I stop dead in my tracks as I walk towards the spa. I am booked for a hot stone massage at 4:30 p.m. at Cradle Mountain Lodge in Tasmania. But there’s been an unexpected delay. Just a few feet away from me in the grass, a big brown beast chomps on a patch of grass – separating me from my destination. 
The creature is not something I recognize as I flip through my mental Rolodex, trying to identify what stands before me. It looks like a hairy pig with the face of a teddy bear. But appearances can be deceiving. I’m not sure what to do here. Do I drop and roll, play dead, yell, or throw it the lint-covered mint I have in my jacket pocket?
It is eyeing me with an air of aloofness, still chewing. I decide to step gingerly toward it and further along the path to the spa in the distance. After I’m clear of the creature, I make a run for it.
When I arrive at the spa, I alert the receptionist. “There’s a thing out there!” She looks at me quizzically and, in a soothing spa voice asks, “What thing?” I describe the beast that nearly ate me alive. Rather than horror or concern, she laughs: “You saw a wombat.” She chuckles and tells me it’s as ferocious as a Care Bear.
This is Tasmania, at the southern tip of Australia, home to many wombats. And it just so happens that I was very fortunate. Most Australians never get to see one. Lucky me.
Outside the spa, Tasmania offers a multitude of unique experiences packed into a relatively small island (about 310 kilometres from west to east, roughly the size of Scotland). Topography ranges from the mountains of the Central Highlands to temperate forests, rolling hills and sandy beaches. It’s giving New Zealand a run for the money as an eco-friendly place that still offers long stretches of unspoiled environment. You can drive for miles and never see a house, a person, or a highway billboard. Few places have such limited commercialization. And we Canadians will truly appreciate its weather: Winters are practically balmy with an average temperature of about 12 Celsius (53 degrees Fahrenheit).
Before you start thinking that Tasmania is just one big national park, check out its capital, Hobart. With a population of 194,000, it’s hardly an urban jungle, but it has all the good things that come with city life. It is Australia’s second oldest city (after Sydney), established officially in 1904, when Europeans arrived to farm and settle villages. Homes and businesses were built primarily by convict labour.
Like elsewhere in Australia, prisoners were sent to Tasmania to serve their sentences. To see a glimpse of the city’s criminal past, visit the court and penitentiary chapel on Brisbane Street. Its dark cold underground passages, execution yard and tiny solitary confinement cells are disturbingly eerie. But they do not even compare with Port Arthur, considered to be the harshest prison in the British Empire until it closed in 1877. You can even take the kids on a family-friendly tour.
Personally, coming nose-to-snout with a wombat was scary enough. I skipped the prison tour.
- Michele Sponagle
- Photo Credits: Susan Flashman, Michele Sponagle
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