Okay, so Tasmania has been by far, hands down, far and away, to infinity and beyond, and a cherry on top the greatest place in Australia so far. So amazing, in fact, that I’m gonna be breaking this up into a handful of blog posts just cuz there’s so many dope-as pictures and tales of adventure.

Story 1: New Friends

Before I even landed in Tasmania, I met some other travelers (Michiel, Aline, and Jeremy) on the ferry and we shared a bunch of (maybe too many?) beers together up in the lounge before bed. Fast forward to the next day, and I am waiting in front of the ferry trying to figure out where to go and Michiel and Aline come out to get to their rental car. Well the car isn’t there.

So I invite them to join me! We fit all of the stuff in the car and we set off, directionless. Got to the base of Mt. Roland (didn’t know that was what it was called at the time) and drove around on gravel roads, trying to have an adventure. This led to Coco and I doing our first creek and river crossings together and yeah, was an adventure! As we kept driving we saw a sign that pointed to Walls of Jerusalem.

Not knowing what that was, and guessing it was maybe a viewpoint, we followed the sign up more windy roads to a parking lot. Once there, we asked some hikers where the viewpoint was. They laughed and explained that it was a big national park with overnight hikes, but that it was awesome and we should do it.

Pretty sure the following conversation went something like this:

Me: “Sorry guys, I don’t have a proper overnight backpack or any food – I don’t think I can do this”
Aline: “We can throw some of your stuff in our backpack. We have food too!”
Michiel: “yeah, but we don’t have any way to cook the food. I haven’t had time to buy fuel.”
Random hikers in the parking lot: “Here, we have some camp fuel.”
Michiel: “Well can we buy it off you?”
Random hikers: “Nah we don’t really want any money, how about we trade something!”
Aline: “Well I have some energy bars!’

And there’s me just watching this all unfold, and off we departed, on our way through the Walls of Jerusalem National Park, hiking up King Solomon’s Stairs in the golden evening light and setting up camp as night fell.

Then the possums attacked (and ate our remaining power bars). Luckily Aline was there to fight them off and won a tug of war with her backpack against one of the greediest ones.

And then we saw a spotted quoll!! Apparently these are super rare (so rare I don’t have a picture of them).

And just like that, Day 1 in Tasmania drew to a close with far more adventure than I was expecting and some new friends right off the bat.

I think that that day was very amazing for all of us and was just about the best introduction to Tasmania we could have ever asked for. We ended up travelling together for the next 2 weeks (they cancelled their car rental) and many more adventures were had.

I think if there’s anything to pull from this, it’s that saying yes to new opportunities and new people can lead to experiences, friendships, and memories that you could never dream of otherwise!

By saying yes to things I wouldn’t normally… such as driving around strangers I’d met for about an hour, driving my 4×4 through a river, bartering hiking supplies from parking lot hikers and spontaneously hiking overnight into the mountains, I started off Tasmania on the right foot and set an amazing tone for the rest of my time on the small, yet mighty island!

So there you go… A mini story about how I learned to say YES to cool things. And how it was awesome.

As always, a couple songs I’ve been jamming to lately are below the pic. Cheers!!