In Tasmania, the Familiar Yields Surprises

I first heard about the island of Tasmania in 1980, when Tassies fought to save the Franklin River and launched Australia’s environmental movement. At the time, the western half of Tasmania was portrayed as one of the most remote wilderness areas in the world, with impenetrable temperate rain forests and a coast so dramatic that countless beachcombers had been swept off rocks and bashed to tiny pieces.

So when my husband, Jon, and I decided to take a trip to Tasmania, we prepared for some serious adventuring. Tassie, as locals refer to Australia’s southern island state--and themselves (as opposed to Aussies)--is the home of the legendary Tasmanian devil, a flesh-eating marsupial, and it is the jumping off point for trips to the Antarctic. We packed boots, sleeping bags and backpacks, and, for emergencies, novels and chocolate. What we weren’t prepared for was the tame side of Tasmania, the side with the tea shops.

After we rented a car at the airport in Hobart, Tasmania’s capital, our first stop was Richmond, an officially preserved colonial village, where we had Devonshire tea and scones. Our second stop was a chintz-covered so-called “historic house” offering bed and breakfast. Then another tea shop, then a jam and cheese shop, then a jog to the eastern coast, where we stayed at Coles Bay Chateau, a lodge in Freycinet National Park. In the morning, elderly ladies in sensible shoes called us “dears” and presented us with sandwiches and cookies in a little blue hiking pack.

The eastern half of Tasmania reminded us of Northern California as it might have been 50 years ago. The coast looked like Point Reyes or Mendocino; inland looked like the Sierra Nevada foothills, dotted with sheep and eucalyptus trees. In our Toyota we drove around Tasmania as if we were in a time warp, cruising 60 m.p.h. on smooth, empty roads and hiking in state parks for hours without seeing a soul. The few tourists we did meet were all from Australia, and after a while we realized that Australians think of Tassie as their pet secret. People were surprised to see us and congratulated us on our good taste. It was as if an Australian couple visiting the U.S. had skipped New York and Disneyland and headed directly for Montana.

We did, finally, see a Tasmanian devil, but it looked like a large, very sleepy black rat. The zoo keeper explained that since devils are shy and nocturnal, he’d had to wake it up.

But if the present state seemed tame, at least the history of Tasmania was wild. Museums and historic markers everywhere reminded us that Britain’s worst convicts had been sent to Van Diemen’s Land, as Tasmania was then called, where they either worked in chains for sheep-ranchers or lived in total isolation, wearing masks so they wouldn’t be able to see or talk. Tasmania’s treatment of its aboriginal population was equally dismal. In the first 35 years of European settlement (1800-1835), Tasmania’s settlers killed over 4,000 aborigines--shot them for sport like animals. The surviving 135 natives were resettled on a “reserve” where most died from despair and respiratory diseases. The last full-blooded Tasmanian aborigine died in 1876.

As we drove the back roads in the heat of late summer (it was March and 85 degrees), taking fruit and candy from roadside “honesty boxes” (prices are listed, and you are trusted to make change for yourself from the money left there), it was hard to imagine anything other than a tea party happening on this tiny Australian state.

Finally we headed north to Launceston, the island’s second largest city, where we had made tentative arrangements to meet up with a group of “bushwalkers.” It was time to explore Tassie’s notorious wild west.

Tasmanian Expeditions, the outdoor adventure company we had booked with, was run out of Paddy Pallin’s sporting goods store by an ebullient Swede named Lars, who, as he talked, rose up on his toes when gravity couldn’t contain his enthusiasm.

“You’ve come at the perfect time” he said. “Just tomorrow a group is going into the Walls of Jerusalem area, the best hiking country in Tassie. This is the best . . . the most beautiful . . . the oldest . . . Oh dear!” he said suddenly, coming down with a thump. “Do you have boots and gaiters?”

We had boots, but no gaiters (water-proof boot coverings).

“Well . . . well . . . we can . . . It is a very, very ancient area, very remote. It’s wild, it’s so . . . so . . . so . . . Oh dear!” Again Lars crashed down on his heels with a thud. “Do you have polypropylene underwear?”

Alas. We had only cotton turtlenecks.

We ended up renting armfuls of waterproof clothing that afternoon, mostly because the charge was minimal and we didn’t want to spend any more time discussing the structure of miracle fiber molecules. We felt a little ripped off, however. The Walls of Jerusalem National Park was only 4,000 feet high and a four-hour drive to the west. We were running around in shorts. How bad could it get?

There were eight people and three guides in the group we met the next morning, all from New Zealand or Australia. It was a switchback up to the Walls area, mostly through eucalyptus trees, which Tassies call gum trees: blue gum, yellow gum, stringy-bark gum, silver gum, dwarf gum. And along the way I amused myself by analyzing the Australian accent. My goal, by the top of the hill, was to count to 10:

Wan, teeh-ow, thrah-ee, fo-ah, faw-ive, seeks, seh-vin, aye-eat, nai-yen, tin.

When we got to camp, at the edge of the park on a small lake, it was still warm even though it was only a couple of hours until sunset. My husband and I set up our tent rather casually, debating whether or not to put up the rain fly, and were just getting out our books and chocolate for a quiet read when along came Ian, one of our guides. He stopped in front of our yellow-domed construction and shook his head.

