Farewell Tasmania; Hello Malaysia

We completed our 3-week lap of Tasmania and came away seriously impressed. What an amazing destination! Despite taking our time, we still could have spent more time soaking up the beautiful scenery. Compared with our 6-week stay in Australia last year, we think Tassie offers everything the mainland has  . . .except Koalas and the Great Barrier Reef (two of my favorites). Nonetheless, you can see and enjoy almost everything else on offer in a more compact location.

Our list of favorite things would include the wine – we visited 14 wineries and tasted a large variety of wines, in addition to trying others while dining out. The pinots were terrific, and the sparkling wines were a nice surprise. The best winery undoubtedly was Glaetzer-Dixon.

Of course, the wildlife was a highlight. How could it not be? I really loved the wombats!

And the landscape is remarkable.

During our trip, the New York Times included Tassie on its 52 Places to Go list for 2024, which we expect will drive increased tourism there. So, we’re glad we made it before that happened!

In addition, while we were in Tasmania, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark abdicated, and her son’s Australian commoner wife, Mary, is now queen. But she’s not just any Australian, she’s Tasmanian! (From a suburb of Hobart.) Imagine all the hoopla this created. We didn’t see that many Danish flags while in Denmark! Some Tasmanians we met even referred to her as “our queen.”

Finally, while we knew that Australia had boldly enacted gun control laws in response to a tragic shooting in the 1990's, we didn’t recall the specific details. It turns out that the massacre occurred at the Port Arthur Historic Site in 1996 – the perpetrator killed 35 and wounded 23. Shortly thereafter the government restricted private gun ownership severely and never looked back. It was very chilling that one of the most famous tourism sites includes a memorial to such a horrible event. But at least the Aussies did something, rather than offering “thoughts and prayers.”

From Tasmania we moved onto Malaysia, arriving a day later than expected due to a flight delay and consequent missed connection.

Why Malaysia? We wanted to continue traveling a bit while we were so far from home again, which gave us an opportunity to explore another Asian country in depth. Malaysia has a good reputation for great food and diverse sites. What more do you need? Plus, the fact that it is majority Muslim was intriguing to us. We decided to go to the mainland peninsula (as opposed to the Borneo Island part) where the weather would be drier in the time we had.

Here are our first impressions of Malaysia. The heat and humidity are oppressive. We had forgotten how difficult this can be. Thank goodness for air conditioning! The people are friendly and diverse. You see many Malay Muslim women wearing hijabs, along with a significant number of Chinese, and a smaller number of Indians. Many languages are in use, but English is highly prevalent. While the sidewalks are better than Vietnam, in some places they are non-existent, or the curbs are very high. This is due to the amount of rain and the necessary related drainage needed. Thus, walking is challenging.

The Malaysian flag is similar to the US flag: it has 14 red and white stripes, and the upper left corner is blue, with a yellow crescent and 14-point star. The flag is displayed in many places, like in the US. At first, we thought we were seeing the US flag, but our brains adjusted quickly. The 14 stripes and points signify the 14 states in the country.

Kuala Lumpur, where we started our journey, is known for tall towers, with more being built all the time. While you can pay to go up in the various buildings, we’ve never seen the appeal of this opportunity. Still here’s a day and night shot of the Petronas Towers – the tallest twin towers in the world (88 floors), but no longer the tallest building(s).

More from Malaysia soon,

Shana & Jeff

Last Stop: The Tasman Peninsula

We finally made it to the Tasman Peninsula in the very southeast corner of the state, and only about 50 miles from Hobart Airport from which we would eventually depart Tasmania.

The Penninsula is another beautiful area where we hiked along the coast with amazing views and had another chance encounter with our funky friend the Echidna.

We visited the "Tessellated Pavement," which is a naturally occuring rock formation where the rocks look like tiles laid right along the ocean, and later climbed down to the Remarkable Cave.

But all of that natural beauty is not even the star attraction on the peninsula. The main reason to visit is Port Arthur, which was the largest prison in Tasmania during the 19th century. The Port Arthur site is huge (about 100 acres), and it is well preserved compared to a lot of the prisons we saw. In some ways, it is better to think of it as a convict settlement rather than a prison. From its opening in 1830 until it was closed at the end of the 1870's, Port Arthur acted as a secondary penal site, meaning that convicts were generally not sent directly there, but were transferred there from other prison situations if they offended while in custody. 

At Port Arthur, the prisoners were forced to work in many industries including timber collection and boat building.

Of course, the conditions were terrible, and prisoners attempted to escape. We took a tour that showed us a bit of the site while telling us some of the wild escape stories. In many cases, prisoners got away from the site, but ended up back at the prison because they could not survive in the wilderness. And, while there were some successful escapes, they were definitely few and far between.

For us, the most interesting part of the visit was learning about the Separate Prison, and the mid-19th century debate about the proper way to punish and rehabilitate prisoners. In the early days of Port Arthur, the prisoners were given hard work and religion (of course) while being locked up at night. The Separate Prison was built later, and was what we would consider a supermax prison where prisoners spent 23 hours a day in their respective cells, in silence without any human contact (still with religion though). It was particularly interesting to learn that shortly after the Separate Prison opened, the people had already started to note the extreme psychological impact of such punishment on some prisoners. Amazing that we still use this form of punishment more than 150 years later!

