Tasmania Day 1

Salamanca Market and Mount Wellington

Sometimes in a rush for more exotic destinations we ignore the wonderful places right under our nose, and we pretty much ignored Tasmania for the first 11 years after we’d moved to Melbourne. Once we finally visited though, we never stopped coming back, as this small island is blessed with natural beauty and packed with things to see and do. And delicious food, too.

This time around we haven’t ventured too far from Hobart, which was our base for two nights, but we still managed to pack in quite a bit. The only real annoyance on the first day was waiting for almost an hour for our checked-in bag to show up. Note to self, best not to travel to places with tiny airports so close to a public holiday, because chaos may ensue. Because of this delay, we haven’t spent as much time at the Salamanca Market as we would have liked, but oh well. It’s a great place to hang around, with the beautiful sandstone buildings as the backdrop and plenty of interesting and tasty wares on display.

Afterwards, we went for a drive to the top of Mount Wellington, which looms over the city. It was freezing cold with a killer wind, however the views were spectacular. The terrain on the very top is quite rugged and harsh, but it has its own desolate beauty to it that always appeals to me.

Phillip Island

Had a nice getaway at Phillip Island. Yesterday, it rained the entire two hours it took me to get there (managing to drown out Guns N’ Roses at one point), so I didn’t rate my chances for nice walks the next day, and consoled myself with the thought that at least I upgraded to a suite with an enormous spa bath (it was awesome). But miraculously, Melbourne weather for once didn’t behave like a bitch! Still cold and windy, but plenty of sunshine.

The Nobbies is one of my favourite walkways in Victoria. The coast in this area is ragged and dramatic and covered with weird succulent-type vegetation which creates an interesting texture of greens and reds.

Smith Beach looks nothing like it does in the summer, except for a couple of crazy surfers who’d probably go for a swim at the North Pole too. The nice thing about visiting it in winter is that, when you’re not distracted by the beachy things, you can actually look around the place and notice things you don’t when you’re busy getting a tan.

Favourite Rocks

I’ve been lucky enough to see some amazing rock formations on my trips in Australia and overseas:

Mushrooms

Every autumn or so, we go picking wild mushrooms in various spots around Melbourne with my Dad and recently my sister. This seems to be a European thing to do, and gets a pretty bemused reaction from most of the Australians I know:

A. Mushrooms? Are they magic mushrooms, hahaha?

B. But how do you know which ones are good to pick?

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