Tasmania - day 1

6 Dec 2019

In June 2018, I declared Gold Coast my favourite Aussie holiday destination. That is no longer true. Not after Tasmania.

It was some time during the middle of the holiday that I turned to Viv and asked, "How on earth did you think of Tasmania?" It was not something I'd thought of. Usually, he picks a place and then I check the weather (once burned -- quite literally so -- by Perth's summer, twice shy) and then I do all the 'what to do and where to go and where to eat', and he does the trip route and bookings.

"I was watching a cricket match and it was in Hobart and it looked nice." He said. Whaaaaat. He had picked a road trip destination because he saw a cricket match and the place looked "nice"?? And here I thought he'd picked it because we had covered pretty much all of mainland Australia and this little island state was the only place remaining. Oh well, all I have to say is that it was a gamble that paid off very, very well.

Viv was already in Melbourne on work, so Xena and I took a night flight on 6 December 2019 to join him there before we all flew off to Hobart.


Usually, Xena picks one toy to accompany us on our road trips, but this time she couldn't choose between Tiru (short for Tiramisu, based on the colours of his fur), Chirp (the owl) and Pipin (unidentified animal) so I let her take all three, even though her carry-on was completely stuffed with the stuffed animals.


The only time Xena gets to watch movies by herself is in flights, and she chose Frozen (the first one). Singapore Airlines is our favourite for many reasons, and for her, this takes the top spot.


Her review of the movie


Two gals hanging out in mid-air with their drinks

We landed in Melbourne on the morning of 7 Dec. Viv had wrapped up his work and met us at the airport. In a few hours, we were on a Jetstar flight to Hobart, the capital of Tasmania.

The flight was about 1.5 hours long.


As soon as we stepped out of the plane and walked to the airport, we were slapped hard by the cold wind. When doing my research, I had checked the average temperature and it was supposed to be around 15-20. Perfect, I'd thought, not realising that the 30-degree Singapore weather makes us Singaporeans incapable of handling anything less than 20 degrees.

"This is the southern hemisphere, isn't it?" I asked Viv, just to be sure. "This is supposed to be summer?" He laughed and nodded as the wind slapped me again and said, Summer chahiye??? Yeh lo summer!"

Xena was initially very excited about the cold weather. As soon as she stepped out of the plane, she declared, “I love this, this is my home, I’ll live here forever!” However, after some time, she was also going "Brrrr" like me.


This looked eerily like someone's stranded/abandoned trolley and baggage, but it was actually part of the airport's decor -- complete with Tasmanian devils!


We had told Xena that we would encounter plenty of wildlife in Tasmania, but none of us had imagined the extent!


Here she is, pretending to be a kangaroo.

We picked up our rental car from the airport and set off!


Xena's all set in her car seat.

Seeing her in the car seat immediately reminded me of our very first road trip in Australia when she was about 8 months old. I quickly made a collage to capture the contrast.



Whenever we take a road trip, Xena names the rental car. The first name she ever gave a car was an obvious one - Cary (pronounced car-ee). She named this car Sparkle based on its silvery colour. 

When we were booking places, I'd found this farmstay with horses, ponies, chickens and geese that we knew would be perfect for Xena. Our hostess had sent us directions, remembering to point out that someone had changed the sign to make it 'Alien's road' instead of 'Allen's road'! Well done, witty vandal!


Our first wildlife encounter -- a wallaby that popped by (hopped by?) to say hi!

It was a pretty little house and there was a sign outside the house with our names, welcoming us. Our hostess and her cat came by to check if everything was all right and I told her (the hostess, not the cat) that it was, except that we were kinda sorta freezing. She was kind enough to give us electric blanket, a concept that totally blew Xena away. She immediately declared that she was going to spend the entire holiday in that blanket.

Our hostess told us how to find the bird feed containers and also gave us some carrots to feed the horses. At the thought of feeding animals, Xena immediately abandoned the electric blanket and jumped out. There was a pony and a bigger horse hanging out near the bird feed containers, but they seemed to be guarding the containers with a vengeance. So one of us would have to distract them, while the other would try to get the food.


Finally, we managed to get our hands on some of the grains and fed these gorgeous birds and their babies.

Feeding the horses was a different ball game altogether because their teeth looked very um, "capable" and neither Xena nor I were brave enough to risk having our fingers get mistaken for carrots. So we brought in the big gun -- Viv!


Viv fearlessly fed the horse...


...giving Xena (but not me!) the courage to try it out.

Soon, it got too cold for us to remain outside so we said bye to the animals and headed indoors. Viv had a ton of laundry to do because he'd been in Melbourne for a whole week so we drove to Kingston, where the nearest laundromat was. It was too early for dinner so we hung out and read celebrity gossip magazines till the clothes were done.


Outside the laundromat

Next to the laundromat was a Hungry Jack’s, which I was really excited to see. I had discovered and fallen in love with their veggie burger and frozen Coke during our Melbourne-Sydney-Brisbane road trip in 2013.

I was therefore, heartbroken to see that they no longer had the the original veggie burger. Instead, they have some vegan options now, which didn't appeal all that much to me.


Xena enjoying her hot chocolate on a cold summer's day

We wrapped up early enough, so we could get some good rest (thanks to SQ's inflight entertainment, I had barely slept in the flight) before starting our holiday proper!

Click here for day 2 -- hand-feeding kangaroos at Bonorong!