Fires, Markets and Museums

Tasmania, like a fair bit of Victoria, has been on fire this last week. I mean forest fires, of course ("Bushfires" in the vernacular).

It hasn't been a problem too close to Hobart, but enough for us to have a haze across the city and a smell too, last weekend. The fires are much worse up on the north east - Scamander has had a few houses destroyed (I drove through there when I moved here).

The Haze last weekend - as seen from our kitchen:


The view from our house at night is great, too. It doesn't come out too well without a good long zoom, but you might get the idea from this photo:


Last weekend we had a look at the excellent Salamanca Market (walking distance from our house)


Then went on to the equally impressive Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, which had a great Antarctic exhibition.
When we left the museum I noticed the architectural variety on the doorstep ... this photo shows (left-to-right), late 20th century "government building", followed by a kind of New York pastiche, then 19th Century Colonial, and nearest the camera a classic Moderne/Art Deco. style newspaper press building. Interesting, eh?


We didn't get to do much walking, that's our big plan for xmas ... a long walk.

This weekend there will be mates of mine (Alec and Dave) arriving from the UK. Should be fun.

Here's a snap of me halfway up Mount Wellington a couple of weeks ago:


Ciao for now!

Settling in

We're settling into life in Tasmania very nicely. We moved into a 3 bed house a couple of weeks ago. Hobart is extremely hilly, and our place is near the top of one of the hills. This makes it a strenuous walk (or run) home, but affords a superb view of the City and the Derwent river.

Here's the house (north facing to enjoy the Southern Hemisphere sun):


Here's the view:

If you look closely you might see the Tasman Bridge that crosses the Derwent which is 1/4 mile wide at its narrowest point in Hobart. From Hobart it opens out into Storm Bay and the Tasman Sea. We can see the boats and ships coming in and out of Hobart.

I've been mostly getting used to work. I walk in (2.8km) and run home (most evenings), which is definitely keeping me fit. The temperatures fluctuate like it does on all good islands. We've had temperatures between 6 C in the morning up to 26 C in the afternoon in the past two weeks. Ella doesn't know if she's coming or going. There's an assumption from many mainland Aussies that Hobart is dark, cold and rainy ... ok it has daylight saving (it's light until 9pm at the moment) so it might be dark early-ish in the winter, but it only gets 600mm rain/year which is about the same as Lincolnshire, making it the driest State capital in Australia.

We've made the effort to go walking at weekends, Mount Wellington has loads of options, and we've tried a couple. Here I am next to an aqueduct on the "Pipeline Track" which runs to Mount Wellington Falls.



I've yet to see a living Tasmanian Devil ... just dead ones on the road, unfortunately, and signs:


Last week we had a nice house warming party with a few people from work. Comments were passed on the number of cars outside our house which had roof-racks ... mine was the only one without. This is because everybody here has a kayak or bike (or both) that they stick on the roof and take to beautiful places.

This Saturday night is the work Xmas do, which involves free alcohol all night - should be fun!

I'll try and get back soon to update with our Xmas plans etc.

Island Life ... first impressions!

After a fun weekend with Helen, Jacques and Jana in Landsborough (where H&J have purchased some land to build on)

I drove the Triumph down to Hobart from Brisbane last week - 2,400km exclusive of the ferry trip across the Bass Strait. I had a great time. The drive from Brisbane to Melbourne was fairly boring - long straight roads with little traffic apart from Road Trains. the ferry was much like a large x-channel ferry in the UK.

Once in Tassie it was all change, though. Lots of twisting roads, and beautiful scenery. I took the long route down the east coast and camped for a couple of nights on picturesque beaches. Superb fun. I was welcomed by the local wallabies as you can see!



Ella arrived on Saturday night by plane. We're staying in an apartment courtesy of my new employees this week and will move into rented accomodation, all going well, on Saturday.

Hobart is very nice, we've found the people in general to be very friendly. Work is fun so far - i've got loads to do, but it's relaxed enough for me to be able to update my blog at lunchtime :-)
The weather has been a bit changeable ... nothing too unusual for a Pom of course but I think Ella's a bit confused by it.