“It has to face away from the lake,” Ian said. “And all the stakes have to be taut and pounded, not just pushed, deep into the dirt. The rain fly has to have no part of it touching the tent. And tie the snow hole in the back shut. Wrap a cord around it so no wind or rain can come in.”

Grumbling about equipment fascists, we put down our books and obeyed orders.

That evening we went down to the lake to look at the southern night sky. It was clear and moonless, and the stars overhead were so thick and bright that we seemed to be gazing at them from the moon, or another planet. There were familiar marks: Orion was huge although upside down, his belt seeming to hang from somewhere in the middle of his chest. The Milky Way was fatter and more brilliant than we’d ever seen it, and filled at least half of the sky. The stars in it formed into clouds, which seemed to shimmer and swirl, like light moving through water; some of them formed picture-book nebula.

“Now I know,” my husband said, “why the shepherds tending their flocks at night got religious.”

About four hours later we woke up inside our tents.

“TRACY?” my husband said.

“JON?”

“OHMYGOD!”

It sounded as if a waterfall was coming directly down on top on top of our heads. The roar of the water was so loud we couldn’t talk--we seemed to be vibrating in some sort of cosmic drum. It was like a thousand monks chanting. Like God had turned up the amps.

We immediately felt our sleeping bags, the pads, the tent floor, and checked the corners for water. Nothing. Thank you, Lars. Thank you, Ian. Everything was dry. We tried to speak:

“ARE YOU OK?”

“I THINK SO.”

“WILL THE TENT HOLD?”

“I DON’T KNOW.”

We lay there imagining the worst. I envisioned the dirt underneath us turning to mud, the stakes coming out, and the whole tent, with us in it, sliding down into the lake. But after 20 minutes or so we kind of got used to it. The tent was a miracle. Nothing condensed, nothing seeped, nothing sagged. Finally we fell asleep, hammered down into it, I think, by the pounding rain.

By morning the rain had stopped, leaving wisps of clouds floating across the lake. We put on our polypropylene underwear and knee-high gaiters, packed every other piece of thermal clothing that Lars had given us into our day packs and followed Ian through the mud until we reached the Walls of Jerusalem area, a vast, soft, green, bog-like plateau that reminded me of Scotland. The Walls themselves were beautiful dolerite rock formations, maybe 1,000 feet high and a mile or so long. All of them had Biblical Names: Solomon’s Throne, Damascus Vale, Jaffa Gate.

The landscape was ancient, as indeed Tasmania is--weathered, worn down, filled with prehistoric vapors. Rocks were covered with intricate patterns and colors of lichen; tiny new mushrooms sprang up alongside the rivulets of water that cut through the tussock grass and wet heath. The valleys we walked through were immense, but the mist and the light on the tufted grasses made them seem cozy and private and we saw no other people and few animals except for the wallabies (kangaroos about the size of a border collie) that occasionally bounded over the tops of bushes.

We were three days in the Walls area, climbing the rock walls, tramping in mud, photographing the wildflowers and taking refuge in trappers’ abandoned huts during rain showers. By the end of it all of Tassie’s jam and tea shops seemed on another planet.

When we finally returned to Launceston and left Tasmania on an overnight ferry back to Melbourne, my husband and I rocked cozily in our bunks over the Bass Strait. Although nothing had been as we had imagined in Tasmania, I realized that the sum of its parts, like a dream, had turned out to be more than we expected: a bizarre combination of the unguarded and the tame; a place where the familiar yields surprises and the surprises are primal and familiar.

GUIDEBOOK

Tasmania’s Wild West

Getting there: The quickest way to get to Tasmania is to fly to Hobart from Sydney, Brisbane or Melbourne. Melbourne, architecturally Australia’s most interesting city, is closest and cheapest and definitely worth a visit. Ansett and Australian Airlines fly from Melbourne to Hobart, East West flies from Sydney to Hobart.

Another option is to take the Abel Tasman overnight ferry from Melbourne to Devonport, at the north end of Tasmania, near Launceston. Prices range from about $85 to $400 each way.

Getting around: Cars are easy to rent in Tasmania and are less expensive than in the rest of Australia. You can drive from Hobart, at the southeast end of the island, to Launceston, at the north end, in under two hours. Many agencies offer weekly packages from about $300 to $500, with no mileage charges. Gas is expensive, but there is usually no extra charge for renting a car in one town and dropping it off in another.

Where to stay: The best places to stay in Tasmania are the many bed and breakfasts. “Historical” B&Bs;, in homes built before 1900 with period furnishings, run from about $60 to $150 per night. Other B&Bs; run from about $20 U.S. per night. Most are clean and well-run.

In Launceston, the Windmill Hill Tourist Lodge (22 High St.; telephone 011-61-03-319337) has large, sunny double rooms for about $38 and an owner who will wash your clothes and make you a special breakfast.

Sports and hiking tours: Tasmanian Expeditions at Paddy Pallin’s Sports Shop in Launceston offers hiking, biking and rafting tours of the island and rents all kinds of sport equipment. Local telephone 314-240.

For more information: Contact Australia Naturally, 2121 Avenue of the Stars, Suite 1270, Los Angeles 90067; telephone (310) 553-6352.