making up syllables: diamond dave meets the tasmanian devil, pt. 1

except he doesn't. because they're endangered. because there's a horrible epidemic where the devil population is being wiped out by contagious face cancer. i had to break my no bold style guidelines just to emphasize that: contagious face cancer. probably the worst kind of anything, ever. and that's probably the only time you will ever hear someone be sad about devils being wiped out. usually you gotta pay a priest good money for that sort of action.

we did end up getting one photo of the elusive little guys but they dart in and out so quick its kind of blurry, but here it is anyway:

so you can see that the tasmanian scenery is mostly long brown arches of rock with beautifully strange art deco trees in bold primary colors. no wonder it's such a tourist destination!

we flew into hobart early afternoon and picked up our motorhome-sweet-home. a nice big fiat whose interior was nicer than my flat back in melbourne. there was unfortunately only two seats up front and since i was essentially freeloading i took the table seat in back. i couldn't really see much and was prone to car sickness from time to time but i did end up beating cut-the-rope on my ipod finally. our first day was more or less setup for the rest of the trip: grocery shopping, route planning, climate acclimating. it was to be cold down in tassie and a bit rainy, but nothing too bad. we stayed that night at a little campground in a town called snug which i guess comes from its proximity to the bay.

so tasmania is an ecosystem apart from everything else in australia. it's much more mountainous in it's terrain and the climate makes it ideal for farming and vineyards as well as old growth, high-altitude rain forests. moss everywhere. it's a bit like the pacific northwest.

our first real destination of the trip was an old prison town called port arthur on the tasman peninsula. it turns out the tasman peninsula is the last place in tasmania where contagious face cancer hasn't spread. its kind of like a tasmanian devil quarantine zone. you have to pass a tiny little isthmus just to get to it. on the way there we saw signs for something called tessellated pavement and, intrigued, we decided to check it out. turns out its a natural phenomenon caused by erosion from the salt in sea water which makes rock faces look like vintage cobblestone streets.

there were some more photo opportunities along the way so we rolled into the convict settlement mid-afternoon. they recommend taking two days to fully explore the grounds but we were going to do it in about four hours. apparently port arthur was one of the more heinous penal systems in the world at it's time but you would never really know it from the looks of the place; the beautiful grounds abstract the sites ugly history. although solitary confinement wasn't invented at port arthur it was a highly prized technique in dealing with its notoriously difficult prisoners, many who probably suffered from mental illness. furthermore the grounds were used as a juvenile detention center with some of its inhabitants as young as the age of nine. still, a beautiful place particularly in autumn as all of the leaves were changing.

quick note on that actually. whereas there are definitely warmer months to go to tasmania i doubt that any season can highlight its beauty more than autumn. warm yellows, reds and oranges everywhere, particularly nice on the tall, slender cypress trees.

so we finished our visit to port arthur, which included a complimentary ferry ride around its harbor, around the early evening hours. we stayed on the peninsula for the night and would continue on northward to the picturesque freycinet national park the following day. unfortunately i took too many photos at port arthur so the remaining majority of the trip will have to wait until the following post.