It is not possible to continue further south by train so we traveled to Tasmania by ferry. I don’t know if it is customary to wear a minimum amount of clothing while crossing the Bass’ strait, but we had no problem meeting the requirements.
We went to Tasmania to visit my wonderful aunt Maggan!! She has lived in Australia for over 40 years, and hitchhiked pretty much all the way from Sweden. Traveling by land all that distance, sounds familiar? She took the route through India and had to fly over Burma, but took the boat from Singapore to Australia. She has been a major inspiration to me all my life and means a lot to me.
She is a crazy bird lady, her home is like an aviary. She constantly travels the world with other ornithologists, this year Ethiopia was up. When I was little she was a cow-girl working on a ranch in Queensland, looking after hundreds of cows and breeding horses. At 39 years of age she went to vet school (giving hope to people who think they are too old for a carrier change?), she is now semi-retired and sees a few cases per week. It was so much fun seeing cases together, fulfilling a childhood dream of mine!
Maggan spends most of her time gardening and planting trees, and is a true conservationist. She can also make beautiful saddles and leatherwork, is a taxidermist (for which she used to be hired by museums), makes her own furniture and is a fantastic painter/illustrator. She also loves to dance and is always the last one to leave a party.
She always brings her binoculars and knows everything about flora and fauna.
We had the pleasure of getting to know Terry, who is Maggan’s best friend. He has been a wool-classer and a seaman in the past, and is such a lovely, friendly, generous and helpful person. When we were leaving he drove us all the way up to the ferry, which is several hours away.
We visited former clients of my aunt that had a sheep-cheese farm! Tasmania has changed so much since I last visited, it has become very trendy and a bit of a foodie heaven. People on the mainland seemed impressed when we said we were going for some reason, 14 years ago the majority laughed and said that “Tassie’s” inhabitants were stupid and generally two-headed. No hydras in sight though.
There are wallabies everywhere in Tasmania.
I found some wallaby skulls in my aunt’s garden and here I am seriously trying to figure out how to sneak them through customs. Unfortunately, I chickened out. What a shame on such splendid skulls!
And they have penguins! Little penguins, literally and by name. They are sometimes referred to as fairy penguins, which sounds very Disney. There is actually a very cute true story about a dog called Oddball that saved a colony of penguins from a pack of foxes. The story has even turned into a saccharine movie, you can check out the trailer here.
One of my favourite things about Tasmania is that they have tree ferns pretty much everywhere. I absolutely love tree ferns, they are one of my favourite plants. I can fully relate to the pteridomania (or fern fever) of Victorian times.
I love how pre-historic their unfurling fronds look. They are sometimes called monkey paws, croziers or fiddleheads, which makes them even cuter. They certainly are pre-historic, most ferns go back to the Cretaceous period, some even to the Devonian period. I have had a fascination with them for as long as I can remember, probably because I had a dinosaur book, illustrated by Zdenêc Burian, that was filled with tree ferns.
We stayed with my aunt for nearly two weeks, and then went back to Melbourne by ferry, going slightly north for the first time in several months.