Review of the Dawn Princess

Circumnavigating Oz, Part Eighteen, Burnie Tasmania

written by mickeyd69 posted on 14/02/11

Circumnavigating Oz, Part Eighteen, Burnie, Tasmania. (The story of the entire cruise is available at www.theozcruise.com)

If Australia is considered an exotic far off destination, Tasmania is the most exotic and distant part of that destination, offering all sorts of contrasts and unexpected treasures. It is the smallest state in Australia, but contains the most vertical landforms, with, rocky, towering mountains. Almost any conceivable type of landscape can be found there.

The predominant color in Tasmania is green, as found in lush fields, rolling hills, dense forests and pastoral country villages. The small size of the State allows the visitor to experience many kinds of landscapes in a limited amount of time, and the excitement of sailing the wild waters of the Bass Strait adds to the experience of visiting Tasmania.

Located 240 kilometers (about 150 miles) south of the Australian mainland, Tasmania is an island of roughly 68,000 square kilometers (or 26,000 square miles) of land, with half a million people. Tasmania is unique for its geology, composed mostly of Jurassic Dolerite, a hard volcanic rock that originated in part of Antarctica in the dim and distant past. During the last ice age, Tasmania was still part of the mainland until the ice melted, raising the sea level and forming Bass Strait. The composition and vertical orientation of the Dolerite, combined with the scouring and erosion during the periods of glaciation, has resulted in the sharp, craggy mountains that cover significant parts of the island.

Northern Tasmania is composed mostly of rolling hills, gentle farmland, and grassy pastureland between rugged mountain ranges such as the Great Western Tiers. This rocky range across the center of the island separates the wilderness of Cradle Mountain Lake St. Clair National Park from the agricultural lands around Launceston to the north, rising to elevations above 1,200 meters. Quamby Bluff, above Deloraine reaches 1,226 meters (or about 4,000 feet); Western Bluff near Mole Creek towers up to 1,420 meters (or about 4,650 feet); and Black Bluff rises to 1,339 meters (or about 4,400 feet) off to the west. The Tamar Valley, near Launceston, is the State?s major wine producing area. The north and east coasts are rimmed by long stretches of sandy beaches; while the north and northwest coasts are dotted with quaint fishing villages. Inland from the east coast beaches are extensive farmlands and orchards, while the west coast is wild and rugged, with rocky headlands and deep forests covering the lower slopes of the jagged mountains.

Southern Tasmania is home to the Huon and Derwent Valleys. Hobart, the state capital, spreads along the western banks of the Derwent Estuary and extends along the lower reaches of the Valley. Mt. Wellington rises to more than 4,200 ft. above Hobart, and is frequently snow covered in winter.

Tasmania has four distinct seasons, with generally pleasant temperatures throughout the year in the north and lower elevations, while the high country and extreme south and south west have cold winters. Summer brings long, warm to hot days and cool nights, and nights can be chilly in the spring and fall. Most of the island receives sufficient rainfall to keep it green, but the west is very wet, with rain possible almost any day of the year.

Due to ongoing conflicts over industrialization and the resulting decline in available employment, combined with the outside world?s discovery of the wonders in Tasmania, the travel and tourism business is rapidly expanding. Some of Australia?s best known sights are found in Tasmania, including Cradle Mountain Lake St. Clair National Park (NP), Ben Lomond NP, Franklin-Gordon Wild Rivers NP, Freycinet NP, and Mount Field NP. Because the island is compact, none of these parks are unreasonably far from major cities like Hobart, Launceston, Burnie, or Devonport, where the Spirit of Tasmania ferries arrive from Melbourne. No place in Tasmania is more than a few hours from the sea, and the major cities are connected by a decent network of roads. Some of the more remote parks are accessed by gravel roads, but, most are accessible by regular vehicles.

