Category: 2023 02 Oz
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TALL trees that aren’t California Redwoods!
Yesterday we drove from Strahan to Hobart. To quote the Beatles, this was a long (almost 5 hours) and windy road! Felt very Kiwi. It took us past Mount Field National Park, which features “Russell Falls” – which we had seen in photos hanging in Ruby’s Cottage in Port Arthur – and a tall trees…
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From “Hell’s Gate” to “Hell on earth” to “One helluva victory for the environment”!
Welcome to Strahan (pronounced “Strawn”) on the west coast of Tazzie. If you look at the map, it’s easy to pick out, given that Macquarie Harbour is HUGE (almost 6X the size of Sydney Harbour). We took a 6 hour cruise of the harbour and Gordon River on the new jet catamaran used by World…
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It was time to hit the heavens.
To date all of our hikes in Tazzie have been of the urban variety. Given that we are at the edge of “Cradle Mountain – Lake St Clair National Park”, it was time to head out. Following a lazy morning of course. After all, we are OLD. Moving quickly in the morning holds no appeal.…
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Going rural.
Up until today we have been within sight of the ocean. It was time to head into the hinterland. First stop was Sheffield, famous for being Tazzie’s outdoor art gallery. Taking inspiration from Chemainus, on Vancouver Island, the town has embraced murals on all open walls. Using local history, townspeople and their stories and mingling…
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An overdose of cute!
Driving from Launceston to Burnie yesterday brought two places onto our agenda: the Platypus House and Seahorse World! YOU would have changed course too! The Platypus is truly an odd looking creature, looking like something Disney stitched together from bits and pieces of other critters! But it is totally adorable. We learned a few new…
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Lawn-cess-tun.
That is how Ozzies pronounce “Launceston”. The town it is named for (in Cornwall, England) is pronounced “Lawson”. That seems very English to me, as I cannot fathom how they get “Lester” from “Leicester”. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ In any case, it is a lovely place in northern Tasmania, built on the intersection of a brown, silt-filled meandering…
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Black Cockatoos, heaps of white stuff, and milking machines! 😳
On our way to Launceston, we stopped for lunch at Pyengana Dairy Company for lunch. We always wanted to see how a modern dairy operation works! Unfortunately we forgot to get photos of the farm, so these two are pulled from the web: The farm runs itself! The cows milk themselves when they need to.…
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A very somber place.
We decided to visit Port Arthur, which is widely known for two reasons: firstly, it was a very infamous prison from 1830 – 1877, and secondly, it was the site of a horrific massacre on April 28-29th, 1996, when a mentally disturbed young man murdered 35 people and injured 19 others with an automatic weapon…
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Insanity in the name of Science?
There is an age of the exploration of Antarctica labeled “The Heroic Age”. Between 1897 and 1922, there were 17 major expedition by 10 countries. Some for fame – such as the race to the South Pole – and some for pure science. The Australasian Antarctic expedition of 1911 – 1914, was of the latter…
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Kunanyi controls everything!
The lovely city of Hobart occupies the hills on both sides of a continuous body of water formed by the harbour and the Derwent River. I don’t know where the boundary between them lies! The entire area is dominated by Kunanyi (or Mt. Wellington): rising to a height of 1271 metres (4170′), she is capped…
63 and free 