In Queenstown, I boarded the steamer, T.S.S.Earnslaw, for a cruise along Lake Wakatipu to Walter Peak High Country Farm. T.S.S.Earnslaw is the last surviving of the grand steamships that graced Lake Wakatipu. It served the remote farming communities around the lake, transporting cargo, livestock and passengers. These days, it’s tourists.
In 2010, I spent two days in Christchurch, on the east coast of New Zealand’s south island, before taking the TranzAlpine Railway to Greymouth on the west coast. The next morning, I picked up my first-ever rental car and headed south towards Queenstown.
I’m not sure what gauge is used to determine travel times on maps but it’s certainly not mine. I was supposed to arrive around 5pm, but it was 7pm and I was on autopilot, as I pulled into Makarora Tourist Centre, in Mount Aspiring National Park.
My accommodation was a wooden, A-framed cabin, with a little pathway round a corner to an outdoor lavatory. It was surrounded by bush, which, in turn, was surrounded by mountain peaks, the one in the centre still snow-capped. They towered over me, protective and paternal, like giant guardians. I collapsed onto one of the single beds, breathing in the pure air.
In 2010, I ventured across the Tasman Sea to the south island of New Zealand. I had wanted, for a long time, to see what is described as one of the most beautiful places in the world.
It was also a good spot for a practice run at lone overseas travel. They speak English, of a sort, their money is similar and they drive on the right side of the road which, in Australia and New Zealand, is the left. I was planning to drive through the Southern Alps, which extend down the western side of the island but to get there, I had to catch a train across from the east.
I left Hobart and headed up the east coast to Swansea and the Freycinet Peninsula. I was sick of just looking at photos of Wineglass Bay; I wanted see it for myself.
‘The lookout for Wineglass Bay,’ I said to the girl behind the counter at the Visitor Centre, ‘is it a hard walk?’ She shook her head. ‘So it’s not difficult, then?’
‘No, it’s okay.’
A must, when visiting Hobart, Tasmania’s capital city, is Salamanca Market, sprawled between historic warehouses and the waterfront, famous as the finishing line for the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race, held every year on Boxing Day.
I’d been told I had to see the dead hills on the way out of Tasmania’s old mining town of Queenstown. All vegetation had been killed off years before by the felling of the trees to burn in the mine smelters and the sulfur fumes from the smelters themselves.
White Australia began as a penal settlement, a way for the English to clear out their overloaded gaols and to rid themselves of what they called the “criminal classes”. Many of the convicts were sent to Tasmania, around 76,000 between 1804 and 1853. We were taught at school about the colourful and fascinating history surrounding this time but I wanted to learn more. Continue reading “Gordon River Tasmania”
I came to travelling alone, late in life. I’d always wanted to explore Tasmania, the island south of where I live in Melbourne, Australia. ‘Tassie’ is often ignored by Melburnians; something about it being so close, so easy to get to, takes it off the radar. And then it doesn’t offer palm trees and tropical islands, scuba diving among corals in warm, pristine waters. No camel rides in red deserts or coat-hanger bridges and shell-like opera houses. But something had always drawn me to the place, though apart from a quick drive from Hobart to Burnie years before, in true Melburnian fashion I’d kept putting it off.
Planning to the Nth 