On devils and whatnot
I'm starting to feel as though the Australian tourism board should pay me for ruthlessly promoting their country so much but my trip to Tasmania was so good, I just have to sing it from the rooftops.
I have to state at the outset that Tasmania's not a place for those who travel solely to shop; there is practically NO shopping there. 20% of the country is made of National parks and at least another 40% is farming land and various big empty looking plains and several scary looking non national park forests.Its two biggest cities are Hobart and Launceston and trust me, there are suburban centres in Melbourne bigger than each of them.
What Tasmania has got is something for every nature/activities enthusiast. Hiking,bushwalking, fishing, rock climbing, kayaking, surfing, you name it, they've got some remote beautiful spot that's perfect for it somewhere. It also has something for every gourmet foodie out there. Fantastic vineyards, gourmet cheese farms (the Camembert was fantastic, I'd recommend it to anyone), oyster farms, strawberry farms...you get the picture.
So the trip went roughly this way. We'd drive up to some farm, pig out on the fresh and delicious produce then feeling guilty, we'd go find some national park to walk it off in. It was the perfect combination of sinful indulgence and at least some concessions to a healthy lifestyle.
I took loads of photographs on this trip but most of them involve myself or my family standing around and grinning and besides, my skills at photography are basically non existent so please go there, there and there for some websites of award winning Tasmanian photographers that specialize in taking landscape photography of one of the world's most remote and unspoiled islands. It's basically a goldmine for landscape photographers; it is just that beautiful and varied.
Thing about going to Tasmania is that one has to really stop and take a minute to appreciate its unique flora and fauna. It's no use going there just to take a photo at one of its beauty spots and declare yourself to have been there. It's home to some really unusual creatures like the Tasmanian devil and the platypus. For an explanation as to why the platypus is so special, take a look here.Besides that, the wet and cool climate has produced some of the world's last remaining temperate rain forests where certain species of trees take 500 years to mature. I saw so many thousand year old trees and found myself actually feeling angry at the thought that people wanted to cut them down for the sake of the timber industry.
Let me just describe just this one scene for you. My family and I were driving through Cradle Mountain National Park one evening and we decided to stop and take one of the short walks. And that walk was almost ridiculously storybook-like in an Australian way. Around us, wallabies sat around munching thoughtfully on grass and glancing at us warily every now and then. One of them even had a joey in its pouch which was so Roo in Winnie the Pooh I nearly died of happiness right there and then. The setting sun was low over Cradle Mountain itself and everything was bathed in this odd golden light. There were even wombats rooting around the bushes and sniffling at little streams. It was remote, Arcadian and I felt like I had fallen into some bush ranger's paradise.
Australians do get alot of flak for their racist and white supremacist attitudes, but they at least got one thing right eventually, which was to try and protect the indigenous geography and fauna of their country. To my mind, they're still not doing enough but at least they're trying. (As opposed to the Americans who seem to have stopped trying. If Bush gets his way, more of North America's National Parks will be open to the timber/logging/oil industry which is criminal)
I don't usually gush this much and I promise to do it less from now on. But I've taken two trips recently to some very beautiful and protected areas and now I can't get over how much I've been missing out my WHOLE life. I'm already promising myself another trip to Tasmania and at least one to Kakadu National Park up in Darwin. I really hope I get to do all that before I graduate or at least before people go out of their minds and decide to destroy it all.
I have to state at the outset that Tasmania's not a place for those who travel solely to shop; there is practically NO shopping there. 20% of the country is made of National parks and at least another 40% is farming land and various big empty looking plains and several scary looking non national park forests.Its two biggest cities are Hobart and Launceston and trust me, there are suburban centres in Melbourne bigger than each of them.
What Tasmania has got is something for every nature/activities enthusiast. Hiking,bushwalking, fishing, rock climbing, kayaking, surfing, you name it, they've got some remote beautiful spot that's perfect for it somewhere. It also has something for every gourmet foodie out there. Fantastic vineyards, gourmet cheese farms (the Camembert was fantastic, I'd recommend it to anyone), oyster farms, strawberry farms...you get the picture.
So the trip went roughly this way. We'd drive up to some farm, pig out on the fresh and delicious produce then feeling guilty, we'd go find some national park to walk it off in. It was the perfect combination of sinful indulgence and at least some concessions to a healthy lifestyle.
I took loads of photographs on this trip but most of them involve myself or my family standing around and grinning and besides, my skills at photography are basically non existent so please go there, there and there for some websites of award winning Tasmanian photographers that specialize in taking landscape photography of one of the world's most remote and unspoiled islands. It's basically a goldmine for landscape photographers; it is just that beautiful and varied.
Thing about going to Tasmania is that one has to really stop and take a minute to appreciate its unique flora and fauna. It's no use going there just to take a photo at one of its beauty spots and declare yourself to have been there. It's home to some really unusual creatures like the Tasmanian devil and the platypus. For an explanation as to why the platypus is so special, take a look here.Besides that, the wet and cool climate has produced some of the world's last remaining temperate rain forests where certain species of trees take 500 years to mature. I saw so many thousand year old trees and found myself actually feeling angry at the thought that people wanted to cut them down for the sake of the timber industry.
Let me just describe just this one scene for you. My family and I were driving through Cradle Mountain National Park one evening and we decided to stop and take one of the short walks. And that walk was almost ridiculously storybook-like in an Australian way. Around us, wallabies sat around munching thoughtfully on grass and glancing at us warily every now and then. One of them even had a joey in its pouch which was so Roo in Winnie the Pooh I nearly died of happiness right there and then. The setting sun was low over Cradle Mountain itself and everything was bathed in this odd golden light. There were even wombats rooting around the bushes and sniffling at little streams. It was remote, Arcadian and I felt like I had fallen into some bush ranger's paradise.
Australians do get alot of flak for their racist and white supremacist attitudes, but they at least got one thing right eventually, which was to try and protect the indigenous geography and fauna of their country. To my mind, they're still not doing enough but at least they're trying. (As opposed to the Americans who seem to have stopped trying. If Bush gets his way, more of North America's National Parks will be open to the timber/logging/oil industry which is criminal)
I don't usually gush this much and I promise to do it less from now on. But I've taken two trips recently to some very beautiful and protected areas and now I can't get over how much I've been missing out my WHOLE life. I'm already promising myself another trip to Tasmania and at least one to Kakadu National Park up in Darwin. I really hope I get to do all that before I graduate or at least before people go out of their minds and decide to destroy it all.
posted by adinahaes at 3:04 PM
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