I realize I’ve been off the grid concerning this site lately. I’m sorry about this to those of you who care, but I promise it’s been for a good reason. Two and a bit months ago, December 2nd, I arrived in Tasmania: a place I’d always wanted to go to. I’d had mixed feelings about the rest of the places in Australia that I’d been, but Tassie hit me hard and full-on. The streets of Hobart are quaint and the mountains surrounding the city give the vibe of great green protectors.
Almost every Aussie that I met slagged Tassie off hard, and to this day everything they said couldn’t be further from the truth. When push comes to shove, Tasmania was definitely my favorite place that I’ve ever lived. Here’s a few reasons why.
It’s got it’s own fascinating place in history, especially of the criminal sort.
The nature is out of this world. Tasmania was voted as the 4th most beautiful island in the world by Travel and Leisure Magazine and it’s pretty easy to see why once you’re there. Even the most amazing photos don’t do the breathtaking views justice.
Most of these views are achieved after wicked hikes ranging from fairly easy to ass-kicking hard.
The beaches are even better than the ones on “mainland” Oz- can you spot another person? No? Exactly.
They’ve got a much better grasp on creating fresh, unique, and tasty food than any other place that I went in Australia. The tiny Local Pizza Tasmania shop outside of Hobart claims the fame for this white sauce, parmesan, pea, asparagus, mint, and lemon speciality.
The animals are pretty sweet, too. While hiking, I found an echidna who’s hiding its face from me. I even saw the elusive duck-billed platypus, but no photo could do that magical experience justice.
The Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary has saved loads of animals, as well. Tasmania is unfortunately the state with the highest amount of roadkill. However, the folks over there are often brought the young offspring of killed marsupial mothers and are able to eventually reintroduce them to the wild.
Sadly, my laptop’s disk drive crashed and I lost many of my photos. Looks like you’ll just have to make due with these or, better yet, go check it out for yourself!
It’s good that you’ve enjoyed Tassie but I feel mainland Aussie deserves a bit better . You haven’t seen the south of Australia, the Center and most of the east coast. There are some pretty amazing places and can be quite isolated. I guess I hope you give the rest of Australia a go before the final verdict is in. In saying this, Tassie is one place we haven’t been and are hoping to go one day and spend a lot of time.
I’m sure that those places in Australia are also lovely. I spent most of my visa working in places with the highest wages (WA and NT) so I didn’t have enough time to travel around extensively as Americans only get a single year. Although the East Coast is meant to be extremely beautiful, I opted out of going here as I wasn’t really into the group tours/young party culture that I’ve heard so much about. It’s just a personal preference, but every country has too many great places to see in just a single year!