I spent two weeks around Tasmania where the devil may become extinct due to human agriculture’s policy against the environment. Thus for economic reasons they use chemic products (fertilizer) that literally kill the Tasmanian devils; who is the real devil? The way they are protected against this tumor disease is very simple: lock them in a park where they can’t escape. Which choice would you make between liberty and life? Maybe life as if there is no life there won’t be any liberty either. But would you let anyone else take that decision for you?
So I flew to Tasmania; despite the least environment friendly, it’s the cheapest way to go to Launceston, a 70 000 inhabitants city that left me quite indifferent until I spent a second day after I discovered the Cataract Gorge Reserve.
As I forgot to take with me all cartography software, you’ll have to be a bit patient until I draw a map of my journey. The way I travelled across Tasmania was from North to South on the western coast and from South to North on the eastern coast, from Launceston to Launceston. This was a tour from an eco-tourism certified professional where we left for camping adventures across the island where we were 6 people (7 for the last days) traveling together feeling close to the nature: for example cooking potatoes in sea water on campfire. After this tour I spend some time hiking around Launceston and quickly visited Devonport before heading on the Spirit of Tasmania ferry to Melbourne.
On the first day, we stopped for a warm up walk and visited the Marakoopa Cave and we hiked up to over 1200 meters (4000 feet) high on Cradle Mountain and stopped at the point named Marion Lookup and we ended up camping in a historic mining town.
On the second day, we continued our trip and hiked up Macdonald Mount after a walk in the biggest Tasmanian rain-forest, followed by a swim in the Pieman river and we set up our camp on a beach beside the Great Southern Ocean where the wind decided to join us. On the next day we left to the Montezuma falls (near Zeehan, old mining town). Montezuma was the mexican company that exploited the mines in the mountains. These falls are the highest in Tasmania and are reachable only after a walk through the rain forest. Then our camp was settled in Hells Gate, a place that people don’t want to leave when they saw it, where I swaged until rainfall woke me up. During that day, I found some Wonka chocolate – but it’s all eaten…
On the fourth day of the trip, we went through a place named Queenstown, also known as Mordor due to acid rains that occurred in the area; thanks to these clever people who only think about short term.
The trip went on, and we stopped at Hobart where a shower was more than welcome after spending five days swimming in rivers, lake, or washing ourselves in the sea, without soap. Anyway all the nature around was worth the effort.
In Hobart, I visited the Wooden boat festival where I fell in love with many (if not most) of the boats – and met one of the exponent on the Ferry leaving Tasmania and we spent hours talking about sailing; I’m currently looking for a sailing school and will move to the area where their concentration is high as low holidays season just started.
Leaving Hobart, we went straight to Port Arthur but just had a quick look around this prison where the british used to jail starving people who grabbed a simple piece of bread. We walked to Cape Raoul then had a tour to Devils Kitchen and Tasman Arch. On the next day we went to Freycinet National Park where only three people of our group chose to climb to Mount Amos where the view is a symbol of Tasmania.
On the last day of the tour, our nice and engaged guide showed us an area where tourists don’t go. They even recommend not to go there as the lands are private and belong to a forest exploitation company that uses a violent technique to exploit the forest: throw napalm gas over it so they only keep the massive trees and make some paper out of these multi centenary rare eucalyptus trees. Since the rest of the rainforest doesn’t have enough commercial value, they just burn it. This paper will be sent to Japan to meet bureaucratic requirements that will always require more bureaucracy – and I believe (Joerg told me once) it would destroy the capitalism system one day. Afterwards, this forest will most likely be a monoculture area. To finish, it was the most beautiful rainforest I have seen during my Tassie trip and I did even fill my water bottle from a creek and drank all the water, proving that the environment is clean.
Below are some pictures taken from this rainforest:
Later on that day, Dave brought us back to Launceston, where I hiked around and even climbed and jumped between rocks on the river for two days before I left to Devonport, the city where I took the ferry back to Melbourne: Spirit of Tasmania.
