Bless Canberra Day. An opportunity to get a public holiday to celebrate its birthday by getting out of Canberra. Add an extra day of leave and a bit of travel planning and you can end up with something rather special. For me, this was almost four days in Northern Tasmania, where the landscape is diverse yet familiar, drives and walks offer thrills around every turn, and there’s a sense of olde time nostalgia stopping for food or drink in random Tassie timewarp towns.
So I arrived bright and early on Saturday morning in Launceston. Clearly, when they settled in this area they could see some resemblance to south west England. However, I think they had a few too many ciders at the time. Here it’s the Tamar River, not the River Tamar. Launceston, which is not pronounced proper like, is correctly on it but so too is Exeter, which itself happens to be to the east of Westbury and Somerset (which is a town not a county). Meanwhile, Devonport, which should clearly be on the Tamar is situated on the Mersey River (some hilarious Scouser must have gatecrashed the party). 
Mercifully Deloraine, the first stop on the road, was not geographically inappropriate and home to a rather amiable dose of old style country life, the river meandering, the high street dotted with the requisite trinkets and curios and homemade comforts of bread and cakes.
After Delo, the road and landscape becomes less cultivated and refined, pasture giving way to rugged ridges and sweeping bush, the Mersey somehow trying to negotiate its way into the Great Western Tiers, visible from following one of the great short walks to Alum Cliffs. Heading on further still it’s easy to think the rest of the population has been wiped out by some zombie style epidemic, the roads sparse, nature raw and often unforgiving, trees struggling to hold out
amongst the moorland blasts of wind and rain. But there’s that baguette from Delo deli to bring comfort, and civilisation of sorts re-emerges around the entrance to Cradle Mountain National Park, a comfortable cabin offering the luxury within the wilds.
All this and three paragraphs within the space of a Saturday morning meant there was time for substantially more to follow. In what is proclaimed to be one of the murkier places in Australia, the gloom was lifting, the sun out and the raggedy ridge of Cradle Mountain displaying true and proud from Dove Lake.
Dumping the four wheels and taking advantage of the rather excellent shuttle bus system and my own less than excellent two feet, the beauty and drama of it all was open to be breathed in, absorbed like the pure water in the mosses and still pools of this sweeping landscape. The only logical way up, a few paces on the Overland Track to steps and planks and muddy patches, rising all the time to more lakes and rocks and that empty bleakness that is consistently so hauntingly beautiful. The final scramble up to Marion’s Lookout an exercise in exercise, and a rewarding panorama soured only slightly by the fickle clouds of Mother Nature closing down on the peak.
Of course, on the way back down the cloud dissipated only for the sun to be further blocked by the tangly trees and shadowy ferns lining a series of cascades and gurgles on their way down towards the buttongrass plains beyond. And so it was back out on these plains, with the sun now faded behind the hills, that the wombats came out to play, nothing if not ambivalent to the presence of a human watching them for five minutes.
The next morning and an early start brought many rewards. This time I drove in the pre dawn glow along the narrow winding road to Dove Lake, hoping no wombats would be sharing the small strip of tarmac with me. At its end, a glassy calm mirror, waiting itself to be bathed in the emerging light and, like me, revelling in serenity. Good morning world.
With that start, even a very feeble breakfast of an apple and, later, a five dollar coffee couldn’t put a dampener on things, and before too long it was back on the road again, leaving the mountains and moors for the North West coast. Cheetos kept the hunger at bay as the road descended through forests and along rivers and emerged back into the pastoral patchwork of Tasmanian creaminess. The coast was hit at Wynyard and, around the corner, Table Cape rose in prominence, a magnet drawing its own shroud of mist, blanketing the fields of pungent onions which even a Frenchman on a bike with a stripy top and beret may even find a little overpowering. Freewheeling down on his bike though the Frenchman – in fact any man or woman – 
would be very pleased to find himself at Boat Harbour Beach, bathed in warm sunshine and seemingly relocated from the somewhere far more tropical. An idyllic spot for chilling out after that early start, to refuel on something other than apples or cheetos, and refresh for the onward journey to Stanley.
