Southwest National Park

After a few days in NE Tassie, we drove back down to Hobart, the largest city in Tassie and the second oldest state capital in Australia. As a local resident put it, Hobart is old, but doesn't have a lot of money like Melbourne or Perth, so nothing has been rebuilt, only repaired. Therefore, much looks the same as it did before. It is also the gateway for scientific explorations to Antarctica! How cool is that! We had some nice views on our 2-hour drive back, lots of sheep grazing land, forests etc. 

Also on the drive back, we passed the "Spiky Bridge" which was made by prisoners back when Tassie was first colonized. When the colony needed infrastructure built, the prisoners did it. Not sure why they made the bridge spiky as it looks a bit creepy now, but there you go. FYI, the bridge is not a part of the main highway. 

We arrived in Hobart and went to our airbnb house where we were renting a bedroom from a super nice lady. The house was old, creaky, drafty, and covered in art (as the lady is a painter!), and it was wonderful, full of charm you just can't find in a new home nowadays. Several funny things happened in this house though. First, the lady was a vegetarian, and she didn't allow any meat in the house at all. Drew and I didn't realize this until after we had unloaded our chilly bin full of brats and lunch meat into her refrigerator. Even her dog started sniffing us extensively. Gulp. So that night for dinner, we went to a park and had a picnic, to rid ourselves of the evidence. We never spoke of it again, but I think she knew of our indiscretions, and the dog knew for sure. 

Another funny experience. One charming part of having an old house is the abundance of fire places, and our bedroom was no exception. Well, the second morning there, a bird actually flew down the chimney and woke us by flying in circles around the room. Luckily the window didn't have a screen, so one quick lift and the bird feverishly sought his escape, but he may have left a few feathers behind. 

On our first full day in Hobart, we took a drive to the mountains in the SW section of Tassie called Southwest National Park.  I know, I know, the creativity is very evident here. Not sure if we were so gung-ho because we wanted a taste of CO, but it was a rainy day, we knew it was a rainy day, we knew it was likely to be rainier where we were going, but we drove anyways. The end result was a lot of mountains we could sometimes, sort of see, but I think we enjoyed it anyways. 

This is what the area would have looked like had it been sunny and had we been able to do a hike we originally planned on doing. Next time. 

The drive culminated at Lake Pedder and Lake Gordon, two man-made lakes used to create hydro-electricity. We stopped at the "Lake Pedder Chalet" which turned out to be the most old-school motel and lounge you can imagine. We had a chai to warm up, while the two workers (who were the only other people there) cleaned the bottoms of the restaurant chairs. We looked out the lounge window at the dreary weather, sipped our chais, and stumbled over questions from the 1974 Trivial Pursuit. While it may have been one of the most anti-climatic parts of our trip, it is also one of the parts I will remember most fondly.