Monday 26th January 2009

Initially, Andrew and I found it hard to forgive Tasmania for not being the
South Island of New Zealand. We also found it hard to forgive our wee Hyundai
for not being the Earwig (my name for the Daihatsu we drove around NZ). We got
over one of these things only: while we didn't get to wear out our ooo, I
wonder what's around this corner? Let me guess: ah-ha, I knew it, snow-capped
mountains and an alpine lake sequence in Tasmania it's also beautiful, and
only in a slightly more tame way. The Hyundai Getz remained a problem. We took
the Earwig through the mountains and above the snowline. I wouldn't do that
with the Getz, in fact, I'd avoid taking one up a hill again if I could help
it.
We stayed in Hobart on the night of Tuesday 13, notable mostly because after
walking back from dinner the moon was nearly full and rose spectacularly over
the Derwent. We went inside to grab the camera, Andrew decided to check the
cricket scores and thus deprived me of a photograph as the moon rose into a
cloud bank. We had a humorous interlude the next day involving parking for too
long in the CBD while we tried to find swimming gear. Did you know plus sizes
16 and 18 is different from sizes 16 and 18? Neither did I, but you don't want
the shops to sell out of standard sizes if you wear them, plus sizes are
actually larger at the waist. Then we drove down to Franklin (on the Huon
River, not the Franklin) and remembered that we weren't staying in the B&B
with the spa, but in the cottage nearby.
I was keen to do a fairly serious day walk while we were down there, I would
have liked to have done the South Cape walk (the one that takes about 5 hours,
not the one that takes two weeks). But our rental car insurance was invalid off
sealed roads, and I wasn't terribly interested in having to buy someone else a
new car if I had an accident on dirt. We had to compromise by driving on short
dirt roads: it's impossible to go anywhere interesting south of Hobart on
sealed roads.
We worked up to whatever we were going to do by starting with the Tahune
Airwalk on Thursday 15. This is a metal construction about twenty metres, give
or take, above ground level, and at one point you can walk out along a
cantilever above the Huon, which bounces up and down, much to the thrill of the
toddler who was smooshing her face against the glass and squealing delightedly
at a thirty metre clear drop into a river. I tend to forget about my fear of
heights when doing things like looking at tourist brochures that promise a walk
amid the treetops. On the balance it's a good thing to go through life
believing I'm not afraid of things, but it does occasionally leave me stranded
in a refuge amid the treetops explaining to Andrew that I don't want to go on
the cantilever and, actually, all things considered, I'd probably like not to
be on the Airwalk at all. After I had a minute, I did end up on the cantilever
with the fearless toddler (and, I think, a couple of people who were
deliberately bouncing it up and down too, I hate people who deliberately
trigger phobias, and not just when they do it to me, thanks). Andrew got to
take all the pictures off the end though: fear of heights is for me (and
apparently not a few others), actually a fear of deliberately jumping, and for
me it's also associated with a fear of dropping things (in case I decide to
jump off after them).
We got off the Airwalk in the normal fashion and headed into the forest. One
of the reasons I like to do immense amounts of research into these kinds of
things and always regret not doing so is that I miss important things. For
example, the Huon Pine (lagarostrobos franklinii), which can live to
be 2000 years old (there's a stand of genetically identical trees which was
founded by a tree 10000 years ago too), lives in this area, but the oldest
specimens are over in the west. If I'd know there was a tree that old in
Tasmania I would have gone to see it. We had to content ourselves with a
specimen that was 450 years old.
Since this was a day I'd planned, we weren't doing only one thing that day,
we were also racing down to Hastings Cave. Andrew had never actually been well
inside a cave before and therefore hadn't seen masses of stalactites and so on.
I managed to stamp on his excitement accidentally I think by being more along the
lines of yeah, caves are often like this. We should go down to Jenolan
with James and Yasuko before James moves. We then got our use out of our swim
purchases by going to the hot springs pool.
The next day it rained and I sulked a bit, in between marvelling at how
quickly the weather changes in south Tasmania, which was a theme of the entire
visit. Melbourne should hang its head, and Sydney can go jump, leaving aside
one spectacular storm about two years back at Chatswood in which it went from
clear sky to soaking me to the skin in under 5 minutes. We went off seeking
indoor places to have a good time but unfortunately lost the Cydery. We
stumbled across Peppermint Bay entirely by accident though, where we had a
delightful late lunch platter — good preparation for the linux.conf.au
speakers' dinner there, as it meant I knew to eat lots of the paté — and then
went to a sheep cheesery (variously referred to as the cheese sheepery and the
sheese cheapery and so on). I now own a bottle of whey liqueur and need to
learn how to make tiramisu in order to explain that $20-odd to the great
accounting ledger of life.
The weather luckily cleared up for our dinner at the Home Hill Winery.
Andrew nominated himself to heroically drink three quarters of a bottle of
pinot noir in order not to let it go to waste what with me driving and all. I
remember that the food was good and we drank an allegedly famous pinot, but
it's all lost in the memories of the view through their floor to ceiling glass
out over a vineyard set against a dark hill. My favourite type of weather
varies depending on when you ask me, but at least one of my favourite kinds of
weather is when there are dark clouds above and the sun is low in the sky. I
will never take a picture that is as good as that light.
We finally got to our walk on Saturday after looking and looking for a walk
that was not notoriously hard (eg, the Hartz Mountain climb), not off an
extended unsealed road (South Cape) and not short (everything else). We ended
up on the Pelverata Falls walk, which goes through some beautiful wet forest
before dumping walkers on a path made of loose rocks along the edge of a steep
hill. I had a deep cut in my arm that took about a week to heal after sliding
down along a bit of that path. We hoped for a beautiful clearing at the end and
instead ended up on a wooden platform, albeit with a good view of the falls. We
did wish though that we knew how to get into the spot at the top of the falls:
it's clearly possible because people were waving to us from the top.
It's not clear how many holidays we'll have this year: the conference the
following week has, as usual, made me want to both switch careers (probably
three times in a year) and travel everywhere, all at once. At some point in my
life I do need to do this.