Stanley sits on a narrow isthmus of land almost separated from the island and the twentieth century. But this is a good thing, and one I shall get back to later. For now, it offered up an ice cream in the blue skies and a launch pad for one final push of the day to the west coast. The aim, sunset, the location, a wild, windswept beach lashed by surf from a sea which stretches out a few miles or more to next hit South America.
In the end, sunset never materialised and the only place to eat anywhere nearby was full of annoying empty but reserved tables. The roast beef just a distant pang of memory on the tastebuds, replaced by a real life pizza back in the relative civilisation that is Smithton. To compensate for this it was yet another early morning rise in Stanley, in order to climb atop the Nut and watch the sunrise instead. The Nut is a giant lump of rock which sits upon the end of the Stanley isthmus, a former volcano and home to numerous pademelons taking flight from some crazy Englishman ascending its wickedly steep slopes. Atop, the sky crystal clear, remnants of blackness filtering into the indigo hue of first light, the sea flat and calm as the glowing red and orange emerges over its horizon.
Sunrise always signifies promise for what lies ahead, but that becomes promise with added bells and whistles when it starts in a way so clear and calm. For this is supposed to a stormy, wild kind of spot, one in which ships flounder and foolish tourists and lashed with horizontal rain. Signs that the day was a good one were confirmed with breakfast at Moby Dicks in Stanley, a place of monumental charm and generous food, an amalgamation of the best parts of English, Australian and American breakfasts...the HP of the greasy spoon, the flat white of cafe cuisine, the sunny side ups of a 60s diner. Genuine cooking from the heart, albeit not particularly great for the heart.
If I stayed much longer in Stanley I may not have left, and Moby Dick’s would have a lifelong customer and quite generously proportioned friend. But I tore myself away, taking one last little scenic drive around the nearby coastline, a landscape vaguely reminiscent of South Cornwall, where green fields end abruptly and plummet their way onto rocky platforms and calming coves. The Nut of course dominant, like a roasted macadamia in a sea of beer nuts.
Inland from Stanley are more examples of relative creaminess and dreaminess, a place where pretty much the best cheeses and dairy products in Australia emerge, a site for the Devondale creamery, the Devon element occasionally not far off. But it’s not too long that you are reminded you are in Australia, a vast country with land untouched and untamed, distant and remote and just about too much hassle for anyone to discover or develop or exploit. This is the edge of the Tarkine, itself an enigma with uncertain boundaries and characteristics, tracts of rainforest and pure mountain waters, buttongrass plains and rocky clumps, ferns larger and greener than any ferns that have gone before (with the possible exception of Fern Britton).
The Tarkine is never far out of the debate around environmental protection versus economic development and prosperity. Like many other areas of Australia, it’s only recently being seen as a potential cash cow... bursting with minerals and logging and opportunities for taking the unending supply of Chinese wealth. This may alarm and logic dictates we should protect this unique patch of wilderness, but listen to some of the locals and you get a different perspective... jobs to reduce unemployment, prosperity and security of the region, an opportunity rare on an island where 50% is already national park.
It’s a toughie, as was keeping going on the road back along coast heading east, through the industrial and commercial stretch of Burnie and on to a coffee and cake stop at Penguin. So named because of Lord Percival Penguin, a British aristocrat
who founded the McVities biscuit company and developed the idea for a chocolate sandwich bar while hunting for wombats in Tasmania. Maybe. The other possibility is the presence of nesting penguins around the town, some of whom have been immortalised in fibre glass for endless enjoyment for locals and visitors alike.
The next town of note along the road was Ulverstone, an English style seafront town with gritty beaches, dunes and parks, a place for late afternoon exercise and picnics and beach cricket between the lifesavers and locals. Despite being relatively unglamorous, it seemed to be one of those places where it would be quite easy to fall into a comfortable lifestyle, walking the dog along the front, popping into the fish n chip shop on the way home and having a beer down the local club with a fellow head or two.
