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Tasmania Travel Journal, Part 2:
General Comments
Although we signed up for the Tasmania trip at Super Travel, there weren't enough people to form a group, so what they did was book the flights and coach trips for us, and put us on local tours, and left free half days here and there so it was almost like being on a free and easy holiday.
I think that if I travel with my parents again, I am going to bring my own phone and spend the $5/month to activate roaming. Besides making communication with my parents easier if we split up, it also frees me from their superstitions - my mother has this idea that a handphone battery lasts less than 5 minutes on a full charge, so it cannot be used for any but important calls.
Day 3 - Tasmania (Hobart)
The travel agency which booked out flights was very sneaky. For the transfer to Hobart from Melbourne, we were booked on Jetstar - a new low cost airline set up by Qantas. My experience with them was alright, except that at the airport, I somehow, though I was not sleeping, missed the announcement of my sequence number for boarding. What's more, I also did not hear the pages made for me.
When we arrived in Hobart in the mid-morning, I discovered that the Antarctic Adventure had closed down, so going there was out of the question. The agency had been unable to book us on the Hobart-Richmond tour, so we were free for the rest of the day. Now, there was no wildlife-related item anywhere in our itinerary, and I surely couldn't leave Tasmania without seeing a Tasmanian devil, so I found and booked a suitable tour.
De rigueur for any trip to Australia is a trip to see Kangaroos and Koalas. Since I'd been to Australia a few times already, I'd seen the two more than once, but the Bonorong Wildlife Park did not stop at those 2.
Of course, this being Tas
mania, there were a lot of Tasmanian devils. They were much more aggressive than I'd expected - watching Looney Tunes cartoons doesn't quite prepare one for the experience of seeing a devil in the flesh. Swee Shoon had told me that they were very smelly, but the keeper at the park said that this was because the devils usually make their homes in enclosed areas, and that they actually are quite clean animals.
There was also a tame wombat - apparently they bite humans usually, but this one had lost its mother so it had grown attached to humans. In a few months though, it would turn feral and silly tourists like myself would no longer be able to pet it.
We were given packets of kangaroo feed to feed the kangaroos and wallabies with. It seems that too many people have done this already, for the moment the kangaroos saw us, their pavlovian reflex kicked in and they crowded around us for the food. My mother was spooked by them, so I had to save her a few times when she got cornered, by distracting the kangaroos with food so she could make a hasty escape.
Other animals the park had: a bettong (a curiously rat-like marsupial), emus and 2 eagles crippled in hunting accidents. Unfortunately, the quolls, echindas and possums were hiding somewhere in their enclosures, so I didn't get to see them.
After that, we were driven to Richmond, billed as a "historic" town. Having seen a million and one "historic towns" in England with nothing to recommend them but the historic foundation stones of their wells, I wouldn't fall for that trick again. To be fair, Richmond had St John Catholic Church, the oldest Catholic church... in Australia, the oldest surviving bridge... in Australia and Richmond Gaol, the oldest (still intact) gaol in - you guessed it - Australia!
It might be a matter of local pride for your town to have the third oldest continually used Seventh Day Adventist Church in Australia with its original roof intact, but outside of your small, parochial community, it doesn't count for much.
At Richmond Gaol, we got off the bus for a while. My mother and I went to look at the gaol, but my father didn't think the visit worth the entrance fee, so he went to walk the streets of the town.
On arrival back at Hobart, we walked down to the waterfront, in the face of chilling antarctic winds. Though the waterfront was mostly deserted, there was one restaurant that was bustling - Fish Frenzy, so we had our dinner there. The restaurant was like a slightly upscale British Fish and Chippery, in that the food was served in brown paper cones, there was the traditional Fish and Chips vinegar and an order of "small" chips was too large for even me to finish unaided. The fried fish (available with beer batter, tempura batter and crumbed) was superb, but the grilled blue eye (trevella) we also ordered was heavenly - perhaps the best fish I have ever tasted. My only complaint was that the tartare sauce cost $0.50 for a small container, and tasted like a mix of horseradish and wasabi.
