Tasmania has some of the most incredible wildlife in the world. I was fortunate enough to experience this firsthand a few separate times. On our taxi ride from the Hobart airport to our first campsite, a few friends and I were trying not to nod off at 5 a.m., when suddenly our drive veered off the road, drove on dirt for about a hundred meters, and then got back in our lane like nothing happened. As we freaked out and asked our driver what in the world he was doing, he just pointed in the rearview mirror. There was a fully-grown wombat sleeping in the middle of the road. At around 40 kilograms, they can absolutely destroy a car on impact.
“Tazzie” is also one of the few places in the world not named Antarctica where you can see penguins. During our stay in Bichendo, the locals told us that if we headed down to the rocky coast around dusk, we’d see penguins. As the clock ticked from 8:00 to 8:30 to 9:00 without a single penguin, we were about to leave. But then, suddenly, one surfaced, sliding on its belly across the rocks. Then a dozen more; then three dozen more. In a matter of minutes, a frigid beach on the east coast of Tasmania had transformed into March of the Penguins.
A trip to Tasmania wouldn’t be complete without seeing the most famous animal there: the Tasmanian devil. The devil is small and eats mostly road kill; consequently, they are constantly in danger of being run over, as road signs all across Tasmania preach watching out for wildlife whilst driving. However, the devil is endangered, and their population is decreasing rapidly—and this problem has nothing to do with roads or cars. The devil population is afflicted with a swiftly spreading, untreatable facial tumor that is killing up to 90 percent of populations. The source of the tumor is officially unknown, but the general consensus is that it’s a terrible reaction to fertilizers and other chemicals put into the ground by humans. Consequently, the Tasmanian government has sequestered a healthy population of Tasmanian Devils as an “insurance population,” but that number is still in the low hundreds; meanwhile, tens of thousands die in the wild. Zoos and universities across Oceania are working to eradicate the disease, but little progress has been made.
The most beautiful location in all of Tasmania is the aptly named Bay of Fires in the northeast corner of the island. The granite rocky coast is stained with an orange lichen (moss type flora). Captain Tobias Furneaux landed there in 1773 and mistook the fiery rocks for actual fires. He reported back to mainland Australia that this Tasmanian coast had an incredibly dense aboriginal population, as there were so many campsites with fires. Upon further inspection, Furneaux realized the rocks themselves were orange and the name stuck. At dusk and dawn the water, the sky, and the rocks are all illuminated with an orange glow, creating one of the prettiest sights in the country. Sitting upon these scorched rocks at dusk, I noticed a flipper coming slowly into the bay. Four dolphins swam into the cove, most likely to spend the night in warmer weather. Even though spring is in full swing in Sydney, the capital city of Hobart sits at 42.88 degrees south of the equator, and the average temperature was about 17 degrees Celsius.
Wallabies, kangaroos, echidnas, and other exclusively Australian wildlife peppered the sides of the roads, the forests we traversed, the mountains we climbed, and the beaches we walked. As such, the Tasmanian government is extremely concerned with perpetuating the island’s wildlife. Signs pleading against the feeding of animals, the picking of flowers, and the removal of shells joined those that stressed careful driving. It only takes a short conversation with a local to realize they are proud of their efforts to keep Tasmania beautiful; they are doing everything they can to preserve Australia’s “last great temperate wilderness."
John (Jack) Coaty graduated from Georgetown's McDonough School of Business in 2017 with a major in finance and minor in history. He studied at the University of Sydney in Australia for the fall 2015 semester and blogged for the Junior Year Abroad Network.