The Dawn Princess was to arrive in Burnie at 8:00 Wednesday morning, with an early departure at 3:30 that afternoon. Of all the ports we visited, we?d hoped to stay longer in Burnie. We?d planned a full day with old friends who were meeting the ship and taking us to Deloraine, an hour from Burnie, where they were renovating an old house.

The port at Burnie handles commercial container traffic as well as the occasional cruise ship. Most passenger vessels, including the Spirit of Tasmania ferries, dock at Devonport, a few miles east along the north coast. Because it is a container port, with lots of traffic and cranes moving about carrying super heavy containers, our passengers were not permitted to walk into town. A shuttle system was set up to get us to and from town, but we didn?t know about it until it was too late to contact anybody, and we weren?t sure where we would meet our friends. So, we reluctantly hopped on a shuttle toward town after asking the driver if we could get off if we found our friends. He smiled and gave us his ?No Worries!? And, sure enough, we hadn?t gone more than a few hundred meters, until we reached the fence, and Bonnie spotted our friend standing by his car. I didn?t see him, but she did, and immediately recognized him. We told the driver, and, after he cleared the fence, he stopped the bus and let us off. It was a great reunion, as if we had only been gone for a day or two instead of six years.

After the hugs and greetings, we discussed our plans. We explained that our main purpose was to see them, and we didn?t care what we did as long as we had time to catch up. Our friend Rene (He's French) decided to take us along the coast to the town of Penguin, then to Devonport, and down to Deloraine. We wanted to see where they lived and have him show us the house he?d been working on. So, off we went! Next stop: Deloraine and our friends? farm through some of the most beautiful country we had ever seen.

The coast between Burnie and Devonport is beautiful, with broad beaches, rolling hills, and small towns. The town of Penguin was totally unreal, with a large statue of a penguin in a park near the ocean, across from possibly the most perfect church I had ever seen. The town was started in 1861, but wasn?t chartered as a village until 1875. There are now more than 3,000 people in Penguin, a community whose main claim to fame is its name. Various penguin images are everywhere, but they pale in comparison to the coastal scenery. The town is situated on a shallow bay, which provided a perfect background; and, as usual, I took a totally unreasonable number of pictures.

Eventually we did manage to reach Devonport, where we turned south, taking Bass Highway toward Deloraine. The countryside was beautiful, with rolling hills and farms with fields ready for spring planting. We traveled about 50 kilometers from Devonport, and arrived in Deloraine in about 40 minutes. It?s a small town on the Meander River, with a current population of about 2,000; surrounded by beautiful scenery, including forested mountains and numerous waterfalls.

Rene showed us around the town, and showed us the house he and his bride of 35 years are currently renovating. They?d purchased a farm outside Deloraine, and were designing their new house. They were leasing their land to a farmer who used it to graze his sheep. The farmer got fat sheep, and Rene got short grass. The land was open bottomland along a creek, and extended up hills on either side of the pasture. The upper reaches of the hills were forested. We toured the farm and solved all the problems of the world for a while until the quickly moving clock forced us to start moving. Rene suggested we take a ride through the country, over the ridges near the Western Tiers, toward Sheffield, and then back to Burnie. I would have liked to just return to the Dawn, quickly pack, check out of the ship, and move in with them, but that wasn?t an option, especially in my condition at the time. We reluctantly got in the car and took off.

We hadn?t traveled more than a mile or two when Rene rounded a bend and one of the most beautiful views in the world presented itself. We were looking at Quamby Bluff, an extension of the Western Tiers, framed within a grove of trees while sheep grazed in the foreground. After my customary hundred pictures, we moved on toward the ridge. After a steep and somewhat treacherous drive over the ridge and through the woods, we came to the huge town of Mole Creek, population 223.

