Tasmania Part II

So to pick up where I left off... Friday night Marieke and I headed to what was the only open pub in the little town we were staying in or at least the only one which looked 'safe' enough to go into... or so we thought. It only took about 15 minutes for one of the natives to become curious about these foreign things invading on their territory. (Now I will pause here to let you know most of the other people traveling around were in motor homes and close to or well past retirement age.) We were going fine, and he was kind enough to answer all our questions about the idiosyncrasies of Tasmania... until he pulled out the Nazi comment. To which my German travel companion gave him the bird and informed him that it was time for him to leave.

He did sulk back later on in the night and made amends, however that was the first and not the only spark to fly that night. As the night continued more of the natives became curious and realised the foreigners wouldn't bit and began to come chat. However give it is Autumn (not fall) here it was getting cold and we eventually decided to move inside. No more than 5 minutes of moving inside one of the guy proceeds to get in a fist fight with someone else, is kicked out, the police called and all seemed like a usual occurrence! Marieke and I took this as our queue to go back to the hotel.

I'm not sure if you can read this, but to give a perspective on how small this town was the sign at the school yard said that "John Dick with repair swings Saturday March 6th"

One of the interesting things was the small beers they served

So moving onto what we were really in Tasmania for - seeing the country. :) Saturday we drove up to St. Helens and given the weather was rainy and overcast we decided to head inland and check out a couple of water falls and a 'major' dairy farm. The dairy farm was the must see spot in the area, so we were excited to get there and check it out. For those who have traveled the states, this would be more of a cozy farm type place. The food was okay, the service was poor, but the scenery was lovely and they did have a cheese cake to die for! :)

After finishing up at the dairy farm we headed on to a couple of water falls in the area. Given it had been raining they were spectacular and a great choice.

The view from the dairy farm

The first of the two water falls - St Columba Falls - this was by far the better of the two

This is Halls Falls, which was more of a brook type thing

This is me, just before I slipped and fell - luckily I saved myself and only got my foot wet

Now we were hoping for an improvement in our hotel, as the place the first night was essentially a small mobile home with a very hard queen bed. The hotel in St. Helens was definitely an improvement in the overall quality - however I think their interior design was done in the 70s as the carpet was a funky (and I mean funky) orange/brown/yellow swirl type design and the halls, rooms, and everything had this amazing wood paneling. It put me in a very Saturday Night Fever mood and I couldn't resist the cheesy picture. :)

Tasmania was Gorgeous!! :)

Last weekend I treated myself to a well earned vacation and went to Tasmania with a friend. Our initial plan was to spend the first night in Maria Island, the next at Freycinet National Park, then the Bay of Fires. I have a ton of pictures and think this is the perfect opportunity to do some proper posts so I'll be breaking this up into the different days.

Thursday Night - Friday

Weather forecast: Sunny on Friday with rain developing on Saturday and Sunday

I arrived in Hobart at about 7:45 PM and was off to dinner with my friend Marieke who arrived earlier in the week. We headed to Salamanca Market which is an area right down by the water with a whole bunch of nice restaurants and pubs for dinner. The weather was a brisk type evening which was perfect for walking around and checking things out.

After a nice dinner and quick stroll we set the NavMan for Swansea and away we went. The road wasn't very impressive given the dark night, however we managed to find the city after about an hour or so of driving. When we finally got to Swansea we began to realise just how small town Tasmania is... the main road had one phone booth, a bakery, a church, a Yield sign, and a fire station - and no hotel to be found. So we were at a bit of a loss as to where our hotel was. Luckily there was the phone booth as all cell phone coverage ended about 10 minutes outside Hobart. :)

When we finally were checked into the hotel (around 10PM) - after calling the night clerk to open the lobby to give us our key - we were pleasantly surprised at the quality of the room. For $100 AUD we had a queen bed, two twins, microwave, fridge, dining room set, and a renovated bathroom. Compared to the local surrounds this place was a gem. As Friday's plan was to hike on Maria island we had an early night.

Friday morning we were off to the ferry after a quick stop at the bakery. Our hopes were that the town simply seemed smaller at night... however we were wrong. The bakery was the only place open for breakfast and the ferry that left at 9:00 AM didn't come back until 5:00 PM, and the island has no food and no roads... Given this new knowledge we decided to skip Maria Island for another (more well equipped and prepared) trip and head up to Freycinet National Park a day early (especially given the weather forecast).