It's been a bit of a whirlwind so far, but no doubt it will settle down and I'll be back to update soon!

New Direction

Hello ... it feels like a while since I posted anything up here.
There's finally a good reason to post, I've kind of been waiting for this.
We went to Tasmania a few months ago, partly for me to look for work. The firm of my choice looked promising but they weren't in a position to offer me anything right away... but now they have. I handed my three weeks notice in at Brisbane City Council today, and I head off mid-November to start life on a new island!
Ella might have to come over a week or so later, but that won't be too much of a problem.

Spring is in the air!

Spring is apparently here. The thermometer I walk past on the way to work crept up to 18 C at 7.15am last week, and the swimming pool next to our house opened again.

Then we started to get some rainfall and had a good dose of what felt almost like a British autumn for a few days. Ella and I went for a good walk in the rain last week - very appropriate as we were in a rainforest! My ankle is making progress, five and a half weeks now. I couldn't really run on it yet, but hopefully in a couple of weeks time I will be able to. This Saturday I'll be sitting on the sidelines as my football team plays in the Grand Final.

At work I continue to look out at the progress on the development of our new office: Brisbane Square. It's very nearly finished, so we'll be moving over in the next couple of months ... with an open-plan layout I guess I'll have less of a chance to write this kind of thing!

Update

Well, I'm not exactly running around. Three and a half weeks have gone but my ankle is still swollen. I'm down to one physio session a week and a lot of exercises in the gym. I can walk fine and even managed a reasonable walk on the beach last weekend.

My football team have made the 'finals' having come second in the league in a dramatic finale to the 'ordinary season' (we have a strange US style finals system here). It meant that we narrowly missed promotion to the semi-professional league next year. There's no way I'll be back playing in the next three weeks though, which is a bit dissapointing.

Here's most of the 1st team (including me) in our team photo last weekend:

Back on my feet

It took 2 physio sessions to get me off my crutches, and now, nearly two weeks since the sprain and 4 sessions I'm not limping too badly and the swelling is almost gone. Still a bit painful, but a lot better.
Here's what I looked like.. a bit blurry:

I've been able to drive for a while now so have been out and about to the beach a couple of times, etc. Swimming in the sea is great to get the weight off the foot!

Ella and I are planning an exciting trip for Christmas - we're going to drive to Perth and back (min. 9,000 km round-trip) in the Triumph. It's going to be a big planning exercise to do it right, most of which I expect I'll cover on my other blog www.greeksinoz.blogspot.com

Not much happening

I'm afraid I haven't much to say at the moment ...
We're both fairly busy getting on with life. Ella's snowed under with lots of Uni. work, and so we haven't done much in the way of trips. However, we have begun to plan a big Christmas trip. The idea is to drive across the continent to Perth, and then back. All up it's about 9,000 km , so it's a good thing that we'll have a long time to do it. We'll take the Triumph!

Last Saturday night I sprained my ankle quite badly and by Wednesday the swelling hadn't changed a bit, and I was still unable to put any weight on my left foot. I hobbled on my crutches to the Physio around the corner, and he worked magic on me. I received my first experience of a "pressure pump" - basically an inflatable sock that intermittently squeezes the ankle - followed by exercises, an excruciating ice bath (20 mins in a bucket of ice and water) and some elaborate strapping, and by the end of the two hour session I was able to stand on both feet again. I went back today and did the same, albeit with more impressive exercises and two ice baths, and now I don't need crutches at all! Hurrah for well-informed physios.

It's left me tired and with an insatiable thirst for good beer!

A week in Tassie

Our week in Tasmania was a bit of an unusual trip for us. Firstly we didn't take the car because getting to Hobart warrants a plane journey (otherwise you have to drive to Sydney or Melbourne to get a ferry). Secondly we spent far more time in town than we would normally ... mainly because the 'holiday' was a bit of a reconnaissance exercise as we're thinking about moving there. Consequently we spent a fair amount of time looking around at places we'd like to live and I met with some potential employers.