Day 4 - Hobart
On Thursday, we went on a cruise to the Cadbury Chocolate Factory at Claremont. Handphones and cameras were banned because they, ah, didn't want anything to fall into the chocolate (right). The tour wasn't quite as organised as I thought it would be, in the sense that they didn't show us how they made their chocolate from scratch, but I suppose it wouldn't be too exciting, for they probably receive a lot of their inputs processed already (cocoa butter, as opposed to raw cocoa beans, for example).
We learnt quite a few interesting facts on the tour. For example, only 10% of the chocolate made in the factory is exported outside Australia, and the Chocolate made for Australian consumption has more sugar in it than the chocolate meant for export. That doesn't bode well for Australians' health. Interestingly, after sampling the Australian Cadbury's chocolate, I found that I preferred the export version, as the higher sugar content in the Australian chocolate obscured its richness and taste, preventing full appreciation of its merits.
At the end of the tour, I bought a bottle of Schweppes Traditional Sarsaparilla with "the authentic taste". It had a very interesting tagline, one that wouldn't increase its sales in East and South East China.
Notwithstanding its tagline ("The Real Sars Flavour", for those who can't see, it was vile, with a very medicinal flavour. It's no wonder that no one makes authentic tasting Traditional Sarsaparilla anymore, instead making Sarsaparilla-flavoured drinks. After that experience, I dared not try their "authentic taste" Traditional Cream Soda or Lemondade.
At the shop in the factory, they sold chocolate at supposedly cheaper prices, but after factoring in the exchange rate, it wasn't that much cheaper. Besides which, most of the chocolate was essentially the same, being only variations on a few themes, which is also why I asked my sister not to ship any chocolate back to me from the UK.
The factory and its environs were quite ugly, but there was a cute doggie walking around.
Arriving back in Hobart, we still had some time before our coach transfer to Launceston, so we walked to Salamanca square, apparently a place so poor that people steal the toilet paper in public toilets.
At one of the souvenir shops, they were selling so-called "dancing animals" which were actually vibrators in the shapes of wombats, koalas and kangaroos, for the only thing they did on their strings being pulled was vibrate. There was also "Tasmanian Devil Dung" - "from the wilds of Tasmania, Australia. A must for somebody who thinks they have everything".
In the early evening, we got on a coach to Launceston. Local regulations were that hot food and drink were banned on coaches because in an aircon environment, the smells would circulate and nauseate further those with travel sickness. How considerate of the lawmakers (really).
By the time we arrived, it was pitch-black and raining to boot. A kind woman called a taxi for us; on arriving at our hotel - Sandor's on the Park - and checking in, it was too late to go out and eat, so we ate at the hotel restaurant, which my parents judged as mediocre but which I was fine with. The Polynesian chef was quite nice though - he saw my mother glance repeatedly in his direction (there was a big table of guests who had come before us, so our order took a long time in coming), so he sent us a plate of some garlic bread with his compliments.
It was quite late by the time I went up to the hotel room, and I let my parents bathe first, so by the time I got into the shower, it was past 11pm. I was expecting a nice bath to end the day, but to my shock, I found that there was no more hot water! I called the night manager and she said she'd look into it. After half an hour, though, there was still no hot water. My mother claimed that "I'll look into it" was a code phrase meaning "try again tomorrow", so I went to sleep without a shower :( (Though it being winter, it wasn't really necessary to bathe everyday) Incidentally, in Launceston there had a unique establishment - "Aquarius Roman Baths", complete with Tepidarium, Caldarium, Laconicum and Frigidarium (with a cold plunge pool!). The only thing missing was the olive oil and strigils. I would've tried it, but we had no time and besides, the 54 degree and 68 degree (celsius, not fahrenheit) rooms would have killed me, to say nothing of the 80 degree room.
