Tassie Strikes Back

(steve)

Tasmania has a reputation for beautiful wilderness, loads of wild life, and wacky weather (as well as a few jokes about locals reminiscent of those told about West Virginians). We found it all to be true (except the jokes). After surviving our travel day from hell, we found the city of Launceston to be charming. Coming from New Zealand, the eucalyptus forest was very different and reminded us a bit of southern California. The people were extremely friendly and we received plenty of helpful advice about our upcoming walk. For instance, we walked into the local weather service office and received a forecast from the local weatherman directly at his desk (more about weather later). Strangely, a walk through the city park led us to find an enclosure full of Japanese monkeys. The signage stated plainly, "these animals were found to be easy to care for and survive the climate of Tasmania." Ok.



After two days wandering, we hopped the bus to Cradle Mountain to start our final planned walk, the Overland Track. This walk is celebrated as one of the best in Australia. Located in the heart of a World Heritage Listed National Park, the track wound through a variety of forest climates with numerous mountain lakes and lots of wildlife. Highlights for us included meeting wallabies, wombats, paddymelons, currawongs, green rosellas, kookaburras, and a number of Aussies to play with. We did not get any glimpses of platypus, echidnas, or Tassie devils due to bad luck, and more importantly to the other major factor on this walk, the weather.

More about the weather: Our visit to the weatherman in Launceston provided our first hint of the uncontrollable beast that is Tassie weather. His prediction showed a series of cold fronts (direct from Antarctica) hitting the island throughout our entire scheduled walking time. With a small smile he said, "as long as you are below 800 metres elevation you should be ok." Later verficiation showed the entire track is above 800 metres with a max over 1200. We decided to go for it anyways and rely on our New Zealand training to bring us through.



The first two days ended being all right, with small rain showers late in the day when our serious walking was complete. The last four days were a different story. We ended up with a series of snow and rain storms that lasted throughout the day. We wore just about all of our clothing during those walks and managed to stay warm enough, but not really dry (remember Karen's jacket). The afternoons and evenings were filled with arriving in the huts to hang up sopping socks and coats. With the people and fire burning the temp reached a balmy 10 C (~50 F) inside. The huts were claustrophobic since most were built to house 20 uncomfortably and we walked with at least that many every day. There were plenty of camp sites and people carrying tents (including us), but no one seemed very keen on sleeping out in the snowstorm. Inside the hut, nothing ever got completely dry, so the next morning meant cold, wet socks to go inside cold, wet boots. By the end of the trip, we got used to seeing each others breath inside and never being truly warm. Due to the inclement weather, we didn't see much wildlife after the first two days (other than the occasional miserable looking wallaby or paddymelon in the rain/snow). In fact, we didn't get to see much in general since the clouds were low and we spent most of our walking time looking down to avoid falling on slippery roots/rocks or falling in bogs (not always successful). There weren't many photos either, since that required finger dexterity. Our conclusion on the bus to Hobart was that we are much tougher than before we started this adventure and all future walks will have to be compared to this one for weather difficulty.



Hobart made us feel much better. Funny enough, the weather cleared as soon as we got on the bus. We spent three wonderful days in Hobart and came away with a really good feeling. More wine and cheese tasting, a nice drive through the countryside, and a great night out with a local couple we met on the walk cure all. Tassie struck back, but we still loved it and would really like to go back for some more.