EMMA YOUNG — Em and Stu do Australia Part 4: Tasmania

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Our hopes of spending September and October in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria had gradually died throughout August as COVID took hold.

But the emails saying our tickets for Harry Potter the Cursed Child and Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge in Melbourne were cancelled were the final nail in the coffin.

It wasn’t just theatre. Gone was the plan for Stu’s 40th on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast with some of his oldest friends. Ditto our dates to introduce Augie to his cousin, uncle, great-aunt and uncle and many of our old friends across Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and country Victoria.

Instead we flew from Alice Springs to Hobart on September 1 with no plan apart from to go somewhere Mark McGowan would be likely to let us back from.

Here, thankfully fate did bring us friends: my mate Lencie flew over for a week to see us, and my friend and former colleague Marta caught up with us too as our holidays coincided.

Furthermore, after the NT wringer, Hobart was well able to meet our desire for quiet houses with real floors and walls and temperature control and bedrooms for Augie, for city streets with shops and restaurants, green grass and luxuriant gardens.

We resolved that for the rest of the trip we would stay for a minimum of a week per location.

So we embarked on a very different kind of tourism than that of July and August. With nary a large red rock to be seen, we walked the hilly streets of South Hobart, where towering hedges afforded only glimpses of the heritage stone mansions and flower-saturated grounds within. We visited the one-of-a-kind Museum of Old and New Art – twice! – rode the Posh Pit on the MONA ferry, went to the museum, browsed Salamanca Markets, drove up Mount Wellington and ate fish and chips on the waterfront.

Re-sleep-training Augie took most of the week and was an undeniable stressor, as was making him navigate the city streets of Hobart in his hated car seat. So while sad to farewell our friends, we were also relieved to retreat to Bruny Island (setting of Heather Rose’s Bruny, my top read of 2020) for week 2, where, with Augie finally sleeping again, we relaxed in a way we hadn’t since the first week in Broome.

Bruny was just magic. This island off Tassie’s south coast is like Margaret River in its peaceful forested beauty and the type of genteel activities on offer (nature-wine-cheese-arts-repeat). But it’s much smaller (in town size not geography), more affordable, and has a casual, shabby spookiness all its own, with shacks and caravans much more common than elaborate houses.

Both the most challenging and most rewarding effort was a Pennicott wildlife cruise. “Oh, babies usually fall asleep on the way home,” the guides told us. HAH! A long, rough ride in freezing temperatures with a baby who’d missed his nap and was thoroughly overwrought was at times a frenzied effort, but it was hands down my most special ever dolphin viewing and a view of Tasmania’s spectacular wild coastal scenery you can’t get anywhere else.

For the rest of the week we organised everything around Augie’s naps, kept drive times short and activities no more challenging than leisurely strolls or tastings of beer, whiskey, cheese, wine or chocolate. We had an ocean view, a log fire, total privacy, room for Augie to play, and really felt like we were on an idyllic holiday.

Then of course we had to shoot ourselves in the foot and leave Bruny for a Luxury Escapes deal at a boutique hotel 25 minutes south of Hobart.

We booked while deep in Northern Territory desperation, when it seemed like a hotel room with a one-year-old for a week would be wonderful. We could put him to sleep in the bathroom, we reasoned, and somehow cobble together hotel-room fodder as we had done in our babyless past.

It will be fine! I said brightly to Stu, waving the phone at him with its web page with its attractive discounts and sumptuous photos of romantic couples’ retreat.

We arrived with a hellishly tired baby who’d journeyed hours from Bruny and was fiending for a nap (but not in car thanks), to find a very small and very BRIGHT hotel room with windows reaching to a high ceiling and no partition between bed and bath areas.

Like vampires seeking a crypt and finding a beach, Stu and I were full of dismay but had to find a way for Augie to nap, and fast. When you see yawning and rubbing eyes you know time is of the essence.