Right in the center of Mole Creek, is the Mole Creek Inn, a local hotel which houses the regionally famous Tazzy Tiger Bar, displaying all sorts of images of the Thylacine, an extinct carnivorous marsupial known as the Tasmanian Tiger. The Tiger actually looked more like a midsized dog with stripes across its butt than a carnivorous jungle feline. But, being a carnivore, it did enjoy a fresh lamb meal now and then, which pissed off lots of sheep herders. This resulted in its extinction when the last one died in captivity in 1936, although the presence of predatory Dingos didn?t help. Every so often, there are alleged sightings reported, but no proof has ever been forthcoming. One of the more interesting facts about the Thylacine is that the males also had pouches, one of only two marsupial males that had them. The purpose seemed to be to protect their external genitals as they ran through brush and woods at high speed.

We decided to stop for lunch, and Rene suggested the Mole Creek Inn. The food was great, inexpensive, and plentiful. We started talking with some of the locals, and enjoyed every minute with them. The pub exhibited all sorts of pictures, replicas, and models of the tigers, some of them slightly accurate. My favorites were the female tigers walking on two legs with huge breasts falling out of their tight bikini tops, which was certainly a creative portrayal of marsupials. (See pictures!) They ranked only slightly ahead of the naked female tigers that looked suspiciously like human females riding motocycles. Again, the pseudo tigers were well endowed with very human breasts, among certain other curvaceous attributes, which may have represented some less than scientifically accurate anatomical representations. Nobody seemed to care.

After our lunch and the interesting lesson in marsupial physiology, we realized how quickly we were running out of time, and we really needed to haul ass if we were going to catch our ship before she sailed. The road went through the town of Sheffield, which is another town in Tasmania with an interesting story, although not necessarily as interesting as naked, human female looking marsupials in various stages of undress.

Sheffield is a small town that about 1,300 good people call home. It goes back a fair way, to the middle of the 19th century. Located in the shadow of Mt. Roland, Sheffield has been the center of a farming area, and was also close to some of the Hydro Tasmania dams, which provided employment until the dams were completed. The town seemed to be fading away, losing many of the younger residents who went elsewhere to find better employment. In 1986, with the local economy declining precipitously, one of their more creative residents came up with the idea to paint murals on many of the commercial buildings in town. Today, the town is world famous for the murals, and, once I realized that we had to drive through Sheffield, I knew I would have to find the time to shoot some of the murals.

Rene stopped when we got into town, and I leaped, or, rather, flew out of the car, and waddled my way from one mural to the next, finally getting pictures of more than twenty. The murals had been painted by different artists, so there were multiple styles, although all were realistic. I could easily tell that it would take much more time than I had to see them all, but I got as many as I could in a few minutes. While I was staggering from building to building, Bonnie was getting more nervous by the minute, fearing that we were going to miss the boat. Rene got us back right on time, although we did cut it a little closer than we had at any other port on the cruise.

After our difficult farewells, we walked up the gangway and onto the Dawn. There wasn?t even a line at the Bong station, so we could stroll right in, Bong our cruise cards, and grab the next elevator. The doors opened on Caribe Deck, and we walked down to our room. We were home with almost eight minutes to spare. As I was looking at my watch, I heard noise down below, went out to the balcony, and watched the port crew stow the gangway. We had entered our cabin at 3:22! We could never remember cutting it so close before. While we were watching, the gangway was stowed, all the lines cast off, and final checks made. Suddenly, the ship?s horn boomed above us, shattering our eardrums and echoing off the distant hills. The Dawn moved, almost imperceptibly at first, but then, more steadily.

As the ship slowly increased her speed, the sound of a lone bagpipe lifted from the dock, and poured over the ship like a melancholy mist. We had experienced all sorts of multiple permutations of bagpipes, from singles to 12 piece bagpipe bands during our last cruise to Australia and New Zealand, but this was the first time we?d heard it on this trip. It was somehow appropriate since our departure was different this time. We felt as if we had experienced a deep loss, rather than the excitement of the next new and exciting port. I never thought that it would be so difficult to watch Rene and Bev drive away. As the lone piper continued to play, Burnie faded slowly into the green Tasmanian coastline.