Tasmania by foot

     Well, it all started about two weeks prior to departure...  Being the arrogant and as far as Im concerned mentally deficient American I am, i set out to plan an 11 day trip to Tasmania, last minute!   I went to the Tassie travel centre to get some info on what i could do while I was there and I instantly fell in love with an eight day hike through the last temperate wilderness area in the southern hemisphere and one of only a few in the world.  My collar bone was still broken, on its way to being healed, but nonetheless broken.  I wasn't about to let this stand in my way.  I bought my boat tickets instantly while i was there, a smaller catamaran style boat appropriatly named the Devil Cat for the trip there, and a huge cruise ship called the Spirit of Tasmania for the ride back.  I went to purchase the bare minimals for my hike.  I read in my Lonely planet that the weather was unpredictable, but usually bad.  The talked a lot about rain so i bought a pancho as if this would keep me dry.  It also mentioned that a fuel stove was essntial, but i thought that was the stupidest thing i'd ever heard.  I was a minimalist (for this trip at least :) )  so i figured bread and peanut butter would suffice as a meal for 8 days.  The book also mentioned that it could get cold so i brought along a warm wool sweater, a fleece, and my North Face jacket (good to like 60 below zero)  I figured i wouldnt need it all but just in case.  I also brought some gloves and a hat to humor myself. 
   The book also mentioned that the walk could be done in 5-6 days at a descent pace. I figured i would be much faster than descent considering my remarkable athletic ability:) so i tried to see if i could fit some other stuff in while i was there.  I got a copy of the bus schedule over there, kind of like Tasmania's Greyhound, and began to plan out some side trips. Becasue they only have one bus a day, 3 days a week, planning sidetrips was anything but convienent.  Anywhere i went I had to stay for at least two nights.  As you can imagine it took me hours to come up with a schedule to see as much as possible in eleven days and still do this "Overland Trek" hike as they called it.   To do this, I now only had 4 days on the trail, not a problem, Id sprint it, hold my camera out in front of me and push the button everyonce in awhile.  So i called the bus company to make my reservations and this operator, probobly also the owner, informed me that since it was Easter Break, the buses were not running.  I guess everyone without a car in Tassie had to use their sheep to get around that week.  So all my plannin was useless and a new plan was neccessary.  I decided that I would just do the hike and take the full 8 days.  To do this i had to take the boat to Tasmania and then jump on a bus and go 4 hours south to the capital (and only) city, Hobart.  I would spend the night there and take a bus back up north 2 hours to the beginning of the hike.  Again, this was the only way I could get where i wanted to with the now really limiting bus schedules.  From there i was to walk  100km to the noth end of the park, hop on a bus and get to my boat intime to leave 10 days later.  Perfect plan, or so I thought....
    I it turned out im not really a minimalist.  Food is not really my favorite item so i sacrificed it in the name of other more important items such as my phone, my CD player, two cameras,and a lot of batteries (20).  I also had this tour book which although small, weighed a good 5 pounds!  When my pack was all together (mind you I had very few items of clothing just warm stuff) my pack weighed roughly half my weight.  Since Im not an expirieced hiker (or bush walker) I figured this was normal.  After all everything in it was absolutley essential to my survival.  I had a tent and a sleeping bag attached to the outside and off i went at 6 am on thursday morning.  The trip started out a little sketchy when i woke up early that thursday with an enormous hangover.  Jim and I had been at our little pub eatin and havin a talking over drinks, real deep stuff as always.  A few Guinesses turned into about 6 or 7 and that explains the hangover.  Anyway, so im wondering around the city at 6 am with half of me on my back catchin trams to reach my final destination, The Devil Cat.  A little history on the boat...  This ship was built in order to provide a faster way for people to get between TAssie and the mainland because the cruise ship, the spirit,  took 14 hours to do the trip.  So it was a catamaran design big enough to have two decks for cars and two huge lounge areas for all the passengers.  The boat was beautiful, real state of the art, and was by no stretch of the imagination small.  BUt it wasn't big enough...  As it turns out the designer of the boat had warned the buyers that it wasn't built to withstand the Bass Straight which has the roughest waters in the world, literally.  It was more for the English channel.  So this boat was weather dependent as they called it, not able to do the trip if the swells were over 4meters.  Im not sure what that meant, but i was hoping I wouldn't show up sail out a few miles and then turn around becasue the boat could potentially fall apart.  Anyway, my trip was the last running of the boat because the seas were too rough in the winters.
   As we left port I prayed for calm waters, i could barely stand walking on land with my hangover let alone swaying in 7meter swells in a boat that was designed to handle only 2-3 ideally.  About an hour into the trip, the reason the boat didnt run in the winters became painfully obvious.  As we exited Port Phillip Bay into the Bass Straight the water went from bathtub to typhon in a matter of minutes.  The swells had to be over 6 meters (which is 18 feet) for the lazy ones who are anti-conversion.  Im talking huge. The boat was tipping 45 degrees to each side, back and forth, back and forth.  People were running up to the top deck outside, which was about a total area of 20 square feet, to vomit over the side of the boat.  This proved to be a challange in itself considering the movement of the boat.  People would be running into the walls and into poles because the ground was anything but level, it was like  a fun house!  Plus once outside and hanging over the edge, freezing cold water was hittin them in the face as the boats top deck leaned closer to the swells.  I of course didnt have the pleasure of participating, i was so hung over that to get up and relieve myself would have been a near death expirience.  I held strong, using the skills I had learned Freshman year after rough nights out!  I found it amazing though that there was in fact a group of Aussie blokes who were havin a little party in a corner and they didnt seem to notice the perril of the rest of the passengers.  The started drinkin at 7am when they boarded and by 10 they were hammered.  Yellin and screamin and laughing, they provided a good distraction from the immense pain I was expiriencing.   The boat finally landed, 6 hours later, in a small port town in northern Tasmania.... 
    
      As I got off, I ran into a couple of friends of mine also with the UC study abroad program, Mark and Carrie.  It turns out they were in tassie for an organised tour around the state and wouldn't be leaving till the next Saturday.  They were going to be on my boat on the way home so we made plans to meet up at the bar.  We all hopped on to a charter bus parked out in front of the boat that was taking us to the closest large town, which was Launceston.  Once there I dropped my bag off at the bus station and Mark, Carrie and I headed off to grab a bite to eat before my bus took off to Hobart.  Some guy at the hostel they were staying at told us that there was a good pizza pub down the street and so he drew us a map of where it was.  That sounded good to us so we headed out, walking towards the X on this piece of paper.  As it turns out the guy wasn't all that good with directions, location, or an