Mt William

Tassie continues to delight. The hottest we have experienced since we arrived is 25 degrees, which we thought wonderful, even though we were surrounded by Taswegians complaining of sunstroke. We have settled into a routine, working most mornings, but having the weekends for touring. Last weekend we went to Hobart, and Cecile dropped me off at Bellreive Oval where I watched the mighty Vics give the Tasmanian pretenders an inspiring lesson on how to be good losers. Cecile went to the Salamanca Market, and the Wooden Boat Show. This weekend we went north east to the Mount William National Park, which was created specifically to protect the endangered Forester Kangaroo. We did'nt see any. However, armed with crampons, pitons, belaying rope and oxygen, we did climb to the summit of Mount William. 216 of the hardest metres I have ever done. Another lesson learnt in Darwin is the daily picnic, and today we travelled to Meadstone Falls to consume our Pate and Avocado baguettes. Yum.

A tale of two cities

Hobart versus Launceston
Derwent versus Tamar
Cascade versus Boag
South versus North

Tassie is such a small place, often stigmatised by the mainlanders. One still often hears stories of two-headed tassies, cousin-love and Irish jokes recycled as Tasmanian jokes. And yet the island is divided by the North/South rivalry.
We love it all. Both cities are charming in their settings and architecture. we like the fact they are large enough to offer almost all a city should, but small enough to be explored on foot. Either are within a stone throw of stunning natural attractions : Mt Wellington and Huon Valley for Hobart, the Cataract Gorge and Tamar valley for Launceston, to name but a few. Small is definitely beautiful as far as we are concerned.
Oh! And by the way, well done David for suggesting summer in Tasmania! Cecile thought why not Northen Queensland?

Animals

Well, we just had a truly wonderful experience - our bosses Vicki and Geoff, in addition to running the holiday park, are wildlife rescuers. They have a lovely 7 acre bush block just outside Bicheno and use it to raise orphan animals. They have wallabies, pademelons, possums, kangaroos, they have even looked after an echidna. Of course most of the orphans have been created by the Tasmanian roadkill epidemic, but they told us one appalling anecdote about some local ruffians who wanted a couple of wallaby babies as pets, so they shot 2 wallabies with babies in their pouches in order to get them. After a week they couldn't be bothered with the work involved, and dumped the babies at the local nature park. Luckily Vicki and Geoff were there to nurse them, and these orphans are in the pictures as adults, roaming the countryside, but occasionally popping back to say hello. Vicki even makes latex teats of various sizes and shapes to replicate the real thing in each species.

At home in Bicheno

One of the great things about Bicheno is that it is centrally located in the North east and allows us to explore all the regions attractions. There were lots of good things to see from Darwin, but often one had to drive hundreds of kilometres to see them. Here is Tassie, the distances are very much smaller. So in the past few weeks we have visited the Mathinna falls, the Saint Columba falls, Launceston airport, Evercreech forest reserve, Storeys creek falls, the Launceston airport, the Meetus falls, Lake Leake, Launceston airport, the Lost falls, the Hardings falls and we have climbed Ben Lomond, making it to the cairn on the top of Tasmanias highest mountain whilst on the way to the Launceston airport. One of the highlights was viewing the "White Knights" a stand of white eucalypts at the Evercreech Forest reserve, each one of which is in excess on 90 metres. Tassies climate has allowed us to return to our bush walking regimen, in the NT walking 10 metres left us both drenched in sweat, but today we walked 6-7 kilometres, much of it in 13 degrees at the top of Ben Lomond. Cecile has been snapping away as usual (do digital cameras snap ?) and even managed to catch some shots of me climbing out of a creek into which I had just fallen. Tassie continues to delight, with glorious mountain scenery and wonderful Georgian architecture at every turn, however it must be said that there is the occasional little town or settlement which presents a less attractive picture. We came upon a group of towns to the north west of Hobart which are certainly the poorest that I have ever seen in Australia. Whole villages without a single property which did'nt need a coat of paint, or repair, ( or demolishing) in which the most popular recreation appeared to be a competition to determine who could get the largest collection of broken down cars into their front yard. The East Coast Holiday Camp where we work is, like most hospitality in Tassie extremely seasonal, flat out Christmas to Easter, with about 250 people on site each night, but then dead quiet for the rest of the year - where to next I wonder ?

Bicheno

The observant blog followers amongst you may have noticed a question mark in the title of our last blog : "Home in Hobart?". Indeed, we were trying, not very sucessfully, to find work in Hobart, and home was a motel room in the suburbs. Last week, we were told that the motel was booked up on Saturday and we had to vacate for the night. We decided to spend the week-end in Launceston, visiting a couple of beautiful old villages along the way. We bough the Launceston newspaper and spotted an ad for cleaners in a Tourist Park in Bicheno, on the East Coast. We met the managers on the Sunday, got the gig, and straigt away settled in one of the on-site vans in the park where we started work the next day. We clean 4/5 mornings a week, which gives us plenty of time to enjoy our suroundings (Freycinet Peninsular is just down the road) and the amazingly changing coastal weather.