Arguably more glamorous was Devonport, a spot that I was going to bypass until the last moment, only to be drawn partly out of duty to Demnports everywhere and convinced the beautiful day was better spent outdoors than in a car. It is of course a port, and the spot where the Spirit of Tasmania links to the big island, threading through the mouth of the
Mersey and calming down calming down into its dock on the eastern side. Like Ulverstone here too were people enjoying the outdoors... exercising, strolling, walking, jogging, cycling, skating, ambling and one or two driving around like chavish hoons. Once a Devonport always a Devonport.
My random bursts of spontaneity continued on the final leg to Launceston, the whizz back via the highway spurned for a B-road delight through more rural idylls featuring rolling haystacks, pretty cottages and leafy woodland. Was it any wonder the road finished at Exeter, a smaller but just as bland looking place as its English namesake with a football team to match? Exeter somewhat improperly lies beside the Tamar River, where the final soft light of day illuminated the rolling landscape around. Ending a day when the sun dazzled from start to finish.
The excess of sun was counterbalanced a little on my last day, a more overcast feel for the majority as I dutifully pottered about Launceston, Tasmania’s second ‘city’. It’s more a large town than anything else, a compact central district dotted with parks and pubs and a mish mash of old colonial chic. It’s a good size to walk around, with the Tamar River lapping along its fringes and sloshing its waters into little inlets and creeks and streams. One of the more notable inlets forces its way through steep sided bushland, forming probably Launceston’s most famous landmark, Cataract Gorge. While not as gorgeous as some other gorges, the fact that this is pretty much in the heart of the city is in itself quite spectacular. A veritable playground of Australia for people to celebrate the bushwalk, 
the suspension bridge, the pool and the cable car ride. The amble up the gorge was an amble, the hike back the other side a hike, a contrast which encapsulates Tasmania... the sedate against the rugged, the refined against the raw, the babyface against the four day old stubble.
Somewhat weary by now I was keen to end in the gentlest way possible, taking the final afternoon at old person speed along minor roads fringing the Tamar Valley. Here were strawberry farms and mudflats and vineyards and yacht moorings. In this land, cursed by distance, a small island off a big island miles from pretty much anywhere, I felt both closer to and farther from home than for some time. Despite some geographical errors, those place names do something very subtle and subliminal to the mind, something that could only be crystallised by several ciders I would imagine. But a pot of Boags it was, loyal to the local cause, to send me on my way back to Australia.
So I arrived bright and early on Saturday morning in Launceston. Clearly, when they settled in this area they could see some resemblance to south west England. However, I think they had a few too many ciders at the time. Here it’s the Tamar River, not the River Tamar. Launceston, which is not pronounced proper like, is correctly on it but so too is Exeter, which itself happens to be to the east of Westbury and Somerset (which is a town not a county). Meanwhile, Devonport, which should clearly be on the Tamar is situated on the Mersey River (some hilarious Scouser must have gatecrashed the party). 
Mercifully Deloraine, the first stop on the road, was not geographically inappropriate and home to a rather amiable dose of old style country life, the river meandering, the high street dotted with the requisite trinkets and curios and homemade comforts of bread and cakes.After Delo, the road and landscape becomes less cultivated and refined, pasture giving way to rugged ridges and sweeping bush, the Mersey somehow trying to negotiate its way into the Great Western Tiers, visible from following one of the great short walks to Alum Cliffs. Heading on further still it’s easy to think the rest of the population has been wiped out by some zombie style epidemic, the roads sparse, nature raw and often unforgiving, trees struggling to hold out
amongst the moorland blasts of wind and rain. But there’s that baguette from Delo deli to bring comfort, and civilisation of sorts re-emerges around the entrance to Cradle Mountain National Park, a comfortable cabin offering the luxury within the wilds.All this and three paragraphs within the space of a Saturday morning meant there was time for substantially more to follow. In what is proclaimed to be one of the murkier places in Australia, the gloom was lifting, the sun out and the raggedy ridge of Cradle Mountain displaying true and proud from Dove Lake.
Dumping the four wheels and taking advantage of the rather excellent shuttle bus system and my own less than excellent two feet, the beauty and drama of it all was open to be breathed in, absorbed like the pure water in the mosses and still pools of this sweeping landscape. The only logical way up, a few paces on the Overland Track to steps and planks and muddy patches, rising all the time to more lakes and rocks and that empty bleakness that is consistently so hauntingly beautiful. The final scramble up to Marion’s Lookout an exercise in exercise, and a rewarding panorama soured only slightly by the fickle clouds of Mother Nature closing down on the peak.
Of course, on the way back down the cloud dissipated only for the sun to be further blocked by the tangly trees and shadowy ferns lining a series of cascades and gurgles on their way down towards the buttongrass plains beyond. And so it was back out on these plains, with the sun now faded behind the hills, that the wombats came out to play, nothing if not ambivalent to the presence of a human watching them for five minutes.The next morning and an early start brought many rewards. This time I drove in the pre dawn glow along the narrow winding road to Dove Lake, hoping no wombats would be sharing the small strip of tarmac with me. At its end, a glassy calm mirror, waiting itself to be bathed in the emerging light and, like me, revelling in serenity. Good morning world.
With that start, even a very feeble breakfast of an apple and, later, a five dollar coffee couldn’t put a dampener on things, and before too long it was back on the road again, leaving the mountains and moors for the North West coast. Cheetos kept the hunger at bay as the road descended through forests and along rivers and emerged back into the pastoral patchwork of Tasmanian creaminess. The coast was hit at Wynyard and, around the corner, Table Cape rose in prominence, a magnet drawing its own shroud of mist, blanketing the fields of pungent onions which even a Frenchman on a bike with a stripy top and beret may even find a little overpowering. Freewheeling down on his bike though the Frenchman – in fact any man or woman – 
would be very pleased to find himself at Boat Harbour Beach, bathed in warm sunshine and seemingly relocated from the somewhere far more tropical. An idyllic spot for chilling out after that early start, to refuel on something other than apples or cheetos, and refresh for the onward journey to Stanley.
Stanley sits on a narrow isthmus of land almost separated from the island and the twentieth century. But this is a good thing, and one I shall get back to later. For now, it offered up an ice cream in the blue skies and a launch pad for one final push of the day to the west coast. The aim, sunset, the location, a wild, windswept beach lashed by surf from a sea which stretches out a few miles or more to next hit South America.
In the end, sunset never materialised and the only place to eat anywhere nearby was full of annoying empty but reserved tables. The roast beef just a distant pang of memory on the tastebuds, replaced by a real life pizza back in the relative civilisation that is Smithton. To compensate for this it was yet another early morning rise in Stanley, in order to climb atop the Nut and watch the sunrise instead. The Nut is a giant lump of rock which sits upon the end of the Stanley isthmus, a former volcano and home to numerous pademelons taking flight from some crazy Englishman ascending its wickedly steep slopes. Atop, the sky crystal clear, remnants of blackness filtering into the indigo hue of first light, the sea flat and calm as the glowing red and orange emerges over its horizon.
Sunrise always signifies promise for what lies ahead, but that becomes promise with added bells and whistles when it starts in a way so clear and calm. For this is supposed to a stormy, wild kind of spot, one in which ships flounder and foolish tourists and lashed with horizontal rain. Signs that the day was a good one were confirmed with breakfast at Moby Dicks in Stanley, a place of monumental charm and generous food, an amalgamation of the best parts of English, Australian and American breakfasts...the HP of the greasy spoon, the flat white of cafe cuisine, the sunny side ups of a 60s diner. Genuine cooking from the heart, albeit not particularly great for the heart.
If I stayed much longer in Stanley I may not have left, and Moby Dick’s would have a lifelong customer and quite generously proportioned friend. But I tore myself away, taking one last little scenic drive around the nearby coastline, a landscape vaguely reminiscent of South Cornwall, where green fields end abruptly and plummet their way onto rocky platforms and calming coves. The Nut of course dominant, like a roasted macadamia in a sea of beer nuts.
