Coles Beach, The Tasmanian Arboretum
Leaving Hobart, I made my way up to the north side of the island and the city of Devonport. There I met up with some people who were there on a working holiday visa, and together we went to the nearby Coles Beach. Although the day started a bit cold and cloudy, the weather got hot and the clouds gave way to the sun. And with the wind slowing down, it was a great day to go to the beach.
In my haste to leave the hostel and get going, I forgot to bring a towel with me. While swimming was not an option for me, it was still nice to be by the water, get a bit of a tan, and be with other people. It was a relaxing day in a relaxing place, and even though I didn’t do much other than laying on the sand, I felt quite happy about it.
After the relaxing day at the beach I wanted to go to The Tasmanian Arboretum, which I thought was simply a fancy term for a botanic garden. Either way, it sounded like a fun place to visit. But it turned out that there are no buses that go to the area, and the only way to get there is with a vehicle.
One of the people I went to the beach with expressed interest in going to the arboretum, so we got together again in order to go together. As my partner for the day was not keen on driving, I sat behind the wheel for the first time since I arrived in Australia, completely by chance.
The only other experience I had driving on the left side of the road was in Japan. This time the car I was driving was fairly boring, and I was a lot more relaxed driving it. We quickly left Devonport, and after making a couple of wrong turns we got to the arboretum. The entrance was very easily missed and the car park was small, which didn’t fit in my mind to something that’s supposed to be a big tourist attraction.
After parking the car, instead of buying tickets we came across an honesty box. We were supposed to just put money in there (which we did), but to me it just seemed like a weird thing to have there.
We crossed a little bridge, passed the closed kiosk where some people sat down to eat, and started to walk around without any clear sense of direction or purpose. Pretty quickly, I got the feeling that I might have been wrong about The Tasmanian Arboretum. While there were some colorful flowers near the entrance, they were not so common beyond that point. It felt less like a botanic garden and more like a park. Quite a nice park on a nice sunny day.
Me and my travel partner walked around looking at the different plants which were mostly green, and felt at ease. It wasn’t very exciting, but it didn’t have to be. We walked along clear paths, and then not so clear paths, looking all around us. There were different areas in the arboretum, and each of them had trees and plants from different regions and counties.
Other than the plants, we saw some wildlife there as well. There were different species of birds in there, walking around, swimming in the lake, or flying above us. There were the occasional insects as well, but they were not very interesting.
And then we saw a sign that said “platypus crossing”. We waited around for a little bit, went to a nearby observatory, and then kept walking a bit more, but we didn’t see it. So after taking a stroll around the park, we came back to the crossing area and waited. And then we got bored and started chatting.
It felt like we were there for a while until eventually, completely by chance, I turned around and saw a platypus right in the middle of the crossing. I pointed it out excitedly, but by the time I got the smartphone out to try and take a picture it was already gone. We stayed there for a while longer, hoping another one would show up, until eventually the hour was getting late and it was time to go home.
Even though I didn’t get any pictures of this creature (which I was told was quite rare), it was still a fun experience. My time in Devonport was coming to an end, and even though I wasn’t there for long, I was glad that I stopped in this city before going back to the mainland of Australia.