The AAT Kings driver keeping tourists safe on the road. Photo / Sue Preston
Travel writer Sue Preston boards a five-day coach tour around Tasmania and is presented with a surprise at every bend.
It wasn’t all that long ago that few Tasmanians would own up to having a convict in the family, but these days, AAT Kings travel director Carolyn Tipper tells us, everyone wants to have convict ancestry – and the wickeder, the better.
I would have liked to have claimed Billy Hunt as my ancestor, if only for his sheer audacity.
As Tipper relates to our group, as we near the former 19th-century penal colony of Port Arthur, the desperate Hunt, an inmate in the 1840s, took a dead kangaroo, skinned it, tied the hide around himself and began hopping out of the settlement.
Unfortunately, he hadn’t bargained on a guard with a taste for fresh meat. As the guard raised his musket, the former London chimney sweep – imprisoned for stealing a handkerchief – threw off his disguise, shouting “Don’t shoot, I’m Billy Hunt”.
You won’t find Billy Hunt in history books but his story is just one of many brought vividly to life by Tipper, who is passionate about sharing what she loves about Tasmania and whose own great-great-great-grandmother Alice arrived aboard a convict ship in the early days of the colony.
Once inside the Port Arthur Historic Site, I too get a convict of my own, if only for a few hours, by picking a playing card in the Lottery of Life.
By matching my card to a drawer in the Port Arthur Gallery, I have a name for “my” convict, his criminal history, his prison life and eventual fate.
I’d stepped aboard an AAT Kings coach a few days earlier and this visit to Port Arthur, a significant convict site about 90-minutes from Hobart, was another day filled with the unexpected.
Settling into the coach had felt like a sweet surrender. No roads to navigate, no accommodation to book, no meals to organise, every day mapped out with care and precision by others. But as I was about to discover, each day was far from predictable. All I had to do was sit back and let the day’s adventures unfold.
The devil’s in the details
Before this tour brought me face-to-face with a Tasmanian devil, I thought they were ugly carnivores with a face only a mother could love. Their gaping jaws deliver the strongest bite-for-size of any mammal in the world and their ferocious teeth can go through bone like butter.
Yet baby Tassie hand-reared devils are cute. Snuggled around their keeper’s neck, they could easily be mistaken for a fur stole and have kitten-soft hair I can’t resist stroking. It’s the only time you will want to get this close to a devil. Later, I see exactly what they can do when a gaiter-wearing keeper gives a group of adult devils a wallaby leg and it’s torn apart in a matter of minutes.
A museum dedicated to poo – who knew?
The picture-book town of Richmond, with its beautiful 1820s Georgian buildings, has a quirky science museum dedicated entirely to the intriguing world of animal droppings and what you can learn from them.
Founder and owner of the Pooseum, Karin Koch, explained how she came up with the idea: “I was looking for a new project when I read a story about a small caterpillar being able to launch its poo up to 1.5m away. A person 1.8m tall would have to eject their poo 70m to compete. I was so intrigued I started to do some research on animal faeces.”
Among the exhibits are some extraordinary paintings, including a portrait of Tasmanian cricket legend David Boon. Tasmanian artist Marion Robertson used a combination of poo from wedge-tailed eagles, wombats, sugar gliders and Tasmanian devils to take out the Pooseum’s Expressive Portraits: Faces with Faeces art prize.
“David is loved for his larrikin antics and is a great Australian sportsman so I specifically sourced faeces from iconic Australian animals,” Robertson said.
Doo Town delights
Richmond may have the best scallop pies in Tasmania, but Doo-Lishus could take the prize for the best fish and chips.
Our coach pulls up at the Doo-Lishus van in quirky Doo Town, a small shack community on the southern end of Pirates Bay on the Tasman Peninsula.
In 1935, a Hobart architect got the ball rolling when he named his shack Doo I. It wasn’t long before everyone was dooing-it. Doo-Me and Doo-Us (as in it’ll do us) came next and today most of the town’s 30 or so shacks have “Doo” names – such as Doo Nix, Make Doo, Much-a-Doo, Just Doo It, Thistle-Doo-Me and Dr Doolittle. In 1972, the authorities agreed to the residents’ petition to change the name from Pirates Bay to Doo Town.
On your own, you could have easily driven past Doo Town without noticing it. Dropping in here was just another example of how much richer travel can be when you leave the planning to someone who knows every inch of Tasmania, from its wild convict tales to its hidden gems.
The writer was a guest of AAT Kings.