Our YaYa Adventures into Hobart & Ratho

Hobart Harbour, Tasmania

Two hundred years ago two young sisters (children really) stepped off the “Castle Forbes” which had just docked into the new settlement of Hobart in Tasmania. Ann and Margaret Honeyman were just 11 & 10 years old. They had been newly indentured to the Reid family as maids to the Reids two babes. They had left their mother and two younger brothers aboard the Castle Forbes to travel onto Sydney Town having just received news that their convict father, who they hoped to join up with in Sydney Town, had died. These two girls, new arrivals to the penal settlement of Hobart, a town settled just 18yrs prior, were Scottish emigrants now bound for the colonial outpost along the Clyde River in the highlands near to what was to become the township of Bothwell on the Central Tasmanian High Country. 

It’s all in the Planning… Making the most of Travel

At the moment I am thick into another trip plan… one coming up soon, and as usual I have two or three of these trip plans sitting on my desktop as I develop them as the mood takes me. A number of travellers like to just go with the flow, and there are certainly times when this is the fun way to go, but then at other times planning is a part of the enjoyment of discovery and I wouldn’t even consider not building up a plan for any given tour… Even the roughest of rudimentary plans is a good option.

Traveling as we do as a lifestyle choice, as opposed to a 2-4 week or month stint across the country, we do have a broad based guide that gets us to where we want to go and then there are times where we just head off in a general direction… or in pursuit of a general goal or season respite… or even in pursuit of an interest, but the trip plan is an essential part of our future plans and I wouldn’t be without it. Mind you these trip plans are very malleable … such as this years primary plan which was to have seen us up in the Kimberley, but instead saw us spending 6 months in and around Perth… exploring, instead. Plans change as does your focus, and often. It is best to roll with the waves and enjoy the ride.

Tasmania and Travellers Rest Area’s

Having just returned from our adventures in Tasmania we are growing once more accustomed to the life of the traveller as we move up through the eastern seaboard. We are at the present preparing to cross the Oondiri Plain once more and spend the winter months in WA but more about that later.

Maria Island – Tasmania

We had promised ourselves a cruise while we travelled the east coastline of Tas’ and it was a hard choice. However I couldn’t have been more pleased than with our choice of a cruise on the Spirit of Maria out from the little fishing port town of Triabunna barely 1 ½ – 2 hrs from Hobart and Launceston.

Up There, Our Heads in the Clouds – Ben Lomond, Tas

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One of the things that we didn’t expect to find in our travels around Tas’ was the beauty of Ben Lomond and its tabletop plateau, which is Tasmania’s primary Ski Resort and a spectacular alpine region of the Apple Isle. We never actually gave it a thought… we knew about Cradle Mountain and its glorious landscape, often shrouded in clouds.

The Tamar Valley – Launceston

At the end of our stretch of the Heritage Highway we planned to camp up for a good week, cleaning, organizing and restocking. Launceston was the obvious choice, but not a lover of crowds we decided to stretch our toes instead at the very mouth of the Tamar River, at Low Heads near George Town.

Van Diemans Land and the Bushmen

Hobart and districts, which sprawl up the shoreline of the Derwent River, hold a wonderful history and is one of the major draws to visiting Tasmania. It is a history that the Government tried to loose back in 1856 when they renamed the southern Island of Australia, Tasmania.

A Tassie Christmas Season

Touching ground on the most southern road in Australia in the remote SE of Tasmania was a special moment for us. We spent a few days down in Cockle Creek, at the National Park camp, which only required the wonderful ‘National Park Pass’… a must for the Tassie adventurer. There are a few public camp spots at the end of the track as well, but we found the NP camp the most accommodating and certainly worth every cent of its relatively meagre cost for the Parks Pass which covers so much of Tas’.

The Cradle in the Mountain

There are usually two things which every traveller or tourist plans on when they come to The Apple Isle. One is to visit the iconic and unique Port Arthur, the infamous penal settlement and model prison of its colonial era. It once was a place of immeasurable suffering inflicted on the convicts and those born to poverty, in another time. The other is to chance their luck on hopefully experiencing the beauty of Cradle Mountain.

Cradle Mountain is part of the Tasmanian World Heritage area’s to be found in the central and South West of this gorgeous Isle. It is a World Heritage site for a very good reason. The Cradle Mountain and Lake Snt Clair National Park is simply stunning in its natural beauty and rare, breathtaking wilderness, but this is not only why it proudly carries a World Heritage Listing.

The World of Gondwana – Tasmania

We’ve been stepping through the ancient Tarkine forests these last weeks, discovering the places reminiscent of Gondwana Land. Tasmania has some of the few remaining forests on Earth which breath quietly and tell the tale of this ancient continent. One split apart giving birth to the ark that is Australia. It is relatively easy to find a true wilderness here in the wild Tarkine, in the remote NW of Tasmania. It is a place where ancient trees loom over you, one where you can see strange water falls that appear to have been built by a childish hand, a playful spirit stacking building block upon building block in columns, to create something that is natures own version of lego-land.