Tasmanian Chronicle.."Local axed to death by Miner
Trip Start
Sep 12, 2005
1
47
108
Trip End
Aug 15, 2006
Tasmania,
Australia
Monday, March 13, 2006
While Victoria is the Garden State, Queensland is the Sunshine State, Tasmania is the Interbred State. Throughout Oz most Australians regard Tasmania as being pretty backward and generally the butt of most jokes but having met 2 Tassies ourselves we felt it our duty to investigate Tazmania! 2 days after U2 cancelled we were on a flight to Launceston, Tasmania's second largest city. Tasmania is about 2/3 the size of Ireland with a smaller population. Most of the State is complete wilderness with huge conservation in place. We were warned before we left that the public transport system was really poor in Tasmania
Check out that for a scare-cut!!!!!! (left)
. Some buses only left for certain tourist destinations every three days! We decided to rent a car. We tried place after place with no luck. It seemed we'd picked the worst weekend to rent a car because it was a long bank holiday weekend with 3 sporting events being held in Tasmania. There was no chance! After being told there were no cars available on the whole island we headed by bus to Hobart the capital of Tasmania. We soon realised that some of the rumours were true as we watched a 23 year old man kiss and fondle his 70 year old girlfriend in front of a busload of tourists!! Three hours later we arrived in the bustling metropolis of Hobart. We checked into a backpackers and went out to Salamanca Square down by the Docklands, which was nice. On the way home we called into bar which was owned by a bulging eyed Belfast girl with more gold than Mr T! After reminiscing about home for an hour we crawled back to our backpacker dorm which we shared with 10 other Chinese guys. The next morning we tried again for a car but with no luck we decided to head to Devonport, to catch the ferry back to Melbourne. Luckily, we saw someone leaving a car back to a car rental place so ran over and managed to hire the car for a day.So we hit the road, into the west towards Cradle Mountain, Tas's number 1 tourist attraction. After 3 hours of driving it started to get dark and was raining really heavily, this combined with the windy roads, kangaroos and wombats on the roads we decided it wasn't safe to be driving
Our first sight of Cradle Mountain
. So we pulled into the next town of "Rosebery."It was a 3 shop and 1 bar town with no accommodation, but the next town was 200km away so we thought we better just make do and went into the bar for a beer. As we walked into the bar the door shut behind us and all conversations in the bar stopped. No joking, it was like a scene from the wild west. 10 denim waistcoated men at the bar turned around to see the fresh genes that had just rolled into town! If we could try to describe the scene- the bar itself wasn't much to look at, a dart board in the corner with brown and red carpet straight out of 1988, wood chip walls to match and no ladies toilets! The guys at the bar matched to decor, one was even sporting a leather peaked cap! They all had gruff zz top beards and blue tattooed words on their forearms. We tried not to laugh or cry and in our toughest Belfast accents said "2 pints of VB please." The tight permed barmaid slapped down our beers and we took them off to the corner and polished them off in three. It was time to go so we took a bottle for the road and went out to the car to think about where we would sleep tonight. We drove around for a while and couldn't find anywhere so we pulled into a trailer park and saddled up in the car park. The next day we scabbed a quick shower and drove into town for a coffee. The town looked a bit different by day, we hadn't noticed the huge zinc mine (Wolf Creek style) that overshadowed the town
The 13km hike was worth it!!!
. We had a good laugh to ourselves as we left in one piece! From there it was 1 and a half hour's drive to Cradle Mountain. It was an amazing place. We walked 13km to see it but it was well worth it. The place definitely deserves its World Heritage Listing. After a good trek in the bush where we spotted our first wild kangaroo we headed back to Devonport where we caught the Spirit of Tasmania ferry back to Melbourne. The 9 hour crossing was made much easier when a relative of Mairead's gave us his cabin for the night equipped with tv, dvd player and fridge. The next day we met up with one of our Tassie friends who was interested in our experience. He couldn't stop laughing when he heard we stayed in Rosebery. When we asked what was so funny he showed us a newspaper article from a month ago which told the story of some random attack on a local by a disgruntled miner. The local was axed to death on the Main Street. We counted ourselves lucky! We had a great time in Tasmania and were glad we got to see it for ourselves. 
