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.

Tasmania - Isle of Mud

Now, for the post all about Christmas...

I have noticed that Tasmania seems to have a bit of 'branding confusion'.
Clearly the island status of this State sets it apart from the rest of Australia, that much is understood. For some reason being a plain old island isn't enough, however, and the marketing people feel this needs furthering. So, everywhere you look this Island-ness develops supposedly attractive descriptive appendages: sitting next to me is a book entitled "Isle of Mountains", it is also called "The Apple Isle"; "The Island of Beauty"; "The Wilderness Isle", and; "The Isle of Splendour". The number plates on the cars have "Holiday Isle" which I think is a bit odd, because the huge majority of people with those number plates are going to be those who actually live in Tasmania! (Although this isn't as silly as the Victorian plate which says "The Place To Be" ... any of those seen outside Victoria beg a question: "If it's the 'place to be' why aren't you there now?").

So, I'm coming up with my own names for Tasmania based on this simple piece of geographical knowledge ... that it is an Island. So, why the Isle of Mud? Read on.

For our Christmas break Ella and I thought we'd take advantage of our time off to take an extended walk in the Franklin Gordon Wild Rivers National Park . In particular we wanted to the Frenchman's Cap Track walk. It is supposed to be "considerably more arduous than many other Tasmanian walks", which seemed like a fun challenge at least!

We set off on Christmas Eve afternoon and drove for about 3hrs 30mins in the rain and strong wind to the start of the track. The walk is reckoned to take 3-5 days so our intention was to camp near the start and get a good start early the next morning. In the end we opted to sleep in the car to keep ourselves dry. The seats in the car recline almost flat, so it actually proved really comfortable and we set off all fresh at 8am Christmas Day.

The warning at the head of the trail goes something like this:
"You are are going to get wet. You are going to get very wet. You are going to get muddy. You are going to get very muddy". Excellent!

First was a basic bridge over the Franklin River, which wasn't too high, which we thought might be a sign that the bogs ahead might not be too bad...
Here's Ella (this was actually taken on the way back)


There wasn't too much climbing (of the conventional sense) to do on the way to Lake Vera and the first rest point. After a gentle rise we reached the infamous Lodden Plains, nicknamed the "Sodden Loddens" ... very aptly. It's a large Button Grass plain that's basically a Peat Bog, which you have to more or less wade through, at point knee deep in mud. It's rather slow and hard work (especially with 15-20kg on your back). It took us the best part of 3hrs 30mins to get through these, and a total of 5hrs 30mins to get to Lake Vera and the sanctuary of the communal hut.

I'm afraid we didn't take any photos on the way in because the weather was rather foul - windy, rainy and cold unless you kept moving! Someone else has done, though!

At Lake Vera Hut I was tempted to re-enact a topical pseudo-historical incident and knock on the door and ask if there was any room at the inn (we took a tent in case it was full anyway). It turned out there was a friendly bunch of equally mad walkers who had opted to spend Christmas on the track. It was warm and cosy in the hut with a stove burning and lots of friendly people:

Lake Vera Hut:


It turned out that most of the other hut visitors had attempted to go up to Frenchmans Cap that day and been driven back by snow! A white Christmas for some.

After a pretty good night of sleep (no snorers fortunately), we tried our luck at going up. The next section of the track was through the most beautiful forest with unusual looking plants, and moss covering everything. The track climbed steeply up to Barrons Pass, and as the trail climbs steeply the rivers are pathways, the pathways are rivers ... it really was rather wet and extremely steep.

The view from Barrons Pass was tremendous, despite the fast moving clouds, and worth the hard climb.


We then walked along the ridge (up and down a fair bit), through the remains of the snow until we got to Lake Tahune and the next hut for lunch. The temperature in the hut was only 4 degrees celsius, and the peak of Frenchmans Cap didn't look too enticing, however, and we decided it would probably be best to head back to Lake Vera rather than risk the weather. Typically, not long after we turned back (after some lunch) the peak cleared and I got this photo:

Better weather meant we got more photos!






The return route was almost as hard, going downhill so steeply hurts the feet, knees and ankles! We made it back to the first hut, though, slightly annoyed by having lugged all our gear all the way up and back in the same day! Ho hum!

Another night was spent in the hut, with a different bunch of walkers who had come in from the start of the walk, and then we retraced our steps from the first day. The conditions were just as wet and slippy.

All in all it was an extremely enjoyable, if tough and tiring, experience. We'll definitely be looking to do some more long walks ... hopefully in better weather, though.

The Dave and Alec Show

Christmas is over, and the New Year has begun. More about that in the next post... first a few pictures from the visit of Dave and Alec from the week before Christmas.

These guys came over to see the biggest Ashes defeat since the 1920s (the final Test is currently in progress), and they found time to come and visit Hobart. They arrived with typically terrible hangovers which they brought with them from Sydney. They were delighted that I'd decided to treat them to a tour of the local Cascade Brewery in Hobart! Here they are with Ella, smiling outside the Brewery (you can see Mt Wellington in the background, too).

After the tour everybody gets to have a drink in the bar ... and as it was Alec's birthday he got to work the bar... here he is pulling his first ever pint (a stuffed Tasmanian Tiger looks on behind him)


We had a nice evening out trying some pubs in Hobart ... apart from Dave who was feeling the effects of the previous evening so he went to bed.
Once Dave was awake again (Sunday) we took a trip to Mt Wellington, where we clowned around.


Then we drove an hour or so to Mt Field National Park, and did a short walk around the waterfalls and forests, saw some little wallabies, and the second tallest tree species in the world!

Waterfalls!


Tall trees!


Dave and Alec spent the next day visiting Port Arthur (whilst I went to work), which is one of the original penal colonies that made this country great (!) I'm told it was a good trip. Then they had a day in Hobart before heading off to the mainland and general cricketing humiliation (as i write even Shane Warne is putting on a good show against our bowlers!) .

More soon!

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!