We spent a couple weeks in January in one of our favourite spots, Bright, Victoria then back to Melbourne to prepare for our two month sojourn in the island state of Tasmania. On the mainland Tassie is known as the land of two-headed people. I guess that means they are different from their “overseas” relatives. We’ll see about that. We were taking a large ferry-boat across the oft roiling and inhospitable Bass Strait for 9 hours. The day before our trip I supplied our fridge with food for a few days just in case there were no grocery stores there (maybe 2-headed people don’t eat). Then I learned that you can’t take any fresh fruits or veggies into Tasmania as they don’t want any hitchhiking insects to invade their home (it’s bad enough they get humans).  We had a big dinner the night before we left and a breakfast of fruit and more fruit the morning we departed. I’m sure our visiting friends from Oklahoma – Peggy & Don – felt like monkeys the way I was plying them with bananas during the final 24 hours. When we arrived at the ferry, the warden still made me toss a beautiful fruit salad (prepared because I thought maybe peeled fruit smothered in yogurt would pass muster) but an unopened bag of mixed greens was okay.

On February 11th the crossing was perfect…not a cloud in the sky and the heaving seas were kind. At 6pm we arrived in the port of Devonport where we were staying the night. I had thawed a pre-made pasta bake for our dinner (and we had my precious bag of greens!) so we could hold off the search for supplies till the next morning.

Tasmania is 68,332 square kilometres (26,383 square miles) in area. The distance from north to south is about 364 kilometres (226 miles), and from east to west about 306 kilometres (190 miles). It is about the same size as Ireland, Switzerland or the state of West Virginia in the USA. (thanks to the internet for this quote). Given it’s rather diminutive size we figured 2 months would be plenty of time to get a real feel for it. But there is a vast amount of isolated wilderness that is only accessible via 4-wheel drive tracks and one could spend far more time seeing even more than we could attempt. 

We didn’t plan ahead much because, as you should know by now, we prefer to be spontaneous and move when the spirit strikes. This could be an issue since the ferry was booked solid and given it’s summer this is when the sunbirds trek south to the chilly state.  So I had only booked the first night in Devonport and our stay at the popular Cradle Mountain National Park.