Tasmania ... Island of Spectacular Views!

Just when we were getting used to things, summer arrived. It's been pretty good weather just recently, and we've taken advantage of it, getting away two weekends in a row.

The weekend before last (10th-12th February) was a long weekend so on the Sunday we headed out of Hobart to Mount Field National Park. We visited this Park briefly with Alec and Dave back in December and knew there were some good walks to do, so back we came for a weekend. It's only an hour or so north of Hobart, so we got up to the start of our walk (about 15km down a dirt road within the Park) at a reasonably early hour. From here we walked to the peak of Mount Field West. This area is used for skiing when the snow falls deeply enough, and the views were stunning as you can see:



As was the company :-)

Up here there were lots and lots of cushion plants ... incredible!
They're not easy to take photos of though:



After a fairly lengthy walk, with a reasonable amount of rocks (as mentioned in my previous post, this is normal in Tassie) we headed back to camp in the Park campsite for the night ... near some very tall trees!

Some of the rocks:


Tall trees!


After our first night camping in quite some time, we went back for another decent walk ... this time Mt Field East. Being slightly further down the range it was somewhat less 'alpine', although still quite stunning, and fortunately more sheltered ... having received a good dose of sunburn on our necks on the Sunday we were a bit more careful.

Ella's friend, Anita, arrived here on the Tuesday, and so we went to Maria Island the weekend of 17-18th February. That was great, but it can wait for another blog entry ... coming just as soon as I get around to it!

Bye for now.

Tasmania ... Island of Rocks

Well, I did say I'd try and keep up the "Island of..." theme didn't' I?

January has disappeared like a Goanna up a gum tree, and summer has made minimal impact on Hobart. I'm not really complaining, but the changeability of the weather is quite astonishing - especially living up the hill as we do. The view from our kitchen continues to astound me, though, it changes each time I look out. An added bonus has been the arrival, twice so far this year, of a cruise ship! The first time I was so excited I ran out and snapped this photo:


The Reeks Australian contingent have been busying themselves at weekends with drives and walks. We've done a few walks in Mount Wellington Park (on our doorstep pretty much). Firstly we did a loop around the northern side of the mountain, towards Collins Bonnet - a fairly long and rocky walk:




Then just last weekend we did a quite gruelling but fairly short walk on the southern side. This was the really rocky but! The hard work was afforded not so much by the slope, but by the lack of signage (so lots of map/guess work instead) and the tendency of the track to cross scree slopes full of precarious boulders. It was also very exposed, very windy, and there was a short burst of hail to top things off! Progress ended up being less than 3km per hour we reckoned.

Otherwise, we've done a couple of car drives with car clubs, trying to gauge what club to join (if any). The first attempt was a bit boring to be frank, rather slow, so much so that we disappeared off on our own for the 1.5 hour lunch break and checked out some dirt roads up to a great spot called Interlaken. Ella got this photo of an Echidna on the way - they're a shy creature that you don't get to see very often, and this one was shuffling away as fast as it could:

The other run - with the local Triumph club - was a lot more successful, so we're joining that club instead.