HOBART - AUSTRALIA

After nearly 2 crazy weeks in Melbourne I finally dragged myself away an hours flight south to Hobart. The scenery out of the window was good with loads of mountains, forest and lakes. I didn't know a lot about Hobart beforehand and was expecting a big city full of skyscrapers as it is the state capital. It was a bit of a shock to find a small town but it looked an interesting place.



Checked into the small but strangely named pickled frog hostel. Like the town the atmosphere was completely different from the massive place I had left behind in the big city. I made contact with my long lost relatives (my time with them is covered in the next chapter) then I got talking to the other travelers in the hostel bar round the open fire.



One of them (pictured next to me above) was going to hire a car to go inland the following day and asked me to join her.

Now I knew that mainland Australia had some remote locations but not Tasmania. At one point we spent an hour on the road without seeing a single building, person or other car.
We visited Mount field national park , Russell falls , and Cradle mountain national park.



The girl I went with and did the driving was from Perth and had never seen snow before in her life. After about half an hour we came across some and I treated her to her first ever snowball fight. This was the last thing I expected to be doing on a visit to Australia. On the way back in the car we seen a big black snake going across the road. According to my relatives it was most likely to be a deadly black tiger snake. That was the first and only wild snake I seen in Australia.

A day or two later I went to climb Mount Wellington  which didn't look far from where I was staying. It turned out to be a very long climb (about 4 hours) to the top up the winding road. Every time I thought I was near the top I would then see the "real peak" further up.



The view from the top was good and on the way back down I managed to grab a bus (after another 2hours). The relatives and the other travelers in the hostel rightly questioned my sanity when I got back and told them I had walked all the way to the top.

After a well deserved lazy day and taking care of a spot on my neck I missed with the sunscreen I went on a night out with a lad from Kent. We ended up in Irish murphys and had a great night.

I spent about 4 or 5 nights in the hostel in total before I was invited to stay with the relatives.