a day ago
Overlooked Tasmania has message for Australian ‘mainlanders'
I have seen a lot of Australia. In fact, I saw almost the entire coast before the age of 10 thanks to my family doing a year of #vanlife before it was a trending hashtag. But the one state I've neglected is Tasmania.
Like many Australians, I chase the sun and warmth on my travels and occasionally the snow to ski. Living in Melbourne, I've never had the desire to go even further south when the weather cools.
That was until this year when I finally took the short flight across the Bass Strait to join Tourism Tasmania in celebrating the launch of their off-season.
Chief executive of the state authority, Sarah Clark, has a clear message. She wants to convince us mainlanders to embrace the cold and become 'winter people,' urging Aussies not to run away to warmer climates.
Tasmanians like to say they don't just survive the winter but thrive in it. Watching chef and co-founder Rodney Dunn stand outside The Agrarian Kitchen at night in a T-shirt as my teeth chattered, and Gunns Plains Caves tour operator Geoff Deer take his jumper off as we rugged up to go underground, or Discovery Resorts Cradle Mountain's general manager Andy Stuart get around in shorts while I donned my snow coat proved as much.
After four days, I can confirm two things about Tasmania. Cold? Absolutely. Boring? Anything but.
From kayaking and climbing through caves to hunting truffles at the farm that grew the very first in Australia and learning to DJ at a goat farm in a town called Penguin — I was entertained from start to end. (There is an opportunity to win a trip to see for yourself. More details on that further on).
Tasmania taught me to get outside, even if it's cold and wet
On the morning of our 7.30am kayaking tour on Dove Lake beneath Cradle Mountain I woke up to the sound of rain on the roof of my cabin and the feeling of disappointment.
The kayaking would surely be cancelled? Nope. The thought of not going and crawling back into bed had not even crossed the Tasmanians' minds.
Floating on the lake on hand-built kayaks made out of 1000-year-old rare King Billy pine, surrounded by the wilderness and no human sound (with the exception of our giggles trying to co-ordinate paddling), the occasional sprinkle of rain dampened our clothes but not the experience.
If you ask adventure tour operator Anthony O'Hern; 'You get some of the most spectacular days for it in winter'.
'Sometimes in winter we get better conditions than any other time. Some weather will come through and on the back of that we'll get a high come across and it will be glass on the lake and snow on the mountain. You just get these really calm, crisp days.'
Just like the environment they are used in, Mr O'Hern's kayaks are a thing of beauty. King Billy pine trees are endangered, endemic to Tasmania and found along the banks of Dove Lake.
Given the trees are now protected, Mr O'Hern had to convince a mill owner in his 90s to sell him the rare timber from a tree cut down in the 1960s to make the special kayaks.
WA couple visited Tassie for one week and bought a house
After a morning on the lake, our itinerary had us off to a 'G.O.A.T Doof' in a town called Penguin, where there is a giant penguin statue dressed up depending on the occasion. On our visit, it was a top hat and bow tie.
Now, when I first read G.O.A.T Doof on the itinerary, I thought the name was solely an acronym for 'Greatest. Of. All. Time.' and had no idea there were literal goats involved.
Brad and Lisa Palmer moved from Perth, Western Australia to Penguin 10 years ago after visiting Tasmania for the first time on a holiday.
'We tried to tour the island in a week, which is laughable for anyone who has tried to do it, and we got to Penguin four days in and started house hunting … I think we made an offer while we were flying home. We were here for Christmas that year,' Ms Palmer said.
Miniature goats were 'never' the plan but now with 24 of the animals, they are the centrepiece of Hideaway Farmlet, used for land management and as a bonus, a tourism drawcard.
'We were sitting outside having a whiskey and listening to music,' Mr Palmer tells me of the moment the idea for the G.O.A.T Doof came to them last winter.
Ms Palmer added: 'As we were getting more intoxicated we thought 'Oh my god, wouldn't it be so great if people could spin vinyl of their choice and we could just do this while hanging out with the goats.''
It helped that Mr Palmer was an experienced DJ, but he was more used to spinning vinyl at warehouse raves than to goats and Airbnb guests.
The experience is currently only available to those staying in the property's cottage, but the Palmers hope they will be able to get the right approvals to host small group celebrations soon.
A 'GOAT Doofer' is one of 10 'Winternships' Australians can currently apply to win a trip to experience this winter. Another experience is being a 'Devil Sitter' at Cradle Mountain's wildlife sanctuary Devils@Cradle, looking after endangered Tasmanian devils.
The successful applicant will win flights, accommodation and car hire or transfers, and will take home a selection of Tasmania's best seasonal produce. (Australian residents 18+ can apply here until June 17.)
Truffle hunting on the farm that grew the first in Australia
On the topic of farms, did you know the first truffle in Australia was grown in Tasmania and you can visit to go truffle hunting? While it's not finders keepers, you do get a truffle-themed lunch.
Tim Terry harvested the first black truffle in 1999 after planting inoculated trees six years earlier.
'Back in the early 90s my father had an idea where he wanted to grow truffles here in Australia. Everyone said 'it's a terrible idea, it can't be done, it's impossible, you really should just let that idea go' but my dad is not very good at letting things go and thank goodness he isn't,' Anna Terry told a fascinated group of tourists at The Truffle Farm in Deloraine.
The visitors, some of whom know Anna from her appearance My Kitchen Rules in 2018, are invited to join the furry four-legged stars of the real life show, Doug, Poppy and Peggy, to sniff and dig out the lucrative fungi.
One truffle we watched a tourist dig up was worth a whopping $600 alone.
Truffles in Europe, where they are found to grow in the wild, are traditionally hunted using pigs — but the problem is you can't train a pig to not want to eat the truffle themselves. Anna recalled meeting a man who had lost two of his fingers to a pig while truffle hunting.
It is incredible to see the three dogs at work on the farm, sniffing out the buried treasure and alerting Anna to their find, in return for a treat. My favourite part, however, may have been watching Chief Truffle Hunter Doug (there's a statue in his honour) pretending he found one when he didn't just to get a treat.
Anna believes personality is more important than the dog breed for the job and says she does not have many special training techniques, crediting love as 90 per cent of what makes them successful truffle hunters. Once digging out a truffle we were instructed to always show it off to the dogs and congratulate them.
A hidden underground world
Speaking of finding hidden treasures, located between Deloraine and Penguin is the Gunns Plains Caves.
Hiding beneath a picturesque landscape of rolling hills and farms is an underground world of limestone caves, streams, sparkling crystals, glow-worms and platypus (but those are a rare sight).
Geoff Deer and his wife Trish have been running tours at the caves since 2004, but he says the story of their discovery dates back to 1906 when a man named Bill Woodhouse went hunting a possum down a hole because there was a bounty on the animal at the time.
Armed with a rope and a candle, Mr Woodhouse lowered himself into the darkness not knowing what was below.
It turned out to be a pretty spectacular find. By 1909, the first tours were being run with ladders and wooden platforms. These days there is concrete steps. However, there is still a lot ducking and weaving to be done to navigate the underground world once you descend 54 steps.
Perhaps, the best part of the tour was when Mr Deer asked us if we wanted to know what it was like when Mr Woodhouse was there. He switched off his torch and lit a candle, eventually putting out the candle to let us experience the eerie quiet darkness. As any good guide with plenty of dad jokes up his sleeve would, he then pretended to leave.
You could say, the Tasmanians won me over.
