Doreen and Me: A Tasmania Campervan Lap, Wombat Included
Melbourne to Hobart, a campervan named Doreen, one Cradle Mountain wombat standoff, and a lot of early dinners.
I stalled the campervan four times in the rental yard before I'd even left the depot, with the bloke behind the counter watching through the window like he already regretted handing me the keys. Her name is Doreen. She's a rattly two-berth with a gearbox that only agrees to find reverse when it feels like it, and a fridge that runs on a threat rather than a switch. By day two I liked her more than most people I actually know.
Days 1-3: Hobart to Cradle Mountain
Cradle Mountain doesn't let you drive all the way in. You park at the visitor centre and catch the shuttle bus, like a normal, rule-following tourist, which isn't usually my department. The walk out to Dove Lake crosses buttongrass moorland for a good stretch before the mountain does anything dramatic, and then it rounds a corner and there it is, dolerite spires stacked up like they're showing off for the tourists. I said something out loud I'm not repeating, since nobody else needs proof I talk to scenery.
The wombat happened on the way back, about ten minutes short of the car park. It was sitting dead centre on the boardwalk, face down in the grass, eating with more focus than I've brought to any task in my adult life. I said excuse me. I said it twice. Turns out a wombat outranks you on a boardwalk, and I ended up doing an undignified detour through actual mud to get around an animal that never once looked up.
I have been overtaken, out-waited and generally defeated by a wombat, and I've told that story to at least four strangers since, mostly at the Cradle Mountain kiosk over a coffee that cost more than it should have. None of them laughed as hard as the story deserves. I'm blaming the wombat for that too.
Wombats, it turns out, have tenure. I do not.
— me, defeated on the boardwalk
Days 4-5: East coast to Freycinet
Don't drive at dusk
Tasmanian roads fill up with wallabies, wombats and possums from late afternoon onward.
Locals stop well before dark for a reason, so aim to be parked up by 5pm.
Tasmania's back roads fill up with wildlife right on dusk, so we started stopping by five most afternoons, which meant early dinners and a running joke that Doreen kept a strict bedtime. Coles Bay, the last town before Freycinet, mostly exists to sell you an ice cream and a national parks pass, and we needed both. The pass is $46.60 per vehicle for the day, which felt steep until I compared it to how much I'd already spent on coffee.
The walk up to the Wineglass Bay lookout is about ninety minutes return and entirely made of steps, which somebody has clearly built with fitter people in mind. At the top the bay does its famous white sand and blue water thing, genuinely lovely, and I stood there wheezing next to a family who'd apparently sprinted up. I told them I was pacing myself. They did not believe me, and honestly, neither did I.
Days 6-7: Hobart, Salamanca, and giving Doreen back
We looped back to Hobart in time for Salamanca Market on the Saturday, which is stalls, produce and a genuinely good amount of fudge for a town this size. Handing Doreen's keys back at the depot felt worse than I expected, which says more about my week than it does about a campervan with a broken fridge and a gearbox with opinions. The bloke at the counter asked how she'd gone. I told him she'd been perfect. I don't think either of us believed that either.
The Verdict
