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Finally!!! Third time
lucky. We finally made it to Tasmania. The visit to Tasmania was planned for
the last 2 trips already. Our trip to Tasmania was beeing delayed due to the
fact that we found so many beautiful places that we liked a lot and kept
staying longer then planned. On 4th of November we now boarded the ferry
"Spirit of Tasmania" which brought us after a 14 Hour journey from Melbourne to
Devonport. Altjhough we had a very quiet trip, the rolling and swaying of the
ship was still clearly feelable. A good deal of the trip we spent in the ships
cinema which is located very low in the hull of the ship. Here the swaying and
rolling wasn't as big.
The next day we stocked up on vgetables and none
perishable foods and then headed for the Westcoast of Tasmania. Tasmanien is
roughly as big as Belgium and the Netherlands together and is inhabited by
aroud 500'000 Tasmaniens. Mainly the North-, East- and Southcoast are
populated. The Westcoast is pretty rough and partly inaccessible. Starting from
Craddle Mountain a number of Nationalparks are building together a World
Heritage Area which almost represents a fifth of the islands area. This World
Heritage Area can mainly be explored on foot through through walking tracks
that will take several days to complete. In total 40% of the area of the
Tasmanian island is protected by Nationalparks and Reserves.
Our journey
led along the Northcoast to Smithton in the West and from there to the Arthur
Pieman Reserve and along the Western Explorer Highway to the South in the
direction of Corinna. The Landscape is hilly and very green, pretty similar to
the Emmental at home. Its use is mainly for agriculture. It was a welcome
change once not to have to drive such long distances from one attraction to
another. Alone the weather was a bit of an annoyance. The temperatures at night
were often below freezing point. They required us to purchase a thick wollen
blanket and thick socks to stay warm throughout the night. In order to do so,
we travelled back to Devonport to purchase them. We took the opportunity to
have slides developed until our return in around 2 weeks to board the ferry
again. This time we headed East with the destination of the Mt. William
Nationalpark, home to Tasmania's largest Kangoroo, the Forrester Kangoroo. We
as well discovered beautiful and lonely beaches like the Bay of Fires. Some of
them lined by white and fine grained sand dunes of up to 50 meters height and
several kilometers long.
In Bicheno we then met our first Tasmanian
Tiger, although not in the wild, but at the Natureworld Wildlife Sanctuary.
These Animals are nocturnal and very shy of people. They are actually quiet
pretty looking animals. The probably grow to the size of a Basset dog. But one
shouldn't mess with his temper or even worse with his teeth. The Tasmanian
Tiger has a very strong and powerful jaw that is only second to that of a big
shark. He is developing around 300PSi of biting preasure. That is roughly equal
to 8 times the tyre preasure of our Landcruiser. This enables him to simply
bite through bones of up to 8cm diameter. He definately needs this tool, since
he only lives of carcasses of deceased animals he finds.
A deffective
gas burner forced us to seek a new jet. Therefore we had to travel to a bigger
town. We decided to drive to Launceston and to visit some attractions along the
way. First we visited the Meadstone Falls. We almost steped on a perfectly
camouflaged Tigersnake basking in the sun on the walking track. We could only
hardly convince here to move of the walking track and to let us pass. In
Tasmania three kinds of snakes are known, the Tigersnake, the Copperhead and
the Whip Snake. All these species are poisonous and usually move out of the
way, so that people don't normally see them. With deep temperatures (below 16
degrees celsius) they go into hibernation and can hardly move at all. Next we
the paid a visit to the worlds largest flowering plants in the Evercreech
forest. These are some 90 meter tall Swamp Gums (Eucalypt Trees). They are
hardwood and grow to an age of approximately 400 years. Only Californian
Redwoods grow taller. They are of softwood and don't flower. The so far tallest
registered Redwood Tree measured 112 meterswhereas the tallest registered Swamp
Gum grew to 98 meters. Via the Mathinna Falls we then reached
Launceston. |
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