GRA MURDOCH TOURS TASMANIA IN A MAGNIFICENT MOBILE HOME. 

The well-read among you will no doubt remember my TIAM article a year ago, detailing a honeymoon visit to Uluru. What? You have trouble recalling? No sweat. I mention it only for context: each year, for our anniversary, wife Jen and myself vow to spend a week or so somewhere different in Australia, somewhere we’ve always intended to visit but have never quite gotten around to. Last year was the magical Red Centre, this year – at the opposite end of the colourwheel – Tasmania: the green apple tucked neatly beneath the mainland.

A few brief connecting flights from our Gold Coast home and we touch down at Hobart Airport under late-summer blue skies. The crew at the campervan rental HQ are welcoming and thorough, running us through the features of our mighty (unexpectedly upgraded), incredibly well-appointed, six-berth campervan. At first we’re a little hesitant about being entrusted to such a significant piece of driving machinery, but we figure we’ll take things gently, so with hands tight on the wheel, we steer out of the rental complex and out on to the road.

If you’re like us and never been campervanning before, but think you might enjoy it, I strongly recommend it to you, and also with my hand on my heart recommend Tassie as the perfect place for such a venture. This island is perfect for a campervan holiday. The roads are in great shape and uncrowded, the facilities at the national parks and campgrounds are well maintained and well-priced, there are free-camping options everywhere, and, (here’s where I might get a little emotional) the geography, the ever-changing scenery, the sheer unspoilt beauty of the place is quite frankly astonishing.

We start our trip with expectations of “doing the loop” of the island: that is, heading up the east coast from Hobart, cutting west across the top, back down the west coast, with several visits into the interior as well, but by the third day of our trip we know this plan is folly. No point madly racing around ticking spots off the list without pausing to absorb them.

So pause and absorb is what we do.

We spend a few days on the Freycinet Peninsula, free-camping at The Friendly Beaches and plugging in for a night at the Coles Bay van park. We walk and kayak and marvel and walk some more. Wineglass Bay – as travel mags will tell you – is voted in the top 10 most beautiful beaches in the world, but for us it’s only one sublime part of the Freycinet whole.

On dusk in the Coles Bay van park we’re serenaded by a virtuoso duo of elderly campers jamming on trumpet and piano: cool, mellow Duke Ellington Jazz tunes swirl and lift into the evening air like fragrance, with gentle applause echoing back from the scattered van and tent-sites. Everyone’s smiling. It’s an utterly gorgeous half-hour.

We then mosey north, up to the Bay of Fires, wondering as we do if maybe we’ve been spoilt by Freycinet and if all that follows will disappoint. Our fears are put to rest by the time we park our van along the dune line of a beach so lovely I will not reveal its name.  

We spend a few days there, walking, exploring, reading, surfing, gazing at our campfire, eating fine meals produced on our three-burner stove and wanting for nothing. We meet some larger-than-life characters, including Roger, who’s been on the road for years in his home-built van, who becomes an instant friend. We take chairs and cups of tea over to his camp where he bakes us damper and tells us stories. We marvel at the ingenuity of Alan, another roaming soul, and the extraordinary inventions that make his caravanning existence almost laughably sustainable and comfortable.

Alan takes a bite of his damper and a swig from his tea and asks us, “How does it feel to have died and gone to Heaven?” We laugh and say it feels pretty good.
The next day, Jen and I are sitting next to our fire and thinking maybe we actually HAVE gone to Heaven. I’m speculating that – unbeknown to us – we’d somehow recently shuffled off this mortal coil. I’ve no sooner finished this sentence when a long-forgotten sound of childhood drifts over the remote landscape: it’s the mechanised, sweetly amplified chimes of “Greensleeves”, the siren’s call of a good old-fashioned ice-cream van bumping its way down the sandy track! It’s the most surreal moment of the trip. Myself and Jen quickly agree we are now undoubtedly in paradise, and dive into the van to rummage for money for ice-cream.
Choc tops, with nuts. Heaven indeed.

Next, we’re out on the road and almost out of time: we head as far north as the superbly named town of Penguin before turning west to return down the middle of the island, through the highlands to Hobart. Looking for a place to spend the night within range of a midday flight home next day, we settle on the Mt Field National Park.
We get in as the afternoon shadows lengthen, but the fella at the visitor’s centre reckons we can still make the walk through the Tall Trees and the Lady Barron and Russell falls.

The next two hours will stay with us for a long time, walking humbled and reverential beneath Australia’s tallest trees, some nudging 90 metres and 400 years old. Only the 110- metre Redwoods in California are higher.

Perhaps this will be my abiding memory of a week in Tasmania: spreading my arms, closing my eyes and resting my head on the impossibly broad, mossy base of a tree that was alive and well when Dutchman Abel Tasman first sighted the Tasmanian coast back in 1642. I’m not much of a soft touch, but the thought of it was profoundly moving. Almost to tears, in fact.

Maybe that’ll be my abiding memory of Tassie, but it won’t be the only one: “We’re coming back, and next time, we’re coming for a month,” Jen reckons, and I’m not about to disagree.

A FEW TASSIE CAMPERVANNING NOTES.

•  We found a good rhythm in free-camping “off the grid” for a few days, then spending a night in a caravan park (juicing the batteries, doing laundry, indulging in hot showers, etc), then back to free-camping. Of the nine days we spent on the road, four nights were spent in caravan parks.
•  Some campervans are high! The only dramas we had involved low-lying branches and misjudgements about clearance.
•  Say G’day to your fellow campers and road travellers. You’re guaranteed to be inspired and entertained.
•  Research the seasons. Tassie can get pretty cold!
•  Beware driving at night, dawn and dusk, lots of critters cross the road ’round these parts.
•  When in doubt, fill the tank!
•  Honestly, in a week we only saw a tiny amount of what Tassie has to offer. But we’re hooked.