This is the life

So, Tas­mania. Can I just say how good it is to be paid to travel, and have the most amaz­ing food paid for in the most incred­ible places? 

It was good to get the Dismal Swamp thing out of the way on Day One so it wasn’t hanging over my head. That night, I stayed at Beach­side Retreat, this gor­geous pair of eco-cot­tages right on the edge of a private beach. I wandered into Stan­ley to check out the art gal­lery run by the son of the people who own Beach­side Retreat. The works were stun­ning: evoc­at­ive impres­sion­ist land­scapes by Anne Shim­mins, beau­ti­ful fur­niture from Tas­manian tim­bers by Mark Bishop and Toby Murnison (the owners). I ended up asking them to put aside a curvy, liquid, sea-green bowl cast from hot glass by Kim White. That’s $220 I don’t really have. I went for drinks with these guys and chat­ted about travel and Esto­nia and more. I went out to dinner on my own and had local oysters, scal­lops wrapped in smoked salmon and fried in beer batter with cur­ried may­on­naise and a selec­tion of Tas­manian cheeses. 

In the morn­ing, I got up and went walk­ing on the beach, col­lect­ing shells. Next was a trip to see Aus­tralian Fur Seals hanging around on a rock near Stan­ley. They were gor­geous: about a hun­dred of them, lying on the rock, tum­bling over each other like kit­tens, frol­ick­ing in the water. Then back to Beach­side Retreat where it was half-tide and per­fect for wild oyster hunt­ing. Armed with a screw­driver for pris­ing them off rocks, a bucket for col­lect­ing them and a shuck­ing knife, I set about gath­er­ing my lunch. Unfor­tu­nately for me, they’re tough bug­gers. I man­aged to cut myself on the edges of oysters and on the rocks quite a bit. It was easier to just open them on the rock and eat them there than to get them off the rock “whole”, so that’s what I star­ted doing. A little gritty, but incred­ibly fresh.

There was a guy with a heli­copter that I was hoping to go for a ride with but he said it was too windy, so instead I hopped in my hire car (also paid for by Tour­ism Tas­mania) and drove to the west coast, down through these wild coastal dunes and then inland past some ugly clear­felled catch­ment areas to the sort of place that feeds my soul: Balfour Rain­forest Track. I didn’t have time to do the whole thing (two-and-a-half hours) but I did a little of it and I’ll be back.

By this point, I was run­ning out of time to get to my next “offi­cial” appoint­ment (the drive and rain­forest was most def­in­itely off the offi­cial itin­er­ary… it’s part of the con­tested and endangered Tark­ine area and the PTB would­n’t have approved). I had looked at the map and could­n’t really work out why they thought this other place fitted in with what I was trying to write. Three hours’ drive away, it seemed a little forced. Would ‘real’ tour­ists stay one night in Stan­ley and then a second night in West Kentish on a week­end getaway?

I got to West Kentish and was even more con­fused. The town is one street, really. I could­n’t find the place I was sup­posed to be. Finally, I made it to Eagle’s Nest Retreat. A two-storey place on a hill, at first I was look­ing for recep­tion or some­thing… and then it dawned on me. The whole two-storey place was the retreat. It was entirely mine for the night. I walked inside and found a note for me from my hosts.

In front of me were floor-to-ceil­ing win­dows fram­ing the majestic Mount Roland. The interior was all black­wood and pol­ished boards. A black­wood trunk with bark still on it stood in the centre lead­ing up to a sky­light at the heart of the octa­gonal build­ing, the roof and exposed beams lean­ing in towards it. I climbed the black­wood stair­case: at the top was a large spa and on the mezzan­ine a huge bed, facing that incred­ible moun­tain view. Down­stairs again, I real­ised there was another, more usual-style spa bath in the bath­room. Out­side, intim­ate tables and old rusted farm machinery made into art dotted the space, with a small foun­tain adding the final touch. And then I stumbled on yet another spa, out­doors, a deep green bath tucked behind a low wall, with flowers sur­round­ing it and two old-fash­ioned pipes over it.

As there’s no five-star res­taur­ant in the tiny town, they send a chef to you. She was due to arrive very shortly so I had no time to explore my spas (does anyone here NOT know how much I adore baths?). Dinner was garlic scal­lops for entrée and pink ling for mains (whenever I tell these people I’m semi-veget­arian, they always cook me fish rather than have to grapple with veget­ables…). We drank a nice gewà¼rtztram­iner and she said she’d left me my dessert in the fridge.

Des, the guy who came up with the idea for the place, arrived and we had pro­fes­sional chats, then I got my chocol­ate cup filled with car­a­mel and topped with straw­ber­ries (oh. my. god.) out of the fridge, poured another glass of riesling and jumped into the spa (the upstairs one). I felt a bit weird in the big party spa alone. (Can I just men­tion how much I was regret­ting not having a part­ner with me at this point? But given that my inter­per­sonal rela­tion­ships right now are less than healthy all around, that wasn’t going to happen, so I decided not to be sad and instead con­cen­trate on everything else.) Anyhow, I fin­ished the dessert and decided to go down­stairs and run the spa bath instead, filled it with a milk bath product thought­fully provided, put on some music, grabbed a book, settled back and soaked. Wow.

Sun­rise was unbe­liev­ably, stun­ningly, intensely beau­ti­ful. Did I men­tion this place had 360-degree views? I laid in bed, just gazing at the expanse of pink hori­zon and the chan­ging reflec­tions on the moun­tain. Then I dragged myself out of bed, put on the big fluffy white bath­robe, padded down­stairs, filled the out­side spa with “exhil­ar­a­tion” bubble bath (white grapefruit, tas­manian pep­per­mint, lemon myrtle) and glor­ied in that for a while. Made myself break­fast with the stuff in the fridge, made hot chocol­ate because I real­ised I’d been so relaxed the night before I’d for­got­ten to have it, and then dragged myself away from the view.

Next stop was Cre­at­ive Paper in Burnie. I’m also a sta­tion­ery whore… and this was beau­ti­ful, hand­made papers. I spent more money I don’t have and headed for the plane back to Melbourne.

Now, I have two prob­lems: how do I get back there and actu­ally afford this for myself? how on earth am I going to fit all this into one art­icle? The latter ques­tion is some­what easier: I’ve already worked out this isn’t going to be writ­ten as if it’s one week­end, but rather two ideas for quiet retreats in Tasmania.