Blog

Tasmania Trip 2008

Last weekend, I visited Tasmania for the first time after living for almost 10 years in Australia. I went there with some colleagues and their partners, there were probably about 60 of us in the group.

Friday, 29/02/2008.

We did a half-day at work and left for the Tullamarine Airport. When I got there, the rest of the group were already queueing for check-in at the Virgin Blue counters. We were supposed to take a 1-hour flight to Launceston. But guess what, the flight was cancelled at the last hour. Bummer!

After waiting for some time, we managed to get the flight replaced with a sea trip on Spirit of Tasmania. We were transferred from the airport to Port Melbourne using 2 shuttle buses. The ship sailed at 9pm and arrived at Devonport at 6am the following day.

Melbourne at night, as our ship started sailing away. Another ship (Queen Elizabeth?) was docking at the port.

I enjoyed walking around the decks, having some drinks at the bar, and the dinner wasn’t too bad as well. The worst part was trying to get some sleep while the ship was jumping up and down, I only managed 2.5 hours of uncomfortable sleep and was awaken with a Tasmanian radio playing the Ghostbusters theme song, that was hillariously rude.

Saturday, 01/03/2008.

Our trip continued with a bus ride to Craddle Mountain for the next couple of hours. Some people were nauseated due to the snakey uphill road, I didn’t notice anything because I slept like a log the whole way until we finally arrived at the Craddle Mountain Chateau.

The meal area.

The view at the back of the chateau.

We were told to immediately have a breakfast because the activities of the day would start within an hour. After an excellent set of meal, I took another bus ride to Tasmania National Park. There were about a dozen of us in the bus, while the others had other activities lined up.

The beautiful Dove Lake, with Craddle Mountain at the background.

The group decided to walk up the Marions Lookout, accompanied by 2 guides. It was quite easy at the beginning of the walk where we were still walking on a flat surface, but soon it changed to this…

That’s T-Boz on the left, helping his wife along the way. While Miranda was already way further up, and Matt was busy capturing the beautiful sceneries.

The group at the back, Chris, Rowe and her husband, with one of the guides.

It was a great feeling when we finally reached the Lookout after 2 hours of walk hike. My old ankle problem bothered me several times, I had to stop a couple of times to catch some breath, and note to self: next time, don’t do this after 4 hours of sleep, don’t carry 3 bottles of water, and carry a backpack instead of a geek bag.

We were busy taking pictures from the Lookout.

While Sofia enjoyed a smoke at high altitude (that’s so so wrong :p).

The return 2 hours downhill walk was much easier of course, except for the 10 minutes climb about 2/3 of the Wombat Pool. We passed many groups of people on their way up, greeted each other, and gave words of encouragement in the form of “Hang in there, you’re nearly half way,” to everyone of them, whether they’re really half way or not. LOL.

We passed another lake (Lila?) on our way down.

I had a nice hot shower after returning to the chateau, followed by a nice filling lunch, followed by a half-hour relaxing spa massage. All were superb, specially after the ship, the bus rides, and the hike.

Next up was the helicopter ride. I initially thought that the helicopter would’ve been the highlight of the day, but after the walk to Marrions Lookout, not so much. It was still nice to see all the mountains, waterfalls, rivers, lakes, and gorges from the helicopter. But sitting on my butt during the ride wasn’t as exciting as walking in the wilderness.

In the evening, we had a pre-drinks session at a gallery across the chateau, where we had the chance to enjoy some excellent nature photography of Tasmania by Aihara Masaaki. It was then followed by a ball, all the way passed midnight. Nice food (great steak), nice companions, nice conversations.

Sunday, 02/03/2008.

Checked out of the hotel at 9am right after breakfast. Slept again during the 1-hour bus ride to Launceston for the return flight to Melbourne. And thankfully there’s no cancellation this time.

Not too bad for one weekend, eh?