Tasmania

Tasmania. Its name to me means an exotic and far away place, as it is an island you can reach it by plane or by boat, it is one of the seven states of the country of Australia.

Two years ago during my circumnavigation by motorcycle of this great country, I did not calculate well my timing and by the time I reached Melbourne, on of two ferries had stopped running due to the Winter approaching and there was a Holiday that made it impossible for me to get transportation. I had given up on seeing Tasmania, but my Australian friends Haydn and Dianne Durnell, came thru once more making me "an offer I could not refuse" Haydn recently exchange his large BMW motorcycle for a lower and lighter one and he offered to me on loan refusing as usual any thing in exchange. And here I am, following the carefully planned route that Dianne suggested and organized for me, she is an above average tourism advisor with extensive experience in traveling in Australia and around the world.

The previous trip had a length of 22,000 km, this one is a small one of only 5 or 6000 km and trying to see the places that I could not see during the first trip.

In Melbourne the Durnells have a couple of nice friends , in whose house I spent a night and they have offered me again their hospitality for the night before I board the Ferry "Spirit of Tasmania" which departs from the Melbourne,s dock. This will happen next Sunday March 11th, at 9:30 am, and one has to be there ready to board two hours in advance. The trip takes 12 hours and arrives in Devonport where I already reserved a Hotel to spend the first night. It is not wise to travel at night around Australia due to the nocturnal animals that crash agains all the vehicles that dare to circulate after 5 or 6 pm.

Tasmania like the rest of the country is home to thousands of Kangaroos, how did they get to that island???

According to what the experts in Geology and Anthropology know, about 35,000 years ago give or take a few thousand years as nobody knows for sure, both Tasmania , Australia and the islands of Indonesia (13,000) were all part of a continent that during a period of global warming of geological proportions that melted the ice from the polar caps and elevated the sea level flooding this continent and forming all these islands we see now.

Before this cataclism occurred, men and animals just had to walk South from Asia and or Africa and colonized the areas that are isolated by the Oceans now.

The history of Tasmania is a very tragic one, as far as it is known the Dutch "discovered" it first and gave it the name of Van Damien Island in honor of the Dutch Governor of the Duth Indian Company that ordered and paid for the trip of a military Dutch by the name of Tasman, and later his name replaced the first one in an attempt to change the image of the Island.

This image was due to the cruelty of men, England that was always fighting with the Dutch and the French( the French had landed in Tasmania too, before the British) decided to use the isolated island as a prison, first they made Australia a prison (after they could not send their prisoners to America because of their independence).

Tasmania was ideal. nobody cared that it was already inhabited, it was remote, with a harsh climate and surrounded by treacherous oceans the made any escape impossible, and they sent the worse convicts, with luck they would die (many did) and would cease to be a burden. These convicts were mainly men but there were many women and children that were made convicts due to the harsh and cruel laws that the rich British had passed to protect their wealth, and practically all the women if they were not prostitutes

initially they were made prostitutes by the men, convicts and military guards that constantly raped them and infected them, impregnating many in the process, due to this some historians believe that all or many of them are descendants of a convict or a prostitute, and this at some point in the past represented a heavy social burden.

After many generations these social problems have been eliminated, what persists is the fact that a terrible genocide was committed with the elimination of ever aborigine present in the island, and process was planned and carefully implemented until its complete success. The amount of these people in Australia and the size of the country impeded the complete elimination of the aborigines that continue to represent an "unsolved and constant problem" and one that the Australians try to ignore like the proverbial "elephant in the room"

The new generations of Australians have transfomed Tasmania and now it has become a magnet for tourism exploiting its fertility, his scenic views, and its cruel history.

It is a remote spot and you have have the desire to reach it , I am just about to reach that goal.

I have been on the road in my motorcycle for two days, I am following a route inland, avoiding the coastal and big cities traffic , eventually I will cross the chain of the Blue Mountains that I missed in the previous trip, and there will be other places that I will mention in this blog.I started in a town called Murwillumbah, where the Durnells live and drove West and then South, tonight I am in Singleton and tomorrow I will continue SW avoiding Canberra and Sidney on my way to Melbourne. See you on the road, yesterday it rain but today practically all day! Victor