Becca Down Under

This post is by Becca Jennings.

    Hi there! Since joining the staff of Travel Designers Travel Leaders in Rice Lake, I've had wonderful opportunities to travel to some pretty exotic places, and I'd like to share some of these trips with you. Maybe someday soon you'll be able to go there yourself, and I'll be ready to help you.

    
    It's a long way from northwest Wisconsin to Australia, but that's where I found myself in October of 2019. A lot of visitors Down Under stick to the east coast, primarily Sydney and the Great Barrier Reef, but I head to the west. 
    One of the first things Americans discover about Australia is its size. Almost 3 million square miles, just about as big as the continental U.S., but with a lot fewer people. We landed in the city of Perth, at just over 2 million the 4th-largest city in the country. 
    Among the many sights we saw in and around Perth was Heirisson Island, which is in the Swan River that winds its way through metro Perth to the Indian Ocean. It's a small island, only about 70 acres, and inhabited entirely by kangaroos. 

One of the kangaroos we saw had a little joey in her pouch!

    It was great to see kangaroos up close. They're the animal most closely identified with Australia, and found nowhere else in the world. They can be pretty big, over six feet tall and up to 200 pounds, and there are a lot of them, about 35-40 million, according to government estimates; the human population of Australia is about 25 million. Drivers on highways will frequently see "kangaroo crossing" signs, like we see deer crossing signs back in Wisconsin. But the animals are very shy and rarely interact with humans. 

    From Perth we took a trip up to the Pinnacle Desert, about two and a half hours from the city. The Pinnacles are limestone formations within Nambung National Park. We explored them on foot and then had a great lunch at the Lobster Shack.

The Pinnacles can sometimes reach heights exceeding ten feet.

    
     We left Perth and flew across the continent to the island of Tasmania, which lies 150 miles off the southeast corner of Australia. It is one of the country's six states, and is comprised of the main island and over 300 smaller ones. This would prove to be one of the most exotic places I'd ever hoped to visit.
    The main island is about 25,000 square miles and some 40% of it is protected from development. It is the smallest Australian state, both in land area and human population, which is just over half a million. Nearly half of those folks live in the capital city of Hobart, which is where we landed on our flight from Perth. Our hotel was the Ibis Styles Hobart, the largest in Tasmania. 
    There are four distinct seasons in Tasmania, but they are milder than we have back home. It was a little chilly when we got there, and thankfully I'd packed some appropriate clothing for our excursions, the first of which was the Tasmanian Farm Gate, Hobart's weekly farmers' market. We saw all kinds of artisanal cheeses, meats and seafood, locally-produced wines and lots of bakery items. 
    From the market we boarded our tour bus for a jaunt up Mount Wellington, which rises over 4000 feet above Hobart and the Tasman Peninsula.

The view from Mt. Wellington was spectacular, even
with the clouds that day. And it was quite a hike!

  
    From there we took a ferry ride to the Museum of Old and New Art, located on the Berriedale Peninsula. It's part of the Moorilla winery and is the largest privately-funded museum in the Southern Hemisphere. It's three stories tall and part of it is underground. 
    The rest of our day was taken up with inspecting more hotel properties and dinner. We were a tired bunch when we made it back to the Ibis for the evening, but we were looking forward to exploring more of Tasmania the next day.
    The next morning was taken up with a fascinating, three-hour cruise of the Tasmanian coast. Here we got our first taste of some of the island's exotic animals, like the gray seal in the middle of this photo:

    We also saw some of Tasmania's highest sea cliffs, huge waterfalls and mysterious caves. Birds of all kinds, too. But let the passenger beware, if you tend to get motion sickness (which I do), self-medicate before you depart. It's well worth it. 
    After the cruise, we headed to the Port Arthur Historic Site. This was a penal colony, known as "A machine to grind rogues honest." Thousands of prisoners were held here for a period of about 40 years beginning in 1833. They were the hardest of the hard-core from Great Britain. This tour was my favorite part of the trip, and we concluded it with lunch at the 1830 Restaurant. 
    Another site inspection took up our afternoon, and we retired to our hotel in Hobart for dinner and a restful evening. The next day would find us leaving Hobart and heading inland, exploring more properties and eventually winding up near Tasmania's World Heritage Wilderness, where the group split in two for overnight accommodations at a pair of smaller hotels. 
    The highlight of our evening was a tour of Devils @ Cradle. We got to see one of the most fascinating animals in the world, the Tasmanian devil, up close. I couldn't get a good photo, but this is what they look like: 

The devil is a carnivorous marsupial, about the size of a
small dog, and is on the list of  endangered species.

     
    Our final full day in Australia finally arrived, and it would prove to be the most strenuous, with a trip into the Wilderness to Dove Lake. The members of our group were given three options for outdoor trekking, and I chose to go with the group heading up to Marion Lookout. This was very difficult, nearly 14,000 steps up and down, and I almost didn't make it, but the view from the top was worth the effort.

    In the afternoon we visited the town of Sheffield, which is famous throughout Tasmania for its many murals, depicting the town's history. 

This photo was taken by a European visitor in 2016.

  Our evening featured a visit to Cataract Gorge Reserve, which is a sacred place for Tasmanian Aborigines. It includes a long walking bridge over the South Esk River and the world's longest single-span chairlift. Click on the link to get some great photos!

    The next day, we began the long journey home, starting with a bus ride back to Hobart and a flight to Melbourne, and from there across the Pacific and back to America, eventually to my home in northwest Wisconsin. The flights to and from Australia are definitely exhausting, but the visit was definitely worth it. And it will be for you, too. Give me a call when you are thinking about going Down Under!