Around noon today, I set out from Hobart to achieve my main mission: arrive at Burnie by 6pm. This involved a 325km (about 200 mile) drive straight through the center of Tasmania, from the southeast corner to the northwest corner.
This would be around a three-hour drive on a straight-up highway, but it takes a bit longer because the roads in the center of the country, while nicely paved, are definitely high-attention driving. Not many folks live in the center of the country, and the terrain is Appalachia-style hilly. The every 10 seconds, the road will abruptly turn. The speed limit is anywhere form “you figure it out” to hairpin turns that say “for the love of god slow down to 15kph”. The roads have no shoulders, and I presume everything beyond the asphalt is filled with venomous snakes and ants. I didn’t see a single petrol station between Hobart and the northern coast (over 100 miles). Judging from the volume of roadkill, the nocturnal animals (wombats? wallabies? possums?) must make the road extra treacherous at night. I definitely wouldn’t want to be driving the route in inclement weather, either. But today was bright and warm and sunny and an absolutely wonderful day for a long, curvy drive.
The southern end of Tasmania’s heartland is a steppe: low, rolling hills covered in amber grasses, punctuated by occasional wind-gnarled trees. Sometimes a few cows or sheep graze in the distance. Rarely, a farmhouse made out of sheet metal appears. At one point, I saw electrical line towers just laying on their sides in the middle of a field.
As I journeyed north, the hills got taller and rougher, covered in trees that grew straight up and not outward, and growing so densely that you couldn’t possibly walk into the forest. There are creeks and reservoirs and, in one instance, even a “rivulet”. (When was the last time you saw a rivulet?)
Eventually, the winding roads give way to a highway at the north end of the island, and suddenly there are towns and petrol stations again. The ocean laps up on long beaches in front of black rocks.
The entire drive took my full concentration. Aside from focusing on the ever-changing road and landscape, I also had a good four hours to sit with my budding ability for driving on the left side of the road. I’ve started to become more comfortable with it, even though oncoming traffic on the right still kind of freaks me out. I also turned on the windshield wipers instead of the turn signal a couple dozen times. However, turning into the correct lane seems to be going okay, which is perhaps the most important thing.
Thus, I arrived in Burnie unscathed at around 5pm, one hour before the front desk of my hotel shut down for the night. Success! And they gave me a lovely room with an ocean view!
And then I rewarded myself with dinner at a place called the Rialto, which was a block away. I drank good wine, ate good seafood pasta, and absolutely devoured a phenomenal sticky date pudding.
Sadly, I don’t really have any photos of my cross-island odyssey. As I said above, the road had no shoulder, and since it was also full of sudden turns and hidden surprises, a stop along the roadside would have been asking for an accident. However, I did find one turnout with an overlook and some space to stretch my legs. This is where I remembered to take a photo of my trusty Tasmanian companion, this blue Toyota Yaris:
