Island of lazy bloggers

I can't believe it's nearly August already. I haven't "blogged" since March. To be honest it's a combination of being a lazy blogger and the fact that I have had a decent amount of work to be getting on with...

Anyway, a quick round up and photos:

Uncle Karen visited and amongst other things we went to Bruny Island:


Ella and I had a fabulous Easter weekend driving around the south-west of Tasmania:




At the end of May we went up to Queensland and saw Ella's family (including Ingrid and Phil back from Germany briefly)



Then we had a visit from Ella's family and we climbed some of Mt Wellington in the rain and cold:


At some point I started playing football again, for local team Newtown Eagles ... and they put a picture featuring me (!) in the local daily paper:


Recently it's been quite cold and we've done a little less walking, but we have been up to the mountains to see the snow. A work mate of mine and his wife moved to Hobart a little after we did, from Townsville, in tropical North Queensland - so snow to them is a real novelty! Juan took these photos of us at Mount Field:







Last week we moved house ... but you'll have to wait for me to tell you more about that (hopefully not 5 months though).

I'll be over to England at the end of August, so maybe I'll see you then.

Tasmania - Islands of Sun!

I say Islands because Tassie is actually made up of a huge number of islands, the main one being where we live of course. A few weeks back we took Ella's friend Anita (visiting from Queensland) to Maria Island to enjoy a very sunny couple of days in Darlington! The easiest way to get to the island is by ferry from Triabunna, an hour or so East of Hobart.

There are no cars on the island, bar the Rangers vehicles, and the whole place is a National Park... my words don't really do it justice, though, just look at the photos Ella and I took!

This is a view looking back at Darlington on the way to the Painted Cliffs. You can see the former concrete works (c.1920s) and the old Commissariat Store from the 1830s when the island was a convict station.


The Commissariat Store is now used as the visitor centre - first port of call when we arrived.


The accomodation options are either a campsite or the old penitentiary ... built by the convicts themselves. At $22 for a 6 bed room it was as cheap as chips!


We did a short walk on the evening we got there to the Painted Cliffs and back:




We walked back along the beach.


Then the next day we did a good long walk along a cliff to a high peak (Bishop and Clerk). From here you could see the famous Freycinet Peninsula and Schouten Island - they looked like they were floating in the sky.




What a great weekend it was!

My Uncle Karen is staying with us now, and we'll be off this weekend for a little trip together ... perhaps Bruny Island this time.

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.