In case you don't know, Tasmania is one of the Australian States, and it's the only island State. It is situated to the southeast of the mainland. Tassie is recognised as a bit of a backward brother, particularly compared to Victoria and New South Wales ... sounds a little like Lincolnshire if you ask me. The key 'backward' characteristic relates to the fact that the population is small - 480,000 or so on the island, and the capital, Hobart, has only around 50,000. Speak to anyone from Queensland about Tassie and the first thing they'll say is - "It's cold" ... by this they mean that it gets down to 10 degrees in the day time in the winter - hardly Antarctic (although it does host the Australian Antarctic Research Station). Actually, Hobart benefits from a Gulf Stream effect which makes the climate quite reasonable. It was also one of the first parts of Australia to be 'settled' by Europeans, where convicts were sent. For a while the stupid English didn't even realise that it was an island and not attached to the mainland.

However, if it's this 'backwardness' that means there is no high-rise city centre, a laid-back and friendly attitude from the locals, and something like 20% of the island protected as a World Heritage area, then that's fine with me.

The pubs were great (there's quite an English feel due to the old architecture in Hobart), and Tasmanian beer is some of the best in Australia. We spent some time in a pub in Hobart and saw some good humour (it makes sense if you followed Australia's progress in the World Cup):

This photo shows Hobart and the Derwent River as seen from the top of Mount Wellington (1,300m), which looms over the City and can be seen (apart from when it's obscured by cloud) from everywhere:

We managed a couple of days outside Hobart. Here we were climbing up to the top of Hartz Peak. Ella hasn't seen all that much snow in her time, so this was a real treat!

Conclusive evidence that bouncy things do live in the snow - we saw loads and loads of footprints on our way up the mountain ... but no human ones:

Typical of Australian footpaths, the signage was good ... even if we did have to remove the ice from some of the signs!

Being "in a country area in the cold" I had an excuse to wear a silly hat:

The higher you go, the snowier it gets!

We stayed for a night at this great lodge in a fairly remote part of Tasmania's southwest. Unfortunately, they're not that well kitted out for winter visitors and it was rather chilly:

Our other couple of days out of the big smoke was spent on the Tasman Peninsula. Truly brilliant coastal scenery greeted us on a decent walk on Cape Raoul.

Here's a photo taken from the centre of Hobart looking out from the harbour. The seals aren't real ... but the birds and the ship are!

So the conclusion was that we liked what we saw, and had some ideas about where we might like to live. It seems that some of the employers I met thought I was ok, too, so things might just work out nicely ... more as and when I have more detail.

Wedding Anniversary

Yes, we've been married over a year now! Doesn't time fly?

As we were going off to Tasmania for a week one week after the anniversary we didn't go all out celebrating, instead we did a longer than usual walk in Brisbane Forest. The added bonus being that it actually rained for once!

Here we are having a lunch break in a storm shelter:

World Cup 2006 - Viewed Upside Down

It's the sixth World Cup of my life (I don't count Spain 1982 as I can't remember it), but it's the first I've experienced from the southern hemisphere. It provides another interesting insight to life in Oz for me.

The first thing I noticed is how interest picked up fairly slowly. There was a lot of fuss when Australia qualified after beating Uruguay on penalties several months ago, but it went pretty quiet for a while. Then the build-up was fairly slow, and didn't start months in advance as I expect it did in England. I started to wonder if there would be much made of it at all.

SBS won the TV rights, and they're one of the smaller network stations who tend to specialise in less popular sports, foreign language news, etc. They're showing every single game however, which is good, and turns out to have been a good buy for them! Martin Tyler who used to do commentate on games in England, is their commentator, which makes things familiar. Of course there are a lot of Italians, English, Brazilians, etc. who want to watch the World Cup, but the big and most important thing has been the interest from the average Aussie! After Australia beat Japan 3-1 in their first game (and by doing so scored their first ever goals in a World Cup) the country has come alive with World Cup fever. 2 million people watched them lose to Brazil 2-0 in a very entertaining game. That's 10% of the population!!! And the game started at 2am ... on a Monday morning! Even Ella got out of bed to watch the whole game - truly impressive!

