A bit of tassie bush

Saturday, April 17, 2010

I left the farm to explore the wider world of Van Diemen’s Land starting in Hobart, yes I had already explored it but never mind. Now I thought being in Tasmania would automatically render me friendless, seeing as no other backpackers seemed to be going there, and for the first few days in Hobart this was pretty much so. However little Mandy from the scandal back in Adelaide was about to visit, so after being in Hobart alone for a couple of days I had a friend.

Mandy, a Dutch girl named Analise, a Belgian guy called Michael and I set off on a 2-day trip of Mount Field and the Southwest national parks, we plugged in the iPod and took it in turns to complain about each other’s music choice and soon we were into the hills leaving the city behind. Our first aim to find the hostel proved a little confusing but when we did find it we felt a little silly as it was ‘bleedin obvious’ as the building with the blue roof that we were told to look out for, in hindsight we over thought it a bit. Anyway we got in and found it to be a delightful little house, which actually was the owner’s house, his kitchen etc. and he slept in the shed up the top but used the house in the daytime. After getting ourselves sorted and dumping stuff and eating lunch we finally went out and took a hike up at Mount Field.

The next day was to be our Southwest national park day; although Mount Field has infinitely more to explore the Southwest was where we planned to do a big hike. Today was not one of my best days, the day before at mount field was beautiful, we climbed waterfalls and took funny photos and generally messed about, then at night we had a Barbie at the hostel and the owner sat with us as well, we cooked up a delicious feast and chatted about karma and the point of being vegetarian, stayed up late listening to music and feeling very peaceful. So today I wasn’t feeling too energetic, my legs had half calcified and were refusing to move properly and I was pissed off at Mandy. It turned out I must have got the wrong end of the stick; I thought she was leaving her boyfriend in Germany, but 2 months later and she still hadn’t informed him of this. So halfway up the hill at the end of the day I voiced my complaints and then we didn’t talk much, we almost made it to the summit and then we staggered down, I got some lovely photos from the day and the morning was good but the end feeling wasn’t too good, and that night when we returned to Hobart Mandy and I went separate ways.