Tasmania – Day 6

I…drove…so…much…today!!!  Holy hell. 

Once again, I woke up before my alarm.  Not just before, but many hours before haha – typical!  I looked at my phone and saw it was 3:30am.  Great.
I tried going back to sleep a number of times, only to lay there.  Now that my mind was running, it wasn’t gunna happen.

So, get this right – this is how my mind works.  It reached 4am and my thought process was this – "Well it’ll be sunlight by 5, so if I leave now, I’ll get ahead on my trip up the coast and I’ll be able to have breakfast by the time I reach one of the major coastal towns!" – so I packed everything up, all excited, thrw it all back in the car, and left my motel key in the door (like I’d been told to do if I wanted to leave early so that the cleaners knew I had left).

Now, if driving on narrow, high ledges considered a highway was scary, this was quite intimidating.  It was pitch black, and not only was it pitch black – as I was driving I realised that this isn’t Queensland, where the sun comes up at 5amish.  The sun here comes up around about 7-7:30am.  Three..hours…of…darkness.

Now I know from growing up where I did, that nature’s fauna comes out at night.  I knew this before I left.  I was also conscious of being in a rental care.  I also knew the risks and the probability of hitting one of these creatures.  It was quite funny because I was so self-conscious of it happening that even with my beams on high (in more ways than one – ba-boom-boom-tish!), I was scanning the sides of the road constantly for anything that was even going to attempt to jump out at me haha.  I was also hitting on the highway not going above 50k/ph, when the limit is 90k/ph.  Luckily there were no other cars.  I probably saw about 3 come up behind me (oooo!) the whole darkness and I simply let them pass they went zooming right past me in typical Tassie-driver style.

When one went past, I sped up to get behind them.  That was, I figured, they would be more likely to strike whichever mammal wanted to become roadkill before I did 😛

And the evidence was there.  Every five/ten kilometers or so there would be roadkill on the highway, which I’d gently swerve to avoid.  It’s so sad.  I was reading that there is an overpopulation of Tasmanian Devils in Tasmania, and Tassie Devils are scavengers, so they wander onto the road to eat roadkill and sometimes end up becoming it themselves.

I passed many of them, just grazing on the side of the highway – mostly kangaroos and wallabies.  I was so conscious of them just jumping out in front of the headlights, and, of course, as I rounded a turn, one did.  I hit the brakes hard just in time to avoid hitting it, and it kept jumping just in front of me.  It eventually bounced off to the side, unharmed.  Stupid kangaroo!  Gah.

It was all good after that, for a fair while anyway.  Then next thing I know, I’m driving along (funny that) and I feel and hear a ‘THUD!" on the left front side of my car and I see it fall off to the side of the car.  "FUCKING JESUS!" I exclaimed!  My parents would be so proud :of my cursive actions 😛  I can’t have been going any faster than my cautious speed, maybe 50 or 60k/ph.  It scared me off.  As soon as I found the next town, which happened to be a coastal town, I pulled down a side street and found a rest area.  I pulled into there and turned the lights out.  I was the only car in the complex, which I imagine would be really happening during the day, as it seemed like a cool beach area.  I could hear the waves crashing heavily beyond the beach behind me.  I could also hear some sort of birds making weird calling.mating noises.  Such an annoying screech, but bearable.
I put the seat back, and reclined back.  I eventually decided I was gunna just sleep.  Fuck driving again.  I pulled out my other jacket from my bag and used it as a blanket, and huddled myself up in the driver’s seat of the car.
I was conscious of a cop coming in and fining me, as I know it’s illegal to sleep in your car in my home state (although I used to do it fairly often in my old Magna lol), but I wasn’t really sleeping anyway.  The heat from the air-con had made the car nice and toasty and was keeping me comfortable for the time being.  The jacket felt nice as a blanket too.

It was interesting though trying to tell when the sun was coming up, because it was a VERY bright night.  I’d been listening to the radio during my drive, just seeing what sort of music is available here – I was pretty happy to discover Triple J and listened to that for ages.  It was a toss (haha_) between that and ABC (don’t ask why even I don’t know lol), but on ABC people kept calling in and talking about how amazing the moon was.  I looked through the trees in front of me and it was only then that i realised that the moon was absolutely massive.  In fact, it’s still big right now… < ok I’ll leave that one alone 😛

So that explained why I could see all the wallabies eating on the side of the road.  I don’t think I saw any Tassie Devils, mostly kangaroos and wallabies.  They were my main concern cos they can do serious car damage!  I pulled over to the side of the highway and got out of my car shortly after hitting the roo, to inspect any damage.  Thank fuck I couldn’t see anything.