Now I went to Tasmania without any preconceived notions or ideas - my friend had done the research and most of the planning and for all intensive purposes I was tagging along. However I was very surprised at the sheer beauty of this little island. In the blink of an eye it goes from farms with grazing sheep, to gorgeous beaches with the bluest water I've seen in a very long time or possibly ever, to rugged mountains which reminded me the rock formations in Arizona.

Freycinet is known for Wine Glass bay which is a gorgeous beach which is only accessible by foot or boat. So given we forgot to pack our boat we hiked in. :) Here are some of the pictures from our hike.

Marieke and I in the obligatory self portrait

The view from the sand

One of the inland lakes

Beach walk to Hazards Beach

Of all the places we stayed, Swansea was probably the smallest town, however it offered the best nigh life... so to add a bit of a cliff hanger I'll save that bit for the next post.

And I thought it was hot in January...

I'm not sure if it's made the news in the states, however Monday was the hottest night in 13 years. Yes I said 13 years!!!!!

Now add to that the humidity, lack of air conditioning, lack of bug screens (which means I get unwanted visitors at night), and you have a very unpleasant and restless nights sleep. :(

The upswing is that I'm going to Tasmania tomorrow evening and the high is 50F which will be much better than the heat we've been having. As always I'll take lots of pictures, and try to post the narratives.

My appologies on not posting the names of the cockatoos - however I've been working long hours and haven't been able to interact with them much. Call me old fashioned but I want their names to come to me from them. :)

Any who... it's a cool night and I'm off to try to get a good nights sleep.

My new "Pets" and your challenge :)

When I moved into my new apartment/flat, it was very apparent that there is a different set of local wildlife, and more particularly birds. Being close to the harbour there are a number of different local birds, but the most popular ones are the cockatoos and laurakeets. Apparently, the last person in my room was feeding the laurakeets and had a local group which would come by often.

However, I've managed to attract bigger and better birds. There are a couple of cockatoos which have realised I keep sunflower seeds and will feed them if they come. They're extremely smart and a bit greedy, but not many people can say they have 'wild' birds as pets which will eat out of their hands. I say 'wild' because they are very socialised living in Sydney.

My challenge to you is to help me come up with names for them. :) Please comment on what names you think I should call them and my flatmate and I will choose from the lot. There may be a prize for whoever the makes the chosen suggestion.

Our two friends telling us they want food

One bird...

Two birds...

Now Rachelle (my flatmate) and I were becoming a bit suspicious as the birds were very greedy and seemed to ALWAYS be around... but tonight it all became clear. There are two sets of birds which come around!! Shortly after this picture the dominant pair proceeded to scare the others away and eat both sets of food I put out.

Three and four!!

Today I fought the ocean....

... and it won. :(

But I will not be discouraged and am taking this as a challenge for tomorrow. The weather for tomorrow's swim is not much better than today so I'm hoping this will scare many 4,500 people who are registered to swim. Today, however was meant to be a easy swim to simply get out in the water and move around a bit.

The swells were meant to be 8 ft today with rainy weather - tomorrow is meant to be only 6ft with the same weather. Fortunately (or so I'm told) the swells will be coming from the south so the beach we are swimming from will be sheltered. This is key because I typically end up having trouble in the massive waves coming into the beach and thrashing me around like a rag doll. Here are some pictures of the waves I attempted to swim in... hopefully the ocean isn't as pissed off tomorrow!

The View of North Bondi

South Bondi

Straight on... those waves look smaller than they actually are

Weekend of Fun - Part 2

So after my long weekend of swimming, relaxing, and cleaning - I had tickets to go to a show for the Sydney Festival. Sydney Festival is essentially a month long music, arts, and theatre extravaganza all throughout Sydney. Some of the shows are mystical/magical, some are new takes on old shows, and some are just concerts. I've never been too into the art scene, but my old flatmate is so she had her eye on a couple of shows. One of which was this hip hop group called the Tom Tom Crew. Her description to me was that they were a percussion and acrobatics group which had received rave reviews.

I went into the show open minded but was not expecting anything too fantastic. I was wrong - it was amazing!!

