Tasmania

Tasmania: Home to the Tasmania Devil. But the most common animal that I saw on the signs is not the Tasmanian Devil but the legendary Tasmanian Tiger.

Legend has it, that when explorers first arrived, they saw a wolf like animal with tiger stripes. I find this similar to how the "Singa" or as the world commonly calls it the "Lion" was spotted when Sang Ni La Utama arrived on the shores of Singapura. And like you can never find a lion in Singapore (except in the zoo, and lions live in the desert anyway), you can no longer find a Tasmanian Tiger in Tasmania anymore. Or anywhere else in the world as a matter of fact.

Still, the home to the Tasmania Devil is a beautiful place to visit. Having the priviledge of visiting during winter was wonderful as it is so hot in Singapore now. The temperature ranges from 6 to 16 deg Celcius and I was cool with that (all punt intended). The main downside to winter is the occasional rain and the constant grey skies which can be a bummer if you are planning to take lots of outdoor photographs. I was then very grateful for the day that we went up to Cradle Mountain: the sky was clear and blue when we reach Dove Lake and we managed a few beautiful pictures.

The sky became overcast quickly after an hour and we sort of regretted taking the 2 hour trek round the lake as it proved to be cold and tiring. It was quite an easy track with some except the up and downhillls towards the end of it. Some parts of the track took us to frost covered areas where we stumbled upon a wombat. It took us completely by surprise because it passed us silently while I was taking a picture of my friend tying his shoelaces. What first caught our attention was the fresh shit on the track, which must have been left behind while it was passing.

There were many sites, suggested by Chan Brothers, for us to visit. My friend did a wonderful job of printing out the google maps of the routes to these sites so that I can help him navigate. It is wonderful to drive in tasmania as the road signs are clear and not easy to miss. The main thing that we had to look out for were the wildlife that would jump onto the road from dusk to dawn. We had a close encounter with a small one and my friend swerved a little and managed to avoid hitting the little jumping creature.

Since we bought the car pass that allows us to visit all parks, plus the fact that my friend was the only person driving and that distances between locations were long, we decided to skip many of the sites like the wilderness park, cheese farm, wine and beer breweries. We visited mainly the parks and went to 3 water falls altogther: Liffey Falls, Nelson Falls, and Russell Falls.

One place that we regretted not spending more time at was the Curringa Farm that was near to Horbart. We stay in this magnificent house with a great hall with kitchen and dining room attached, and 2 wings for bedrooms. Every room has full length glass doors that over look a beautiful river. Imagine waking up to beautiful scenery every morning! However, that can only happen if you are not afraid and leave the curtains open throughout the night where the surrounding is pitch black. One thing that I really enjoyed about the house was that its equipped in every way: a full kitchen with stove, microwave and electric oven, fridge and even a dish washer. And all the time, the place has a toasty feeling as we make sure that the wood in the fireplace is burning to make sure that we don't freeze. If I had the chance to go back to Tasmania again, I would want to visit this place and have the full farm experience.

I would say that this was a wonderful trip. The only down side was the expensive food and the lack of variety; I think Singaporeans are spoiled for choice. I loved the homemade soups though. My friend said that I must have had at least 9 bowls of soup in the whole trip. On the whole I thoroughly enjoyed Tasmania and it was wonderful to see so much of nature and God's beautiful art pieces. I would love to go back again, but this time, I would choose Spring time instead of Winter; then I can see more clear skies and less rain.