January 2012

Cataract Gorge in Launceston. Photo by David Lansing.

Friday I told you about Joe, our shuttle driver (and all the wallaby roadkill). Big, bald, stocky bloke who speaks in a strange Tassie accent that even the other Aussies have a hard time understanding. Cheerful fellow. But, oddly enough for a bus driver, he seems to have trouble with directions. He keeps saying things like, “If you look out at the right you’ll see the Great Western Tiers (except he says “Great Weste’n Tees”) but the thing is, the craggy peaks are actually on our left. And this isn’t a one time thing. Over and over again he tells us to look right when we should be looking left. Or vice versa. In fact, we all start getting so used to his misdirections that we just automatically look in the opposite direction from what he tells us. There must be a medical term for this but I don’t know what it is.

Anyway, I’m not saying this to belittle Joe; everyone on the bus quite likes him, including me, and, as I say, he couldn’t be more pleasant. I mention it only because Joe has told us that we’re going to “the striking wilderness of the Cataract Gorge” but he’s steering the bus through an impressive suburban neighborhood, called Trevallyn, of large, lovely hillside homes just minutes from Launceston’s city center and I think we’re all wondering just where in the world Joe thinks he’s taking us. And then suddenly we top a rise, park beneath some shady gum trees, and there before us is a deep-green swimming hole rimmed with giant boulders from which any number of Tassie Huck Finns are diving and a delicate suspension bridge spanning the tumbling white waters of the South Esk River: Cataract Gorge.

We walk through the trees along a trail leading to a pale blue pool, fed by the clear, clean waters, in the middle of a bright green lawn, and rugged hiking trails that lead through the bushland and along the cliffs up the gorge, and even a chairlift (the world’s longest single-span chair, Joe says) that crosses over the basin pond and up the mountain.  Practically right in the middle of the second largest city in Tasmania. Stunning.  Just take a look at this photo, which I shot from the middle of the Alexandra Suspension Bridge, and look to the right (my right, not Joe’s right) where you’ll see the outline of the spring-fed pool in the middle of the lawn (no charge for a swim here!) and you’ll spot a couple of big trees beyond that. Take the path through those trees and literally in two minutes you’d be in an upscale residential neighborhood and in five minutes you’d come across a fish & chips shop and a pretty good Italian restaurant. Where else in the world are you going to find something like that?

A field of opium poppies in Tasmania.

We’ve got the greatest bus driver taking us around the Tamar Valley. His name is Joe and he talks non-stop although I only understand about half of what he’s saying. He’ll slow the bus and point at some green rolling hills in the distance and yak away for a few minutes. Maybe he’s talking about the blue wattle trees or a red-tail hawk floating in the currents or the white poppies growing in the field (there are a lot of opium poppy fields in Tasmania, grown for the pharmaceutical industry, and the flowers, just now coming into bloom, look spectacular). It doesn’t matter; it’s just fun listening to Joe go on about whatever it is that interests him.

I asked Joe about all the roadkill I’ve been seeing. It doesn’t look like any roadkill I’m used to seeing in the states. This stuff is all the size of a cocker spaniel and has a dark, shiny coat and a long, pointy tail. “Itz wallaby, itn’t it,” said Joe. Really? From where the ship is docked at Beauty Point to the little town of Chudleigh, where we visited a honey farm, I’d counted 26 roadkills. Certainly they couldn’t all be wallabies.

“Not, not all,” Joe told me. “Might be one or two rabbits in the mix.”

The thing is, most of the roadkill looks quite fresh. Like from last night. As cute as they are, you won’t find too many Tassies feeling bad about smacking into a wallaby. “They’re pests,” says Joe. “Large rats.”

Still, it makes me a bit queasy. Especially when the roadkill is a young joey. And if I’m spotting a wallaby roadkill just about every mile or so on the road, that must mean there are tens of thousands of them out there in the bush. Either that or they’re very unlucky crossing the road.

Gary Willis at the Chromy luncheon. Photo by David Lansing.

See the beefy bloke holding up the platter of savory tucker (after a couple of days in Tasmania you can’t help but start speaking like an Aussie)? That’s Gary Willis. Gary is a Tassie chocolatier (in fact, I’m munching on some of his salted caramel chocolate as I write this, thank you very much, Gary) who is one of the guest lecturers on the Orion. Yesterday we shuttled off to the Josef Chromy winery in the Tamar Valley to sip some lovely Tasmanian wines (I asked for second helpings of their stunning sparkling wine). Afterwards the winery hosted us to lunch. That was nice, don’t you think? And they didn’t just hand us a turkey sandwich or something (although that would have been fine). Instead they brought out these platters of meats and cheeses and pates and such. There was smoked quail and wedges of local blue cheese and dishes of olives and four or five different charcuterie. That’s the platter Gary is holding up. We were meant to share it. But here’s the thing: Gary doesn’t eat meat (you’d never know it looking at those beefy arms, would you?). So he was giving the entire platter to me. Do you believe it?

Not that Gary went hungry. When he told the waitress he couldn’t eat most of what was on the platter (he did slice off some of the lovely cheese and speared an olive or two), she went back into the kitchen and a few minutes later came out with a gorgeous plate of grilled garfish and white beans as well as a big salad. Gary was quite happy. But not as happy, I think, as I was.

The Anvers chocolate factory. Photo by David Lansing.

The rain has stopped; the sky is bluer than I can describe (Tasmania has air so clean it is used as the baseline to measure particle emissions almost everywhere else in the world), and we’re off on our first little expedition today, a somewhat circular route around the northeast end of Tasmania with stops at a chocolate shop, a cheese farm, and a honey producer before lunch at one of the island’s most famous wineries, Joseph Chromy. The only thing that could possibly make the day better is if Miss Lobke could accompany us, but it seems femme maitre d’s have things to do even when there are no passengers on board. Pity, that.

So we’re divided into two groups of about 30 each and escorted to two buses idling next to the entrance to Seahorse World (some of us—okay, me—sneering at the short and stout OFFICIAL SECURITY officer grimly staring at us as we file past) and off we go traipsing through the Irish-looking rolling green hills of the Tamar Valley (fields of just-mown hay, fat sheep, nursing cows, with copses of black wattle and gum trees) to Anvers where a Belgian named Igor Van Gerwen, who moved to Tasmania in 1989 to start up a little cottage confectionary—sort of like a Tassie Willie Wonka—makes truffles and fudge and all kinds of sweets, all made with rich Tasmanian cream and butter. There are only two problems with our little tour: One, there is no one there actually making chocolates, and, two, somebody forgot to let Igor and his staff know we were coming so the two lovely ladies working the counter and the cottage café are more than a bit surprised when 60 cruisers come in, most wanting a cup of tea or, in my case, some rich hot chocolate. “Oh, dear!” says the startled woman when we come in the door. “Oh, dear, dear, dear.”

Nonetheless, the ladies do a fine job taking orders, selling truffles, and bring out  cup after cup of hot chocolate to the rustic wooden tables out in the exquisite garden with blooming roses and Monet irises and many more vibrantly-colored flowers that I’ve never seen before. It takes a while for everyone to get served and pay for their bag of truffles but no one seems to mind; we’re on holiday, in early January (which is the start of summer here in the Southern hemisphere), and the weather is as delicious as Igor’s chocolates.