Written By Cara Laban
@travelling.with.anxiety
I quit my job in New York and decided to head to Australia with very little plan. I was traveling the East Coast when someone mentioned how beautiful Tasmania was and not to be missed. It wasn’t really on my radar, but it WAS NOT TO BE MISSED. I had also heard you should go during Summer (December-February in Aus). Well it was around Christmas time, and I didn’t know how long I’d be in Oz so I decided to add it to my trip.
I didn’t want to go on a solo road trip, I was just getting used to traveling solo via bus and staying in hostels. I was constantly surrounded by people, albeit strangers, but I wasn’t ready to take on complete solitude for 2 weeks driving around an unfamiliar place.
So I wanted to find someone that I liked enough to rent a car with and go camping around Tassie. I met this girl, Hope, in a hostel in Airlie Beach. She was super cool so I asked her if she had any travel plans.
“Plans, psshh no, I never make plans.”
A new concept to me, the girl who made an extensive spreadsheet to organize my entire East Coast trip. ?
Well, I asked her if she wanted to head to Tasmania with me in a few weeks and she was like “hell yeah!”
And I was like “I am GODDESS of making friends. I own this shit.”
So we rented a car and booked our flights, went our separate ways on our own East Coast trips, and planned to meet back up in Tasmania.
Then we discussed finding somewhere to stay for the night in Hobart on Couchsurfing. I had never done couchsurfing before. Hell, I had never even stayed in a hostel until a couple of weeks prior to this.
So staying in a stranger’s house for free in an unfamiliar place sounded….sketchy.
Since I wasn’t going to be alone I decided to give Couchsurfing a try. I downloaded the app, made a profile, and started reading references and applying for a stay.
Then Hope texted me.
“So I found someone who will host us!”
“Cool!”
“Only, he doesn’t have a house, or a couch for us to surf.”
“What…where, huh?”
Which leads me to the 5 lessons I learned:
- You don’t need a couch, or even a house to host on couchsurfers
This gray haired, middle-aged man named Danny was living on Tassie in his Ute, and loved Tasmania so much that he was willing to take travelers around to show them all his favorite spots.
We weren’t sure about driving around with him, but he came with glowing references on Couchsurfing so we decided to meet up with him for a drink and get some recommendations.
Well…that drink turned into us canceling our rental car and a 10-day tour that Danny curated for us, driving us around the island, staying at campgrounds, where Hope and I slept in her tiny little two-person tent at night. But let’s be real, those Kmart tents are NOT built for 2 full size people. Luckily, Hope is much shorter than I, so we made it work.
I also had no plans of camping so I had absolutely NO gear. Not even a sleeping bag. Luckily Danny had one of his kids old ones….but I really don’t want to think about where that’d been.
This leads me to lesson #2
- Tasmania is FREAKING COLD, even in the summer!
I mean COLD. I didn’t realize anywhere in Australia got this cold. Totally naive.
Even in the Summer, it dropped to about 4-5 degrees Celsius at night. Mind you I came to Australia with very few warm clothes…cause ya know..I didn’t know it got that cold (peep me layering my 2 warmest pieces of clothing). And all I had to sleep was this child sized sleeping bag ON THE GROUND.
I was always frozen, until we found a public bathroom with warm showers in it.
Danny was also a gem and would cook us hot soup in his little soup maker and make hot cocoa for us while Hope and I sat in the car watching a movie on the iPad.
- Not all strange men who want to drive you around in their car are serial killers
I was definitely skeptical of taking Danny up on his offer. What true-crime watching, anxiety-ridden young woman wouldn’t be?
But like I mentioned earlier, I did my due diligence and read all of Danny’s many reviews on Couch-Surfing. I also made sure that he didn’t ONLY take girls.
He had lots of reviews from couples and blokes only. Sometimes people would just follow him in his car to the cool spots and they would cook dinner together.
While Danny wasn’t a serial killer, he was a character in his own right.
But I’ll take a conspiracy theorist over a woman-hating, body chopping serial killer any day.
- There are conspiracy theories about Tasmania
So yeah, Danny was a big time conspiracy theorist. We discussed the 9/11 conspiracy theory in detail. (Oh btw, Danny was from New York, he had moved to Australia about 25 years ago)
At the beginning of our trip he took us to Port Arthur. It’s a very cool museum sitting on the Tasman Peninsula. It was a 19-century Village and Prison. Interesting, I know.
Well there was a Mass shooting there quite a few years ago, which kicked started Australia’s strict gun-control laws. Danny did some research into this and found some sketchy information about it.
Like how the guy who did it shot everyone perfectly in the head, and that they bought one of those multi person ambulances (?idk what it’s called) a few days before this happened and sold it shortly after. I never did do my own research into the matter, so don’t go spewing any of this to your mates as fact.
- The Tasmanian Devil is real and Wombats poops are cubed
Lastly, I learned that the Tasmanian devil is not only a cartoon, but it’s actually a fairly cute, yet dangerous little animal. And it looks nothing like the cartoon, like at all. I don’t know how they came up with the design for him.
I never actually got to see one, or even a wombat…but I did spot their poops on a few hikes. And they are CUBES? Like how even?! Next time you’re at pub trivia, you’ll get that one right…
Among all, I learned to let go of the reins a bit, and take a risk (safely, though). I learned that Tasmania is absolutely breathtakingly stunning. And that I’m capable of stepping waaaaay outside my comfort zone.
Thank you Hope and Danny for giving me an experience I’ll never forget!
Written By Cara Laban
@travelling.with.anxiety