It's great, because Tasmania isn't very busy with backpackers at the moment, we're in a huge eight bed dorm... all by ourselves! We all woke up nice and early this morning, and got ourselves ready in plenty of time to check out. We then went into town to use the internet (we wanted to print out our car hire confirmation) and then found the place where we were going to be renting it from. Afterwards we walked around the shops and then went back to the hostel for some lunch.
At just after 1pm, me and Nikki went out to collect the car and Steve stayed at the hostel to watch the bags. Our car is pretty cool! It's a white Hyundai Getz 1.6 (which we've named Wanda) - and because we've been used to driving big ol' camper vans, this thing seems like a little rocket. We went to collect Steve and then set off on our latest road trip...
Something we wanted to do whilst we were in Hobart - but couldn't be bothered to do on foot, was go to the top of Mount Wellington, which is 1270m high. Now that we had a car, we had the perfect opportunity and headed for the summit. The drive to the top was pretty exciting, with the small roads zig-zagging up the side - for a total distance of 12km. When we got to the top, the views were AMAZING! We could see for miles and miles - in all directions. We were higher than the few clouds that were in the sky! After taking some beautiful photos, we made our way back down - much was much more fun than the drive up.
We all had a look at the map and decided that, seeing as Hobart is quite Southern already, we'd head down to a place called Port Arthur, which is in the South East of Tasmania. It wasn't very far, but on the way we stopped in a place called Sorell - because they had a place called the 'Pink Cadillac Café', and we all fancied milkshakes. Afterwards we got back in the car and drove on. We found a nice little place to stay called the Port Arthur Caravan & Cabin Park - and this time we had a nine bed dorm... all to ourselves. The bunks were crazy, rather than being the standard two-high, they were three. Poor Steve, who was on the top bunk, was almost touching the ceiling.
With somewhere to stay sorted, we went out and visited the Port Arthur Historic Site. Me and Steve booked to go on a ghost tour around the ruins, but Nikki said she didn't want to come - she said she's scared of ghosts in the day, so can't imagine walking around a place where ghosts are spotted every other week... in the dark. After having something to eat, we all drove back to the sight and at 9.30pm we went off for our tour.
The Port Arthur Historic Site is where, during the 1800s, convicts sent from England were sent for 'correction'. The ghost tour was pretty good. I was asked to carry one of the three lanterns - and had to be at the back of the group at all times to make sure everyone was ok. We were taken around the ruins of the church, the prison, the lunatic asylum and even a doctors surgery - which still had a dissection table! We didn't see any ghosts, but our guides stories did make some of the people jump (including Steve). When the tour finished, we collected Nikki from the safety of the Visitor Centre (where she'd been watching X Factor on the laptop) and came home.
We like Tasmania - it looks like the nicer parts of home... but with MUCH better weather!
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