Imagine me sending Stu for a Word with staff then putting Augie on floor and hauling a heavy sofa away from beneath the windowsill, creating a pocket for the porta-cot between the wall and the back of the couch.

Then pulling the floor-length curtain out to drape it over the cot and top of couch, creating a tent to try to block porta-cot’s view of rest of room.

Stu returning saying staff conferring, then us trying to block light from window with our own blackout blind (curtain was only decorative and not light blocking). I climbing to reach top of window with our curtain, perched one foot on couch top and one on windowsill, mouth full of clothespegs, Stu trying to help and watch Augie on the floor.

Yes we got him to sleep, no it wasn’t an experience we cared to repeat, and we threw ourselves on the mercy of staff. Thankfully a different room was found, bigger and with a bathroom we could shut the door on after rugging the baby up enough to mitigate cold tiled bathroom!

Frugal hotel room cooking and eating with only a fridge, a microwave, a bathroom sink and a snow-white carpet can be a fun challenge for a couple, but not so much for a whole week with a baby adventuring through some very specific solids needs and also sleeping in front of said sink. Add to this two fire alarm evacuations in freezing weather separating Augie from his bed (and nappy bag! oops) and you get a couple feeling distinctly unromantic and rather relieved to leave this beautiful place despite its very lovely and obliging staff.

Hence, the next rule: all accommodations to include kitchens and a separate bedroom for Augie, that is, from now on to haemorrhage money in spirit of acceptance.

*From now on the baby sleeps in a crib.*

Thus we made the scenic drive to spend the last week of September in an extremely nice AirBnB in Launceston, winding through a bucolic landscape to a city that while like Hobart is sadly quiet post-COVID, is also like Hobart in being beautifully hilly, historic and flowery – Hobart and Launceston feel more like English towns than Australian ones.

The lure of Launceston really is the day trips available from it though, and by now, burnt out on sightseeing and driving, we did rather little apart from short forays into and just outside the city.

We gorged ourselves on all the wines and cheeses we were accumulating in this foodie paradise and speaking of gorging (sorry) the sight of the week was certainly Cararact Gorge, a wonderful natural playground any city would be proud of.

The quiet family time was extremely rewarding, too, especially as Stu and I were both together to see Augie take his first steps at just under 14 months.

But facing the fact that we were overloaded from sustaining a travelling household with Augie, limited in the scope of possible activities due to the lack of babysitting support, and limited in the destinations we could reach given the border situation, meant it was time for a change.

We decided to reframe the situation and call it an opportunity for me to progress my next novel. We would settle in a Hobart AirBnB for the month of October, where Stu would return to full-time fathering, me to full-time writing.

Here, with Stu returning to Augie-speed activities and schedules (library, rhyme time, swimming, baby gym), and me allowed to shut the door and write for five hours a day, we became happy once again.

*Pink granite knuckles at Sleepy Bay, Freycinet, break down into pale pink sand.*

We still fell exhausted into bed every night but breathed easier, playing house in a gorgeous corner of North Hobart, in a house we could never afford in real life, sightseeing in late afternoons on a miniature scale, with pretty walks and forays into Hobart’s impressive selection of city bookshops.

Then… in swooped my in-laws once again with oodles of babysitting energy. Following an unfortunate three-day lockdown after their arrival, they made it possible for Stu and I to let our hair down enough to go on one full day trip to Port Arthur, and even an overnight trip – our first night off since becoming parents!

We seized the opportunity to see the famed beauty of the Tasmanian east coast and drove along a winding highway to Bicheno, where we braved the shoreline on a rainy night to see fairy penguins swim ashore from a hard day’s fossicking at sea and join their mates and nesting chicks. We went to Freycinet National Park and walked to the Wineglass Bay lookout and Sleepy Bay, and even went out to breakfast!

If we could only import family and friends, we could happily live in Hobart, we thought. But the final month of work and play was calling, this time in an equally beautiful (and admittedly warmer) city: Adelaide!

JOBS TALLY
Bookshops visited: 7. Parmas eaten: 2