Cycle Touring Tasmania: Part 1

We've just completed day 10 of our 3-week cycle tour of Tasmania and today is the first day that I've said, "I just want a hot tea and a blanket and a snuggle."  The weather here would be typical of a New England September. Most days are in the 60's and it alternates between a light drizzle, overcast and damp and a bluebird crispness that makes your sinuses prickle with the first big inhale of chilly morning air. I call that "hace fresco" weather because the English vocabulary hasn't come up with a word that suits my fancy to describe such a day. 

The leaves are turning yellow and burnt orange in the North-central part of the state and the last 2 days of cycling through rolling hills of apple orchards and sheep and cow farms may as well have been western Massachusetts except for the pervasive eucalyptus skyline. 

We've noticed a few things during our first week and a half or so. The first is that cycle touring is not really a thing in Tassie... yet. We have seen one other cyclist with panniers and she said she had seen another so that's 4 cycle tourists in the state right now. Or something like that. Cycling is popular in the larger cities like Hobart where there are bike shops and spandex clad roadies out and about all day long but in the rural mountain towns of the central plains and western mountains - we are a bizarre and confusing anomaly. 

Other Tassie tourists are almost exclusively older and/or retired Aussies from either Melbourne, Brisbane or Perth and they all have caravans. They are also the most friendly people we have ever met. Almost obtrusively so. Like even as you are clearly standing up to leave and your body language says "It's time for us to move on" the Aussie will keep chatting away, apologize for not having space in their home for you tonight and give you their business card for the next time you're casually passing through Sheffield. Don't worry about starting up a conversation - the 65-year old in the camper van 50 yards away will walk into your campsite wondering how you're going, where you're from and how on earth did your country vote Don into office? We are almost always assumed to be Canadians at first glance and then we have to gently explain where we're actually from to the reception of more unsolicited disproval at our country's current state of affairs. "Don't worry," one woman from Melbourne told me, "I sometimes wish I were from New Zealand too." We are offered food, water, a hot fire, alcohol. We have been offered a place to stay in Noosa and in Townsville when we arrive there later. A nice man in a pick up truck pulled over as we were slowly spinning up a hill, he asked where we were going and then offered us a ride. "Why would you bike there? That's 90k away."  

 

The general consensus is that we've made a mistake by accidentally hiring push bikes without realizing it. Or that we are crazy. Just a bunch of young whippersnappers we are.  I've taken to calling the face "the face of otter confusion" because the faces of these elderly holidayers as they drive by us are the same face that I once saw on a sea otter when Bill woke it up from its nap and it genuinely couldn't tell whether it was dreaming or not. Not fear or anger - just complete and utter befuddlement. So we get that face a lot. 

We also get a lot of friendly honks and plenty of berth from cars passing us on narrow, winding shoulder-less roads. 

We get waves and smiles too. We've gotten a few fist pumps and plenty of thumbs up out the windows as cars pass us on a steep incline.  And only once was someone a real asshole when he sped by with his window rolled down and screamed at me right as he passed. I let out a squeal of fear that I've never heard myself make before. 

 

We have had some trouble finding appropriate campsites. A rumor was that there were 90 free campsites in Tasmania - however these are free only if you are "self-contained" meaning you are an RV with your own waste disposal/toilet inside. We unfortunately were unable to fit one into our panniers. 

 

Two nights ago we wound up in Deloraine, a charming old Victorian town on a gently flowing, duck-invested river.  Dismayed by our camping options, we ended up pitching our tent behind a footy (Australian Rules Football) field and woke up the next morning pleasantly surprised to have not been murdered by an eccentric man who makes dolls. Let me elaborate. Matthew, like all Aussies, did not require an invitation to conversation. He walked 200 yards off the walking track to chat with us. He had long gray hair and a long gray beard which he tied into a knot at the bottom. He wore oversized courderoys which were covered in paint and brown faux leather loafers which he had cut holes in the toes so that his heather green socks could be seen. He asked odd questions of us like: "So Bill, do you like to think?" And held Bill's hand for way too long after shaking it, commenting on how oddly delicate and lovely they were and not like most mans' hands. He walked with us back to town and wanted to show us the home he lived in - an old 1890's school house that was now being renovated into a family home and he was allowed to live in what used to be the school kitchen. His room, when he showed us, was absolutely covered in dolls. A wall was lined with books about dolls and he had hand carved at least 10 dolls out of wood and had painted them with that terrifyingly blank stare of a horror movie porcelain doll. Then, to make things even more meta, he had painted portraits of all the dolls he had carved and those were adorning the walls. Paint and fabric and paint brushes and wood shavings lay all over. "I didn't always make dolls," he told us, "I played the bagpipes for 11 years prior." Oh. 

So later that night as I lay awake in the empty field I realized that Matthew was pretty creepy and he knew where we were sleeping. I spent the night watching my pocket knife and flinching at every crunch of a leaf made by a grazing mouse. 

So, like I said, I'm very happy not to be murdered today. 

Tasmania is very old. And minimally changed compared with the rest of "Mainland" Australia when it comes to infrastructure and technology. The people here are called everything from old-fashioned to red necks. The economy is sustaining itself on farming, mining for metals and logging - all of which require the cutting down of pristine gum tree rainforest and native animal habitat. The contrast between the generations-old, remote mining communities and the newer, hipper more environmentally conscious is much like that of the American debate between building pipelines and drilling for oil. It's a battle between preservation and livelihood. Hard to say who's winning. 

