Adventures - And Work

In late April, I flew down to Tasmania into Launceston airport.

What for, you ask?

To visit my friend Sally, to have a bit of a holiday, to visit a part of the country that I've never seen before, and to work!

Tasmania

Affectionately called Tas, Tassie, "The Apple Isle" (due to its long history of apple orchards growing there - the first apple trees in Australia were planted there in 1788, the same year that the First Fleet arrived in Botany Bay and made a settlement in Sydney Cove) and "The Natural State" (because there are so many untouched wildernesses, protected areas, and World Heritage Sites), Tasmania is also known as "The Holiday Isle", because of its reputation as a tourist destination. The peak tourist season is during summer, so because I was there in late April to early June, the roads were very quiet and some places were either closed or only doing small amounts of business - perfect for someone like me who doesn't prefer big crowds!

A basic map of my travels in Tasmania

Tassie has a population of less than 600,000 people. To put this in perspective, Sydney, Australia's largest city, has a population of over 5.5 million on about 1,800km² (a population density of about 450 people per square kilometre), while the whole state of Tasmania has a population of almost 575,000 on about 68,400km², a population density of about 8.5 persons per square kilometre. (However, the Northern Territory holds the national record for lowest population density at roughly 0.19 persons per square kilometre - that's 5.26km², or about 1300 acres, per person; just a little bit smaller than the size of the country of Gibraltar!)

Some people think of Tasmania as backwards or uncivilised, and while it is true that it seems like there are quite a few "bogans" living in Tassie (although that is true of anywhere in Australia - and indeed the world), for the most part the people there are welcoming and friendly. Tasmania has been called the "Bible Belt" of Australia, partly because of a rich history of conservative or Protestant Christian settlers. There are some place names in the Kentish region that reflect this Christian influence - Garden of Eden, Promised Land, Paradise, and King Solomon's Caves. There are some other places with interesting names too - Gentle Annie, Nowhere Else, Nook, Cooee (near Burnie), Penguin, and Chuckling Creek!

Tassie is a good place to see the aurora australis. There was an aurora the last couple of nights I was there, but sadly it was cloudy, so I didn't see the colours, only the glow through the clouds.

The best photo I could get of the aurora australis.

I was staying in northwest Tassie, on the northernmost part of the Southern Hemisphere's largest and the world's second largest temperate rainforest, called the Tarkine. Here is one of the most pristine wilderness areas in the world - the air is very clear and fresh, with mining and forestry enterprises being some of the very few things that may taint it; no massive factories or manufacturing plants here!

It truly is rainforesty!

Beautiful landscape!

Tasmania is home to over 300 different endemic species of plants and animals (adding to the tourist attraction), including the Tasmanian devil, the declared-extinct-in-1939 Tasmanian tiger or thylacine, the eastern quoll, the hunted-to-extinction Tasmanian emu, and the Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagle. There are also lots of wild platypuses, wombats, wallabies, kangaroos, pademelons, feral cats, deer - but no dingoes, foxes, or feral pigs.

The best photo I got of a platypus in the wild - unfortunately they were swimming too far away to see them very well or get very good photos....

A wombat den.

Examples of endemic Tasmanian plants include the Tasmanian blue gum, Tasmanian waratah, leatherwood tree, King Billy pine, Huon pine, and several species of acacia and eucalyptus trees. There are lots of other plants too, of course!

Mountain pinkberry, an endemic Tasmanian bush.

A "pine tree" moss. I love playing with focus and perspective on my camera like that! The moss in the foreground is less than 10cm tall.

Native heath - very beautiful!

Frost. It was very cold - I think in the last two or three weeks that I was there it did not get above 10°C! It did get below 0°C a few times, but sadly it didn't snow - I really wanted to see snow!

My Work in Tassie

One of the primary reasons I went to Tassie was to earn some money picking pepperberries, also known as native pepper, bush pepper, and Tasmanian pepper. They are a native bush spice, somewhat resembling black peppercorns, especially when dried whole; spicy, but with a different flavour than black pepper. Tasmanian pepperberry grows as a large bush, of which both the berries and the leaves can be used either fresh or dried, either whole or ground, all having similar flavour.

Pepperberries. The majority of leaves and twigs will come out during the processing of the berries.

Frosty pepperberries

I helped with all the different stages of processing the berries, including picking, washing, drying, and packaging. I won't go into detail of the processing though, as I don't want to give away trade secrets!

Click here to see our winter sale with products that would definitely keep you warm if you went to Tassie too!!

Look out for my blog post next week to see some more photos and hear about the different places I visited! (Unfortunately some of my photos didn't turn out as nice as I hoped...)