Ella and I are going to Tasmania ('The Island State') on Sunday. This will be the fourth State I've visited, leaving only Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory (which isn't actually a State) for me to visit. It should be great. 2.5 hours in a plane and we'll be on the island, where the temperature should be maximum 10 celsius in the daytime. Ella's quite excited about seeing a decent amount of snow (there's ski runs 75km from Hobart). Actually the weather has been 'pretty ordinary' of late - some much needed rain at last and temperatures down below 20 in the daytime.

So we'll be watching England taken on Ecuador at 1am Monday morningin Hobart ... perhaps in a pub?

Anyway I'll report back when we are, hopefully with some nice photos!

Family visits and a trip being planned ... now updated with some photos!

Another month has passed by since I updated. Whoops.
The temperature has continued to drop, it was just 10 degrees C this morning as I passed the thermometer on my way to work. By the afternoon of course it's up to 25, but it drops again in the evening - we are without daylight saving time in Queensland so it is dark by 5:30pm. It's actually a nice change to be cooler, and lends a semblance of seasonality to the year.

Mum and Julian have been in the area for the last week and a half. After a couple of weeks in NZ they stopped with us for a few days, and we had a nice time - primarily wandering around Brisbane, but we also went for a walk and a Barbeque in the forest.

Here's me standing next to a spooky Fig Tree on the edge of the Botanical Gardens ... as you can see, the tree has enveloped the iron railings!

It's nice to have some 'outsiders' here to show around: The added perspectives of those who aren't used to the area reminds me of the good and bad aspects of living in Brisbane. The cleanliness, climate, and greenness of the city are what come across most strongly, I think. Mum and Julian disappeared up the Sunshine Coast last Wednesday afternoon, and from the reports I have heard they've had a lovely time. I'll be seeing them again when they get back tomorrow (Thursday), for a couple of days before heading back to Blighty.

Ella and myself, meanwhile, have been planning a trip of our own. We have to take advantage of the break she gets from teacher training so we've opted to fly to Tasmania for a week at the end of June. We're both pretty excited, as it's supposed to be a beautiful island, and there should be some real winter weather there. Yes, I admit I do miss it a little bit. It should satisfy my interest in historical things, too, as it's full of Georgian architecture and played an important early part in Australia's European history. Plus, there's an interesting link between the Louth area and Tassie. The explorer Sir John Franklin (attended the same school as I and was from Spilsby near Louth) was once governor of the colony (during the period where it changed names from Van Diemen's Land to Tasmania. I'd love to go in the Triumph, but it would mean a minimum 1,000km drive to a ferry which would take up too much of the holiday, so we booked cheap flights.

Bye for now.

Another Easter in Oz

So, I've been here over a year now, and another Autumn approaches. Temperatures are beginning to drop, although it's all relative. I pass a public thermometer on a hotel sign on my walk to work at about 7am. I've noticed over the last couple of weeks that the temperature has been dropping; it was in the mid-20s, and it's now down to 16 Celsius.

Talking of changing temperatures, we took a trip south-west for the Easter weekend. Stanthorpe always appears on the TV weather reports as having cooler temperatures than we have in Brisbane. It's only two and a half hours drive away, but on nights when the temperature doesn't drop below 20 in Brissy it can be 10 in Stanthorpe. Ella's parents organised a pleasant weekend for us and Ella's family near to Stanthorpe. I drove Ella, Jana and Ingrid down on Good Friday in a decidingly full Triumph (we were loaded to the gunnels with provisions for the weekend).

The accomodation was spot on. "Escape on Tully" (Mt Tully was the name of the area we stayed in) was well kitted out with gas BBQ, kitchen, two bathrooms, etc. There was even an outdoor bath on the veranda!!!