 

In general, we have found cycle touring to be incredibly easy and that it requires almost no planning. Wearing the same clothes every day, abstaining from showers, finding lodging and food has all been, overall, really simple. The one exception had been Good Friday, which unlike in the USA, is a bigger holiday than Christmas day and shops, supermarkets and cafes are closed and everyone is home from work - so good luck finding groceries on this day. The Easter holiday for school children is two weeks compared to just one over Christmas holiday. Considering the US is such a Christian county, Australians have been surprised to find out from us that Good Friday typically slips by without much of a mention and certainly without any national holiday recognition. 

At the halfway point of our loop of Tassie, we have seen the mountainous, lush, remote rainforest side of the country in the West coast and are now creeping toward the beachy flat dunes of the East Coast. We have seen more roadkill than I've ever seen in my life and for those of you playing wildlife bingo at home we've seen wombats, wallabies, kookaburras, echidnas and more. The birds here have the most unique and jarring calls I've ever heard and I cannot wait to see what lies ahead on the second half of our ride!

 

 

What is this thing you call "Big City"?

Bill and I have never been on a vacation to a city. We have briefly passed through Los Angeles or SF or Minneapolis on our way to somewhere else more remote but we've never actually stopped and stayed put in one place for more than a few days. The closest thing I can think of is when we spent 3 days in New Orleans a year ago. Aside from that, and the hand full of brief interludes with Portland or Boston or Vancouver the idea of purposefully going to a large congested city was nearly as interesting to me as huffing paint fumes or drinking curdled milk. Unequivocally uninteresting, nay, revolting - and not worth my time. 

But then we came to Sydney. And we stayed 8 days in that same city. And it turns out Sydney is not like paint fumes or old milk at all! In fact Sydney is like perfectly creamy Camembert and salty breezes and and like the frenetic energy and simultaneous order of a disrupted ant hill. And actually, we have thoroughly enjoyed the cultural and urban discoveries of this big city. 

Below: the view from our neighborhood in Kirribilli. 

 

Bill and I had such a seamless passing through the Australian airport and customs that I might actually worry for their national security. Nobody even stamped my passport and we were through getting our visas, bags and on the train 40 minutes after landing. I didn't even have time to get hungry or grumpy. 

Our love affair with Sydney's culinary bastion of excellence began with a Lebanese spinach and feta pouch purchased at an airport kiosk. This piece of perfectly risen bread with impeccably salted and golden exterior was better than 90% of the food we had eaten in New Zealand. It may have been 15 minutes after this interlude with Sydney airport food that we decided our prior budget of $60/day would have to go for our week in Sydney as we were going to need at least double that to eat our way through one of the most diverse and fabulous food scenes in the world. 

Our host in Sydney is Philip, the same generous man who, along with his life partner, Judith, hosted us in Wanaka a month prior. When they heard we were headed to Sydney they casually asked "Oh, we have a flat there with an extra room.  You would like to stay there would you?" To which Bill and I telepathically instructed the other to maintain thencoolest of countanences and not let on that inside we were wiggling with the excitement of a 4 year old with a piñata and agreed that, yes, that would work just nicely. 

Philip and Judith, are likely the most well-read ,brilliant, high class, city-dwelling adventure junkies I will ever meet. They are simultaneously planning trips to walk through Africa with elephants and bike through Nepal while giving university grade personal lessons on oyster shucking and wine tasting as well as historical lessons on bird conservation strategies post-cyclone and how sailors learned to calculate latitude and the intracasies of coal mining in Australia and its impact on global warming. I actually had to tell Philip at one point that I wasn't paying attention anymore because my brain was too tired from learning new things. 

Anyway, Philip and Judith made some fantastic recommendations on food and drink and we were not disappointed. He also contacted his local fisherman connection and acquired 48 un-shucked Sydney Harbor oysters for us to have with a nice dry Reisling on one night. He is a class act. 

We rented bicycles for the week and used them to explore a handful of Sydney's many sprawling suburbs.

We biked through beach towns without pretense. Through business districts with stock market suit wearing execs having a pint at noon and over bridges with jog-commuters (now you've got nothing to brag about bike-commuters) who run to and from work with a backpack and business suit hanging from the pack with a carabiner. We biked through ferry terminals and touristy wharfs with over priced fish and chips and happy hour drinks. We visited old Victorian neighborhoods with newly decorated graffiti art walls and hipsters who look like the Allman brothers and Amy Winehouse at the same time. Through old tight knit communities in the blue mountains and through scuzzy industrial train track riddled wharehouse districts.  

 

 

All the while sampling local beers and coffee, tapas, cheeses, Chinese yum cha, seafood, veggie bowls and breakfast eggs poached in balsamic reduction, local wines and old fashioneds. Nothing was disappointing. Everything was fabulous. 

There's an alluring energy to big cities and I'm starting to understand it. At any given time there are people moving by foot or bike or motorcycle, by Uber or bus or car or train or taxi, by ferry or sailboat or cruise ship. People swimming or jogging or roller skating or playing frisbee or volleyball or surfing or kite surfing. There is no shortage of a physical energy transfer between the city and its people. Though I still think I prefer the imaculate stillness of a snow covered tundra, there is no denying that a city carries in it an organism of living and breathing exchange between its inhabitants which is so intriguing as to make you want to stay and get wrapped in it for a while. 

 

The newness of it all and the pleasant marital harmony we've been enjoying have made for a really lovely stay-cation if you will. A nice break from the constant traveling mantra we've had the last 3 months. It's been so comfortable to spent a rainy day inside the flat and not worry about where we ought to be off to next. 

Speaking of, we fly to Hobart, Tasmania tomorrow morning. We will not have a vehicle so transport will be by bus or bicycle. Plans are still being formed but the resumption of the new-day-new-city way of life beckons and we must follow our instincts into the next big city-less adventure.