The sun came up as i reached ‘Four Mile Beach’, after I passed Bicheno, where I’d pulled over to ‘nap’.  I love the name of that town (Bicheno) for some reason – just sounds cool.
I got some nice views of the sun rising 🙂

Reforestation

 

I drove for what felt like ages after that.  I’d decided that I wanted to do the whole Tasmanian east coast as far as St Helens today.  And I did it.  i got to St Helens and spent a bit of time there, getting a few groceries (ie junk food) and I filled the car with fuel.  I knew I’d have another big drive ahead of me, and the last thing I needed was the run out of fuel.
St Helens is a sleepy little town, and the few people I came across seemed very friendly.  It was still early morning and a Sunday at that, so shops weren’t open yet, but I only had to wait a half hour for the IGA to open.  I saw a girl setting up shop at the fuel place across the road also.  Sweet.  I was a bit annoyed I couldn’t find any 24 hour fuel places the whole drive.  Just as well the car had a fair bit left and is economical.  So I got my stuff and pilled the car with $40 of fuel.  The lady couldn’t figure out the change and I told her I used to work in a servo as well.  She told me that she quite likes the job, but only does 15 hours a week.  I had to smile.  It is a pretty cruisy job most of the time – I’d have to imagine a small town during the day must be a very cruisy job!
 

 

Now was time for the long drive to Launceston.  I decided I wanted to spend the rest of my time in Tasmania in a place with civilisation, and phone reception!  Haha!
I was so happy when my phone eventually received a bar of signal!

 

It’s hard to tell from the pic, but this fascinated me – the clouds lining the top of and trying hard to get over the high mountain range to my right.  I was trying to take these pics with my phone whilst driving along haha.


And now the scenery becomes like a rural highway.  I was glad to be able to be doing the speed limit again, without the worry of damn marsupials.

It was when I reached this town that I had full phone reception!  I was so annoyed because I couldn’t ‘check-in’ to anywhere nor could I update my diary.
I only uploaded that last entry this afternoon as I got into Launceston, copied over from notepad 🙁  I hate when it all seems out of order 🙁
I love that Tassy has a town called Perth!

And for the first time on my entire drive, as I entered Launceston, the highway became two lames each way!  Bout time!

 

I am now in Launceston!  I pulled over to the side of the road, aware that I now had reception, and uploaded my previous entry from my laptop in the car LOL.  I had to do it before I wrote this one!  Unfortunately I couldn’t put the pics up, but I will, and they are the nice piccies! 🙂
 

O_O

I then did another crazy Matt spontaneous thing and pulled into a shopping centre cos I was dying to hang a piss, so i did that, and then I opened the laptop again and went on wotif.com and booked the mystery hotel for $85 a night.  I then paid for it, found out what the hotel was, put the address in the GPS, and drove straight here.
Yup.  The lady couldn’t find it when I arrived cos I’d literally just booked it hahaha.  She had to go to a back office computer and access Wotif to do it that way 🙂

This is where I’ll be for my final two nights.  I found my gym in this town as well!  I’ll go there tomorrow.  I can’t wait to go again.  I’ve missed it like crazy.
My friend Kyle (who looks incredible since he began working out) sent me a grindr msg saying he was horny and wanted to be thrown against a wall.  I sent him a message back saying, ‘Don’t SAY that!!!’ – he knows how hot I think he is and just plays on it haha.  Bastard!

Here is the hotel I got this time 🙂
 

Yeeeeah – 4.5 Star Mecure, centre of city.
 

Thanks for reading guys 🙂  I can’t believe I drove pretty much the whole East coast of Tasmania!  It is definitely something I am proud to have completed.
Launceston to me, is a lot like Toowoomba in it’s set up.  I did notice however that thee guys here are MUCH hotter than the guys in Hobart were =D
I went for a walk around the main streets today, but not much was open being a Sunday afternoon.  All I really wanted was a haircut! 🙂

Free day tomorrow to explore Launceston, and then I take the car to the car wash, fill it with fuel again and take it back and jump on a plane on Tuesday.  Hopefully all will be good.  It’s been so awesome driving a car that runs perfectly =) 
This week has felt like forever!  I could extend it, but I really should be a sensible and boring person for a while.