We were well placed to investigate Giraween National Park (I should probably keep count of all these Parks I'm visiting), so on Saturday we did a great walk. The area's known as 'The Granite Belt', and there are incredible rocks and peaks, bolders, and so on. We did a good long walk up over Mt. Norman and back. Here's the troops enjoying a well deserved lunch:



Well-deserved because we'd just walked up a granite slope like this (photo shows Ingrid and Ella):


A short drive home after a long walk was nice and we got to enjoy a lovely sunset from the veranda:


We all took it in turns cooking over the three nights, which was a lot of fun and certainly spread the workload. On Easter Sunday we took it a bit easier, back at Giraween doing a short walk before lunch, along the river in an almost surreal granite river bed. We all had a splash around in the waterhole and then back home for lunch and a relaxing afternoon.



We headed home on Monday morning taking a less direct route, along dirt tracks (called the Mount Lindsay Highway!) between some other beautiful National Parks.
This photo shows Mount Linsay in the distance (I think):


Altogether a very nice weekend indeed. It provided a suitable send-off for Ingrid, too, as she left to join her boyfriend in Frankfurt on the Tuesday. Good luck Ingrid!
Many thanks to Helen and Jacques for the excellent food and accommodation.

I'm currently experiencing one of those "I wish I had a camera on me" moments.
Looking out of my sixth floor office window I can see two abseilers cleaning the opposite building's windows. It would make a great photo! I can't find the office camera, either. Let's hope the storm we had yesterday doesn't come back soon.

Meanwhile life plods on ...

Work hasn't been exactly thrilling. I don't feel particularly challenged, or even very busy. I'm taking a long hard look at what it is that I would like to do, though, and expect this will mean a significant change... maybe even re-training.

Ella's been working really hard on her teacher training as well as lecturing undergraduate students, so she's pushed to find any leisure time at the moment. We have managed to get out to Brisbane Forest Park at the weekends, however. The forest is massive and covers much of the West of Brisbane and we can get there in 15 minutes drive from our house. It used to be logged, but seems to be protected now.

This photo from the edge of the forest shows how close the city is.

The walking trails aren't signposted, but can be followed on a map... at first we thought this was unusual and a bit stingy, but now realise that it could be because of the difficult terrain! There are many extremely steep sections. I tried to get photos to prove it, but it's not easy to show the gradient using photos. The forest is great, with rainforest and dry forest intermingling, ruined only by the electricity pylons. Our plan is to try and walk all of the accessible tracks.

The Border Ranges

I've been working as an Analyst for Brisbane City Council Economic Development for 6 weeks now ... time flies! One of the best things about my new employer is their flexible nature. I've had two days of flextime already. The first was spent doing car stuff - which you can see on Greeksinoz - and the second enabled Ella and I to get away. It's a couple of weekends ago now but I'm just finding time to type it up.

We've had the loan of the in-laws 4wd so we wanted to go somewhere we could use it for a weekend. The Border Ranges National Park was decided upon. Approx. 80 miles south of Brisbane it is a lot cooler thank goodness due to the altitude and rainforest vegetation.
Evident in this picture here!


We got there on the Friday night and immediately got into the routine from the Christmas trip - pitching the tent and getting the fire going. The drive in was fun and fairly rough road, and I inadvertantly drove over a monster python ... the sign of things to come!

On the Saturday we spent a large part of the day walking about 25km through the rainforest. It was absolutely beautiful, and very rainforesty! We seemed to be walking in clouds for most of the day. The down side was that we saw 9 snakes altogether although most were small (there was a big red-bellied black though)

Here I am at the half-way point on the walk.



On Sunday morning we headed through the park in the 4wd, about 45km of rough dirt track - great fun! We're pretty much sold on getting a similar beast in the future.

Here's the Toyota Hilux with some views of New South Wales border country:



Back to work on Monday wasn't exciting, but I livened things up a little by catching my thumb on a 10mm drill bit last Thursday which meant a trip to the hospital for stitches and no football for me for a while! I have a photo of the injury I can post here if you like ... if I get e-mail repuests then I'll put it up!

Now have a look at this website please, and help my aunty help my nephew ... confused? : Click this

The rest of the road trip

Here's a few snaps from the first week - a couple of shots of Sydney and our camp at Deua

The Rocks - Sydney


Sydney Harbour at night


Deua NP



From Melbourne we went back on ourselves, south to Phillip Island and then east to Wilson’s Promontory National Park were we stayed for three nights. It’s a spectacular park and we did a couple of excellent walks, including a monster 36km trek to the lighthouse and back. A fire swept through a large part of the park back in April so we got to see the forest in recovery mode. We also spotted a Wombat wandering around the campground.

