Driving in Tasmania v the mainland: roadkill, cyclists and more

How do the suckers on the big island do it? I spent a month driving around Newcastle to find out.

It's a sad truth - Tasmania is the roadkill capital of the world.

It's possibly the only Australian state where roadkill football is a more popular roadtrip game than car cricket, and definitely the only state where racking up a three-figure score is possible.

As the national anthem proclaims, our land indeed abounds with nature's gifts, but far too many of them are abounding into bonnets and coming off second-best.

Newcastle has literally no roadkill and I'm happy to pin it entirely down to fauna crossings.

If you can imagine Tahune Airwalk-meets-Hollybank rope course but made for a possum, and situated right above major highways, you've got the idea.

Mem Fox would agree it's literally possum magic.

IN OTHER NEWS:

Old tyres in Tasmania get to spend their retirement in a nice paddock in Longford, but in New South Wales, they finish up shredded on the side of major highways.

These are the roadkill of New South Wales, which to me, as one who is fond of wallabies, seems a fair trade-off.

As you delve into the suburbs, the tyres are gone but the roadsides are adorned with old, soggy couches and mattresses.

I have no idea why, but it's a bit gross.

In Tasmania we also have a much healthier respect for shopping trollies, which in Newcastle are abandoned in epidemical proportions in streets, under bridges, in waterways, stacked on top of other abandoned trollies - pretty much everywhere except the supermarket.

Every Tasmanian knows there's nothing quite so frustrating as driving along, minding your own business en route to a very important Sunday afternoon business meeting when all of a sudden your world is thrown upside down.

Just the mild inconvenience of slightly adjusting one's speed so as to not run over a cyclist, also known as a person, has catapulted even the most mild-mannered Tasmanian into a fit of horn-honking, finger-jabbing, expletive-hurling rage.

Well, you won't have that problem over here.

One, because there's not many cyclists on the road, and two, because if there were, they'd be trundling past you while you're sat parked on a gridlocked motorway and you couldn't swerve at them even if you wanted to.

Turns out cars block the roads a lot more than bikes do.

Tasmanian number plates are very simple.

Everyone gets the same design and if you're lucky, your mum will get you a personalised number plate so you can let everyone know that you're Kim and also you're the eighth Kim to have a personalised number plate.

In New South Wales there's a bit more at play.

When you take your car in, you can either pick up some stylistically-criminal yellow horrors that will plummet your car's resale value faster than Scott McLaughlin around Symmons Plains, or you can fork out an extra $60 for some white plates that look normal.

When you choose the yellow ones, you then get to spend the rest of your driving days wishing you didn't.