day before, when we took the wrong turning but continued on where we had turned around. Not far south of Hobart we started climbing through some hills and found ourselves above valleys shrouded in morning mist. The centres of population seemed to get less and less until we entered Hartz Peak National Park and there was nobody, apart from one lorry carrying logs that trundled past us. Eventually, the Tarmac road ended and we were driving on a very windy, unsealed road through logging country. Not far beyond the boundaries of the national park we encountered a picnic area and a viewing platform. We used the bush toilet and walked to the viewing platform. There wasn't much to see however, as the morning mist was still covering the values below us. Not far along, we found the car park for the walk we were after. There was an unmanned information centre, where we logged our walk, just incase anything untoward happened while we were on the track. Despite there being one other car in the car park, there wasn't a soul to be seen and no traffic noise whatsoever. It seemed like we had the whole national park to ourselves. The walk was a fairly easy one up to a glacial lake called Lake Esperance. The majority of the walk was on boardwalk as it was over springs and thick foliage. We made it to the lake quicker than we had expected, so we sat on a bench, ate a snack and enjoyed the peace and quiet. The walk carried on to the top of Hartz Mountain but our book said that walk required someone in the group with navigational skills so we didn't go all the way. We did part of it though and had worked up a good sweat by the time we turned around. We still hadn't seen anyone and were desperately hoping to get all the way back to the car park with it that way. It didn't take long to be disappointed though. We passed the first couple at the turn off to Lake Esperance and then passed two more groups of 2 and two single walkers along the way. It certainly didn't take away from what was such a wonderful and peaceful part of the world though. We made it back to the car and moved in to a short walk just down the road which took us to the small but impressive falls. There had been nobody doing this walk, so we were back to being alone. On the journey back down the windy mountain road, we pulled over in a shady spot and had our slightly later than planned lunch. We had a pot of jam and peanut butter and made ourselves some sandwiches in the car. After lunch, we considered doing yet another walk but were put off as it wasn't inside a national park and was instead a privately owned tourist attraction that had rather steep entrance fees. We weren't to disappointed to be missing it out. By this point the day was getting on and it was about an hour and a half drive back to Hobart. Along the way we stopped off in the small village of Geeveston, which is nicknamed the forest city. Instead of the bog standard “welcome to” sign it had one made out of 2 huge tree trunks that flanked the road as we drove in and out of the village. They were worth a stop and a photo, then we carried on. We were following the Huon River along the bottom of the valley and the views were much better now the morning mist had been burnt away by the pleasantly warm autumn sunshine. The area is famed for it apples and we could see the large orchards at the side of the road as we drove along. Before arriving back into Hobart, we turned off and made our way to the top of Mount Nelson. It's quite a bit smaller than nearby Mount Wellington up the views were just as impressive. There was also a café at the top, where we picked up a cup of coffee and found a seat with a view. MountNelson was once used as a semaphore station, so messages could be sent from Hobart to the nearby penal colony of Port Arthur on the Tasman peninsular. There was an old building on the top, with various bits of information and also a map, pointing out the main sights of Hobart and beyond. Pleased with our achievements for the day, we headed off into town. We had a wander around the streets, half taking in the town, half looking for a pin badge. We didn't see much of the town though and didn't have much luck finding a pin badge, so it hadn't been very productive. To cheer ourselves up, we paid a visit to a bottleshop and picked up some Cascade beer, which is brewed in Hobart. We also stocked up on food for the next few days, as we were heading to isolated Bruny Island for a couple of days and didn't expect to be able to find anything cheap there. We had a delicious curry for dinner, which Charlotte very kindly cooked as I was desperately trying to catch up with blog writing. After dinner we had a very stressful time trying to book last minute accommodation for the Easter weekend. After a long while, we did manage to get some sorted but we had very little hair left by the time we got to bed, just before midnight.
James and Charlotte
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