After our visit to Port Arthur, we returned to Hobart for an excellent birthday dinner for me, and to fly on to our next destination, Malaysia. More on that in the next post, but first, just one more photo from Tasmania: Shana among the lavender at a lavender farm where we had lunch.

More to come soon.

Jeff and Shana

Maria(h) Island: A Perfect Blend of Geology, Wildlife and History

When planning our Tasmania itinerary, I set aside a day to visit Maria Island, known for its natural beauty and wildlife. We decided to take a full day tour run by a small, local operator. Sometimes it’s nice to let someone else do the driving and make the decisions. Plus, the cruise option would allow us to see more of the island’s landscape.

The first thing to know is that it’s “Mariah” (as in Carey) Island, even though it is spelled like Maria (as in “How do you solve a problem like . . .”). Why? Because Tasmanians like to be different. Seriously, that’s the explanation for a lot of things on Tassie.

Due to rough seas, we did not get to circumnavigate the island as planned. Still, we learned a ton from Michael and Zoe (captain and guide). We started with a geology lesson, which included lots of details. I won't lie, to me it's mostly pretty rocks. It did remind us of what we’ve learned from visiting the Basque Coast Geopark -- the terrain is unique and unusual.

In one photo you can see a sea cave we entered, which was filled with small fossils. We also saw some napping seals.

We got off at Darlington harbor, where we learned about the island’s convict and industrial history. A penal colony was established in 1825 but was abandoned in 1832, with the establishment of Port Arther (next post!). It was resurrected in 1842 for another 8 years. Later, an Italian entrepreneur, Diego Bernacchi, leased the island from the government and created a settlement that included farming and tourism, and then became a center for concrete manufacture (using the island’s limestone). In 1972 the island became a national park. Several historical buildings remain.

While I enjoy history, I was more excited about the island’s wildlife – most of which is not native but was “imported.” We finally saw a bandicoot, a marsupial rodent that had eluded us back in Hobart. There were pademelons and wallabies, of course.

But the star of our visit was the wombat, who are like little fuzzy tanks. They are too busy grazing to pay much attention to their human paparazzi.

Our last stop was a seaside view of the Painted Cliffs, a stunning natural sandstone formation along the island’s west side.

All in all, it was a lovely and memorable day.

Almost done with Tasmania! 

Shana & Jeff

The Beauty of the East Coast

We arrived on the east coast of Tasmania after our "rainy day off" in Branxholm, and the weather was glorious. Our first stop was the Bay of Fires, so named for the many aboriginal fires spotted by a French explorer in 1773, and not for the orange-colored lichen that covers many of the rocks there.

Pretty much the whole area was completely spectacular. It was hard to drive along the coast because I wanted to stop and look at every viewpoint.

We did stop on one beach and Shana got her feet wet (you can't tell from the photo, but the sand on the beach is white, which makes everything even more beautiful).

We spent the next three nights in Swansea, in a little beach cottage with a view of the ocean. We used Swansea as a base to do two major things: visit Bicheno, a beautiful town that was a big whaling center in the 19th century, and hike in Freycinet National Park. Although, of course, we also did a bit of wine tasting.

Our visit to Bicheno was lovely. We hiked up to a couple of viewpoints that gave us an overview of the town and its surroundings. This one is known as Whaler's Lookout because it was used to spot whales near the coast (mostly by Aboriginal women who were known to have keen eyesight).

After hiking back down, we followed the Foreshore Walking Path around the town along the coast. Our first stop on the path was the blowhole, which did not disappoint.

It was fun watching kids (and adults) try to get close to the spray of water but without getting wet or, in the case of one kid we watched, having a great time getting soaked.

The rest of our walk was just as beautiful, if a bit less explosive, and included a delicious lunch at The Lobster Shack, a local institution.

The next day, we got out early to drive to Freycinet National Park for an 11 km hike. We wanted to start early to avoid the worst of the heat. And, it turned out, starting early also allowed us to avoid the massive crowds that arrive later to do the first part of the trail we did.

The trail starts with a hike up to an overlook of Wineglass Bay, a beautiful bay that can only be approached on foot or by boat. First, however, on the way up you get a view of Coles Bay, on the other side of the penninsula.

Then we hiked down about 1000 steps to Wineglass Bay, which has another beautiful white-sand beach.

The hike continued accross a narrow isthmus to a beach on Coles Bay and along the water through often rocky terraine until we returned to our starting point.

It was a stunning hike. We were glad we started early and finished before 1 pm because it was really getting hot. We celebrated by going to a nearby oyster farm for lunch, where I enjoyed some of the crop, and we shared a lovely cooked fish and even lovelier bottle of Riesling from our favorite Tasmanian winery (Glaetzer-Dixon, in case you're wondering).

The next day, we drove south from Swansea to a little town from which we would do our tour of Maria Island (more about that in the next post). Once again, and we hope this is not getting too boring, the drive was along a beautiful coastline providing several scenic stops.

In particular, the view from Mayfield Estate Winery, where we did a tasting, was unsurpassed. Definitely the best wine-tasting view we have ever had.

More from Tasmania soon,

Jeff and Shana