Inland from Stanley are more examples of relative creaminess and dreaminess, a place where pretty much the best cheeses and dairy products in Australia emerge, a site for the Devondale creamery, the Devon element occasionally not far off. But it’s not too long that you are reminded you are in Australia, a vast country with land untouched and untamed, distant and remote and just about too much hassle for anyone to discover or develop or exploit. This is the edge of the Tarkine, itself an enigma with uncertain boundaries and characteristics, tracts of rainforest and pure mountain waters, buttongrass plains and rocky clumps, ferns larger and greener than any ferns that have gone before (with the possible exception of Fern Britton).
The Tarkine is never far out of the debate around environmental protection versus economic development and prosperity. Like many other areas of Australia, it’s only recently being seen as a potential cash cow... bursting with minerals and logging and opportunities for taking the unending supply of Chinese wealth. This may alarm and logic dictates we should protect this unique patch of wilderness, but listen to some of the locals and you get a different perspective... jobs to reduce unemployment, prosperity and security of the region, an opportunity rare on an island where 50% is already national park.
It’s a toughie, as was keeping going on the road back along coast heading east, through the industrial and commercial stretch of Burnie and on to a coffee and cake stop at Penguin. So named because of Lord Percival Penguin, a British aristocrat
who founded the McVities biscuit company and developed the idea for a chocolate sandwich bar while hunting for wombats in Tasmania. Maybe. The other possibility is the presence of nesting penguins around the town, some of whom have been immortalised in fibre glass for endless enjoyment for locals and visitors alike.The next town of note along the road was Ulverstone, an English style seafront town with gritty beaches, dunes and parks, a place for late afternoon exercise and picnics and beach cricket between the lifesavers and locals. Despite being relatively unglamorous, it seemed to be one of those places where it would be quite easy to fall into a comfortable lifestyle, walking the dog along the front, popping into the fish n chip shop on the way home and having a beer down the local club with a fellow head or two.
Arguably more glamorous was Devonport, a spot that I was going to bypass until the last moment, only to be drawn partly out of duty to Demnports everywhere and convinced the beautiful day was better spent outdoors than in a car. It is of course a port, and the spot where the Spirit of Tasmania links to the big island, threading through the mouth of the
Mersey and calming down calming down into its dock on the eastern side. Like Ulverstone here too were people enjoying the outdoors... exercising, strolling, walking, jogging, cycling, skating, ambling and one or two driving around like chavish hoons. Once a Devonport always a Devonport.My random bursts of spontaneity continued on the final leg to Launceston, the whizz back via the highway spurned for a B-road delight through more rural idylls featuring rolling haystacks, pretty cottages and leafy woodland. Was it any wonder the road finished at Exeter, a smaller but just as bland looking place as its English namesake with a football team to match? Exeter somewhat improperly lies beside the Tamar River, where the final soft light of day illuminated the rolling landscape around. Ending a day when the sun dazzled from start to finish.
The excess of sun was counterbalanced a little on my last day, a more overcast feel for the majority as I dutifully pottered about Launceston, Tasmania’s second ‘city’. It’s more a large town than anything else, a compact central district dotted with parks and pubs and a mish mash of old colonial chic. It’s a good size to walk around, with the Tamar River lapping along its fringes and sloshing its waters into little inlets and creeks and streams. One of the more notable inlets forces its way through steep sided bushland, forming probably Launceston’s most famous landmark, Cataract Gorge. While not as gorgeous as some other gorges, the fact that this is pretty much in the heart of the city is in itself quite spectacular. A veritable playground of Australia for people to celebrate the bushwalk, 
the suspension bridge, the pool and the cable car ride. The amble up the gorge was an amble, the hike back the other side a hike, a contrast which encapsulates Tasmania... the sedate against the rugged, the refined against the raw, the babyface against the four day old stubble.Somewhat weary by now I was keen to end in the gentlest way possible, taking the final afternoon at old person speed along minor roads fringing the Tamar Valley. Here were strawberry farms and mudflats and vineyards and yacht moorings. In this land, cursed by distance, a small island off a big island miles from pretty much anywhere, I felt both closer to and farther from home than for some time. Despite some geographical errors, those place names do something very subtle and subliminal to the mind, something that could only be crystallised by several ciders I would imagine. But a pot of Boags it was, loyal to the local cause, to send me on my way back to Australia.
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