3 weeks in Tasmania (March 2019)

Cradle Mountain, 3 weeks in Tasmania — Cradle Mountain, Tasmania

Why Tasmania ?

To celebrate our 50th birthdays, Koen and I flew to the – near – end of the world (at least it felt like that for us Belgians). We had 3 weeks to discover the smallest state of Australia. 3 Weeks seem a lot, but actually it is not if you want to see a considerable part of the island.

I had vowed, never to fly that far again since with the years, those long flights were anything but pleasant. But the nature, the animals, the walks and not to forget the island as a foodie paradise were simply irresistible. The more I read about the little jewel, the more difficult it became to keep my enthusiasm in check. I crossed my fingers that the trip would meet all my expectations and those expectations were veryyyyy high !

The planning of our 3 weeks in Tasmania

After months of research and preparation, we developed a tight plan to explore Tassie by car and through walks. Koen was, as always, the driver and I was in charge of the directions. lucky for him, there were not that many roads because even with a gps system, I can easily end up in the middle of nowhere..

Our passports were put in order and we took care of the e-visa. A medium sized car, perfect for our needs, was rented through Europcar after having ensured ourselves that we were allowed to take the car on the ferry for Bruny Island. Apparently, some of the car rental companies did not allow that.

We arranged our accommodation in advance since in some more remote area’s the choice was limited. It were mostly self-catering options and this turned out to be a good choice. However, in some places that we visited there were no supermarkets, so a little bit of upfront planning was needed.

We had to prepare ourselves for all seasons… even during the same day. Packing our bags turned out to be a real challenge!

Our Journey

Fully prepared, we started our journey….

We traveled from Brussels airport via Bangkok to Melbourne were we spent the night before continuing the next day our journey to Hobart. Lucky for us, Thai Airways flew again since the airspace above Pakistan had been closed during the previous 2 days. We learned that the flight path had been modified so the duration of our first flight was extended by 2 hours.

In Bangkok, we ran as fast as we could to the other side of the airport for the security check. Then we had to run back to the other side of the building for catching our connecting flight to Melbourne. Completely exhausted, we found out that the flight had actually been delayed with 2 hours. We informed our motel that we would be late for the check in, so we were over the moon when they messaged us back that they would leave our room open with the key at the back. Yihaa, we were not spending the night at the airport!