It is. It’s an island off Australia (which is already considered as being quite a place). And it’s quite a place. Though one that never quite matches your expectations.
Ask any Australian. Tasmania is a beautiful place for about three weeks a year in a couple of specific parts but everywhere else it’s cold, wet, miserable and full of things that want to kill you and eat you. And then there’s the actual wildlife. The older ones will also giggle aimlessly about ‘the map of Tassie’ without even realising that that the expression itself is perhaps an endangered species (it’s an old timey euphemism down here for female pubic hair).
Truth is far more complex. Just like Tasmania. Yes it’s full of photogenic places. Yes the weather can be lousy. But the people are quixotic, the food can be epic and the roads are never dull. Ever.
We spent the best part of January just gone down there wandering around. Plan was to rent some houses as bases from which to attack various topographic and ethnographic features around the joint. Plan worked too. It wasn’t quite overlanding but we more than made up for it in terms of places covered and children entertained. Oh and every house had a very nice view.
Many roads were travelled. Very few of them in straight lines. Tasmania (like most of Oz) uses the English road vernacular where main highways are M roads then there is a descending series of A, B and C roads. General view is that M roads are big open multi lane highways while A roads are major arterial connecters, B roads are two lane sub connectors and C roads are everything else. Tasmania has the M roads sorted but the rest is subject to negotiation. I nearly lost my wing mirror to incoming traffic on the narrowest A road I have ever seen and one series of corners on another A road required one to sound ones horn to advise oncoming traffic you made it to the corner before they did. Signage, particularly corner warning signage, seems to only appear on corners that have demonstrably maimed or killed someone. One of the best roads for both width and construction was a C road, mainly because it was a logging road in a politically marginal seat. It was a magnificent thing.
Most of the dirt roads are pretty good in this part of the planet. But stones and corrugations did give the old Transporter a bit of a hiding. Still and all, she did admirably.
It’s rather tricky to be specific about places and things as the past is just a blur. But if you ever get the chance then give Tasmania a shot. It will take you twice as long as either you have available or will ever think to need. Four weeks for us was not enough.
Thanks for looking...