So the group is made up of 6 people (7 but one was injured for our show). One guy is a DJ, another a specialist in percussion instruments of any form, three acrobats, and an amazing (and very cute) beet boxer named Tom Thumb. The show was truly awesome. From the beginning they had everyone involved and engaged with the performance. Tom Thumb was exceptional and was able to use his voice in ways which you wouldn't think possible.

Needless to say this was a very good end to a long weekend and was topped off with some exceptional Thai food and a bottle of wine. :)

Weekend Update - Part 1

It has been a very busy weekend and somehow I managed to make it so that it was productive, relaxing, and a lot of fun - all at the same time! :) I will break this blog up a bit for a couple reasons. Partly because it just makes sense, and secondly if I make the blog too big I'll get intimidated by the task at hand and quite possibly never finish the post (which has happened many times before).

Right so down to business...

As typical of my weekends of late, I was a good girl who only had a couple beers on Friday and was in bed before the coach turned into a pumpkin. This meant I was up early enough to be fresh and ready for my early morning swim training on Saturday.

Now I will pause here to say at first I was a bit reluctant with all this early Saturday morning business. It means I can't really let loose on Fridays and have to get up at around 7-730 (depending on how slowly I'm moving) to be out the door in time to get the public transit to the beach. However, it has turned out to be really quite amazing. There is something refreshing and energizing about getting in the water first thing in the morning, seeing the fish swimming below you in the surf, and having a relaxing swim. So basically I'm loving it.

So this Saturday we did a big swim, which was 1.6K. However it was really pleasant because there were virtually no waves and it was a nice sunny day. This was an additional bonus because I signed up to do another race on Sunday which was 1.8K, so for me this was a great warm-up.

Saturday continued to be a scorching day, so I took my trainer's advice and got one of my recommended bi-weekly massages (he really had to twist my arm on that one). :) After the massage I returned home to catch up on my downloaded Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice episodes while trying not to bake.

A very literal comparison of the two days would be to say that Saturday was day and Sunday was night... I woke up to a very grey sky which was trying to rain, and a light wind. By the time we got to the beach where our swim was the slight wind was stronger and the sea was storming like the rest of the weather looked like it should be. So in comparison to Saturday's swim, the waves were MASSIVE. Now my friend Louise and I were both thinking in that maybe they would cancel the swim because the waves were too dangerous. Oh no, this just happened to be one of the serious swims where they don't really care too much about big waves - they just add another dozen life savers on boards, change the course a bit and send you out there.

The view of the beach from the car park - the swim was from between the two hills to the beach right in front of me...

We sucked it up and worked up the courage to go out for the warm up swim, only to find out that it wasn't as bad as you thought it would be - it was worse!! The beach had developed a ditch, which essentially means there was a sandbar about 20 metres out from the beach, so in the middle and on that bar we were thrown around like a rag doll in a washing machine. After the first instance of being completely thrown around by a wave, Louise and I both looked at each other and said "I don't like this very much." However once you've gone in the water and lived to walk back to the beach, it's really hard to say you aren't going back in.... so off we went when the horn sounded.

I will admit there are somethings in my training program which I don't do, but all up I would consider myself fit. However, getting out past those waves made me sooo exhausted that I had to flip on my back and just kick for a while to catch my breath. We rounded the first can/booey (which I have no idea how to spell) it wasn't too bad, aside from the up and down action of the waves which made it very hard to make sure I was swimming straight in the direction I wanted to go. For anyone prone to sea sickness this would have been horrible.

I rounded the last can and was excited to almost be done, only to look up to see the life savers trying to point us towards a less than straight angle towards the beach. Now when they tell me to go somewhere - I go. Unfortunately not everyone was as keen to follow their directions so there was some definite collisions going on, which I am NOT ashamed of because getting in was h-o-r-r-i-b-l-e. The waves were bigger, the ditch was deeper which meant I couldn't touch the bottom to regain my bearings and actually use the next wave to help me move closer to the beach. All I could really do for a good couple minutes was hold my nose and pray I got a long enough break to actually swim back towards shore. I was on the verge of putting my hand up for help when like the sun shining from above there was a break in the waves. So I swam as hard as my tired arms could take me, and made it back to land.

View from the beach where the race ended

The rest of Sunday was spent recovering and cleaning then topped up with a fantastic night, which will be the second blog.... can you handle the suspense???