Lighthouse at Wilson's Prom NP


After Wilson’s Prom. we drove west again to Mornington Peninsula and caught a ferry across to Queenscliff and began the drive along The Great Ocean Road. We stopped at Cape Otway National Park for the night and then carried along the coast the next day stopping in to look at the famous 12 Apostles, and other coastal formations. We then drove north to the Grampians National Park.

Some of the 12 Apostles


Going inland to the Grampians meant a significant change in scenery. We had a great campground up in the hills with good fireplaces and not too many people, although pesky Crows. A couple of days were spent walking, and we saw what we think was a Marsupial ‘Mouse’ – a tiny little thing that was hopping around despite looking like a mouse! On the last night we camped down on the flat near Hall’s Gap (a small town) to treat ourselves to showers, etc. Unfortunately we had to endure noisy middle-age campers who sat up late drinking and talking loudly … and even chopping wood at 11pm! They no longer have an axe to annoy other people with anymore. I heard on the news that bushfires have been raging in the area around the Grampians, so we timed our trip well.

Mount Rosea walk


Rain in the Grampians


A long day driving from the Grampians to Mount Buffalo meant we got to see lots of inland Victoria, including Bendigo, and Glenrowan, where Ned Kelly was captured. Mount Buffalo had another fantastic campground reached after a steep twisting drive. We did a couple of great walks here, too, one involving a 1000 metre climb in 9km of walking. Bushfires from a couple of years’ back meant the vegetation was damaged here too. Snow falls in the winter here, and there are some ski runs.

Mt Buffalo burnt bush


The campground was fully booked as of the 23rd of December, so we had to move on, continuing east via the pretty little town of Bright to the Alpine National Park. We were told by a park Ranger in Bright that there was a total fire ban on so we wouldn’t be able to cook on a fire or stove that night, but he recommended that we camped high up on a plain next to an old cattle grazers hut (preserved for heritage and shelter in bad weather) in which we could cook. A 60km drive up really tight mountain roads got us just past Mount Hoffham ski resort to the hut. Wonderful, and no fees! Unfortunately after a blazing hot day the weather got stormy overnight and we didn’t sleep too well, there was hail in the morning and the temperature was down to about 3 degrees. So on Christmas Eve we did a great and very windy walk along the ‘Razorback’ to the top of Mount Feathertop. The scenery was fantastic – very, um, Alpine, unsurprisingly. Not fancying another night in the wind we chickened out and drove back down to Bright and the sanctity of a caravan park. We spent Christmas day loafing around and drinking beer and port.

The Hut


Alpine NP Razorback walk


Mount Feathertop - Alpine NP 1900 metres


After Christmas we decided to start heading home by going north inland on the Newell Highway, and stopping at a couple more National Parks en route. Endless miles of parched land and near destitute little towns passed in a blur on Boxing Day and we made it to Dubbo and another well-equipped caravan park. The next day we made it to the Warrambungle National Park, apparently a very popular park judging by the facilities. We did a decent walk up to the Grand High Tops. I saw my first wild Emus next to the campground where they mingled with Kangaroos in the evening.

Warrambungle NP


The next day we drove on to Mount Kaputar National Park, part of the same range as the Warrambungles. Having done about 200km of walking on our trip we thought we’d do a short walk for a change, and took it easy in the afternoon in preparation for the big drive back to Brisbane the next day.

Mt Kaputar NP


We got home on Thursday 29th having clocked up a total of 6,040km, 12 National Parks, 22 nights camping in the tent … and lots of great Barbeques. We saw hundreds of Kangaroos and Wallabies, Lorikeets, Pink and White Cockatoos, three types of snake, a Skink, Dolphins, a Lyrebird, Camels, Possums, Wombats, Emus, and a Marsupial ‘mouse’. It was a really great trip, and we’re both so glad we took the opportunity to go.