on the edge of ordinary: Reflecting on our month in Tasmania

16 May, 2024

Reflecting on our month in Tasmania

This was our Tasmanian journey. We would have
liked to make it to more of the west and north-east
coast, but there were almost no sealed roads in
the areas on those coasts you see we didn't go. We
also would have preferred not to have to drive
on the same roads, but it was impossible to avoid,
particularly in the middle (we drove the road from
Queenstown to Derwent Bridge twice) and in the
south-east (we drove through Hobart a few too
many times).

Our long road trip was not yet over, but I'm pausing a moment to write about our month in Tasmania.

It was a fun destination. Tasmania is one of those places on a wishlist of most Australians (and many have been there). Though most people don't spend a month there driving around in their own vehicle, we encountered plenty who were there for a while in their caravans or motorhomes (it's expensive to get there, the ferry is the only way if you're driving your own vehicle). We were there long enough to see some of the lesser-known places, and that was fun. Like most road trips, though, there was always more we could have seen!

Tasmania is fun because there's so much to see in so little space. We met friends in Hobart who originally come from Queensland, but are confirmed Taswegians now (at least in their minds). They said, it's not that there is not lots of great things to see in the rest of Australia, but they are so far apart. I agree. You can drive a long way (like many, many hours, or even days) to see just one thing in other parts of Australia, whereas you can drive just an hour in Tassie and see many things. I think we kinda got used to it, but early on it felt like around every bend there was something new and amazing you could see.

Tasmania lived up to its reputation of being cold. And considering how far south it is, that isn't surprising—it's at a similar latitude to Hokkaido, which gets many metres of snow each winter. It's also a similar latitude to Boston and the southern tip of South America. It's significantly colder than Queensland, but not as cold as Hokkaido, the northern island of Japan. In fact, looking at the weather graph, temperatures doesn't fluctuate anything like Tokyo or Canberra do. Tokyo gets much, much hotter and a bit colder than Hobart. Hobart is just generally cool most of the year. We were there in the April, the so-called second month of Autumn, but we were already often wearing more layers than we do in winter in Ipswich during the day (nights were similar to winter in Ipswich). Though it's worth noting that the van had no heating in the "house" part.

Roads are generally narrow and windy with very suspect edges. Most open road speed signs were more of a suggestion that we laughed at than anything we could realistically do in the motorhome (maybe it would have been possible on a motorbike?).

Parts of the island look very foreign, especially the more remote ones, but other areas looked very Australian. I've added some photos from various parts of the state at the bottom of this post to compare.

We were surprised at how remote some areas were, despite it being a small island. There are many places it's impossible to get to on a sealed road. Several of our campsite required us to drive on a dirt road. And, as I mentioned early on in my journey, there are places where it's hard to find medical care. But we were surprised that many small towns had decent grocery stores (many of them are regional centres).

In writing this I had fun looking at size comparisons. Tasmania is smaller than Hokkaido, around the same size as Sri Lanka, twice as big as Taiwan, half the size of England, and slightly smaller than Scotland. It's about the same size as the US state of West Virginia.

There is much to see for lovers of history, science (ecology, biology, botany, geology), adventure, and active holidays—mountain biking and hiking (remote and much more tame). There is less for those looking for shopping or high density areas. There are plenty of vineyards and open cellar doors. We saw lots of beaches, but not many were surfing beaches. And certainly, if you're a lover of hot weather, you probably would find this island a challenge, except in the middle of summer.

It's noteworthy that almost a quarter of the state is World Heritage listed, you can see it's the darker part of this map. Much of this area you can't drive into.

Our time in Tasmania was also driven by budget considerations. We carefully selected what we paid to do (river cruise, a handful of museums, etc.) and spent most of our time doing free things like walking. We used a combination of free, low-cost campsites and caravan parks to keep our costs low, the combination of these was driven by a limited amount of water we could carry onboard and the shower in the motorhome, which isn't great. We also ate the vast majority of our meals in the motorhome. Usually our morning routine included me making a coffee-to-go to save on the cost of buying one in the afternoon. Probably our biggest expense was getting there and the petrol to get around. (Borrowing a motorhome rent-free was a huge saving, and one for which we are very grateful to my parents for.)

Below is a selection of about 20 photos (the slide show you may or may not want to see). They are mostly showcasing the Tasmanian countryside that we saw.