close encounters of the possum and wombat kind
Back in melbourne now - flew in this morning. It's really nice to come back to a place. You already know how the public transportation works, where things are, and you don't have to learn all of that again. I never appreciated that before.
We'll be staying with the packard's again tonight and i'm excited to go back and chat with them some more. Now we can tell them all about our tasmanian adventure. speaking of which:
we had a good laugh the next morning with Jim and Mae when they explained that the numbers next to their names were not in fact their ages but the years of their birth. changes everything, doesn't it? yeah, we thought so too. In any case, our stay with them was really wonderful. It's quite heartening to be meeting all these openminded lovely friendly people all over the world. Makes me feel happy and like the world maybe, just maybe, isn't (and excuse my new australian vocabulary) shithoused. After our chuckle and some requisite pictures, we headed off in our adorable little blue rental car. Na was excited about the manual car, so i sat in the passenger seat as we drove from western tasmania to the east coast. a very long drive broken up by a couple of waterfall walks along the highway and accompanied by mostly static or talk radio. They kept giving the same news over and over again, too. oy. tasmania is beautiful, it's true, but it's different having come from good ole new zealand. the colors were so vibrant and in such striking contrast. the land and flora seemed so lush and everything seemed pristine and precious. here, things seem more hardy and scrubby. still gorgeous, don't misunderstand, but dryer and more weathered in some way. The trees - mostly eucalyps (also known as gums)- have the most interesting bark. We saw an echidna on the side of the road (looks kinda like a porcupine but is very adorable and has a little snout at the front). We drove and drove - windy and hilly is the name of the game.
Finally we arrived in Strahan - the most southwesterly town in tassie. We stayed at a backpackers that was just fine. we made some dinner (falafel and veggie soup from the can), and ended up chatting with 2 people from melbourne who were vacationing down there - dave and cheryl. very pleasant and told us a funny thing that i find horribly amusing but may lose its charm completely in the retelling: a guy goes into an audition having never heard the song "let's call the whole thing off" before (what rock is this guy living under anyway?). So when he sings it, he says "you say potato, i say potato, you say tomato, i say tomato" but with all the same accent, and he wonders who wrote this song and what the heck is it all about. just do it out loud and see how funny it sounds. i thought it was funny anyway. shut up.
Next day we did a boat river cruise on the gordon river. we chatted with the people sharing our table - from western australia, they were, and enjoyed some cool views. the most interesting part, in my opinion, was the guided tour of Sarah Island (tour guide Rob is vying for tour guide of the month, i think), which was a convict island when they first had convicts down in tasmania (then van diemen's land). It was really really harsh conditions. The average age of prisoners was 20 and the people sent to sarah island were convicts from hobart who had committed crimes (like showing up late or being rude to their superiors - not murder) while imprisoned there. Anyway, people would make murder-suicide pacts and all sorts of horrible things to escape this place in the first few years. Then something changed - they started building boats there and everything turned around. There's a special timber unique to tasmania - Huon Pine that is really strong, has oil that prevents it from rotting in water, and will float two thirds out of the water. So a boat designer trained in boston went to sarah island, started training the convicts to be skilled workers, and turned out tons of really high quality ships made of this great pine. They built a big bakery and a dormitory because the workers (who were now skilled) kind of unionized and forced better conditions. Eventually hobart realized that the island wasn't doing its job as a deterrent for secondary offenders, in fact it was looking pretty good, with people getting training as skilled laborers, so they closed it down and moved everyone closer by to port arthur. so that was a fascinating tour. the guide kept calling people up from the group and having them play parts. a brilliant move. he was part of a theater company. it figures. at the end of the tour he asked me if i had a sister in the area because apparently there's some girl who used to work around there who is my doppleganger. weird.
the rest of the cruise was pleasant enough but pretty uneventful. we passed out that afternoon from the drama mean we had taken as a preventative measure. Next day we headed on to Cradle Mountain (mad props to na for all the driving, by the way. we exceeded 100k each day. that's a lot.) There, we went out to the mountain which is based by a big lake (dove lake). That afternoon we planned to do the popular circuit around the lake, which takes about 2 hours, but we got to a big glacial rock about 20 minutes down one side and sitting on it was so peaceful that we just chilled out there and journaled for a bit, meeting some travelling Ohioans in the process. People are so interesting. we're keeping a checklist of the 50 states to see who is out here travelling. fascinating.
The place i'm sitting at is closing in a moment (isn't that always the way), but i'm going to try to finish this entry tonight, so stay tuned. more fun to follow.
email me
We'll be staying with the packard's again tonight and i'm excited to go back and chat with them some more. Now we can tell them all about our tasmanian adventure. speaking of which:
we had a good laugh the next morning with Jim and Mae when they explained that the numbers next to their names were not in fact their ages but the years of their birth. changes everything, doesn't it? yeah, we thought so too. In any case, our stay with them was really wonderful. It's quite heartening to be meeting all these openminded lovely friendly people all over the world. Makes me feel happy and like the world maybe, just maybe, isn't (and excuse my new australian vocabulary) shithoused. After our chuckle and some requisite pictures, we headed off in our adorable little blue rental car. Na was excited about the manual car, so i sat in the passenger seat as we drove from western tasmania to the east coast. a very long drive broken up by a couple of waterfall walks along the highway and accompanied by mostly static or talk radio. They kept giving the same news over and over again, too. oy. tasmania is beautiful, it's true, but it's different having come from good ole new zealand. the colors were so vibrant and in such striking contrast. the land and flora seemed so lush and everything seemed pristine and precious. here, things seem more hardy and scrubby. still gorgeous, don't misunderstand, but dryer and more weathered in some way. The trees - mostly eucalyps (also known as gums)- have the most interesting bark. We saw an echidna on the side of the road (looks kinda like a porcupine but is very adorable and has a little snout at the front). We drove and drove - windy and hilly is the name of the game.
Finally we arrived in Strahan - the most southwesterly town in tassie. We stayed at a backpackers that was just fine. we made some dinner (falafel and veggie soup from the can), and ended up chatting with 2 people from melbourne who were vacationing down there - dave and cheryl. very pleasant and told us a funny thing that i find horribly amusing but may lose its charm completely in the retelling: a guy goes into an audition having never heard the song "let's call the whole thing off" before (what rock is this guy living under anyway?). So when he sings it, he says "you say potato, i say potato, you say tomato, i say tomato" but with all the same accent, and he wonders who wrote this song and what the heck is it all about. just do it out loud and see how funny it sounds. i thought it was funny anyway. shut up.
Next day we did a boat river cruise on the gordon river. we chatted with the people sharing our table - from western australia, they were, and enjoyed some cool views. the most interesting part, in my opinion, was the guided tour of Sarah Island (tour guide Rob is vying for tour guide of the month, i think), which was a convict island when they first had convicts down in tasmania (then van diemen's land). It was really really harsh conditions. The average age of prisoners was 20 and the people sent to sarah island were convicts from hobart who had committed crimes (like showing up late or being rude to their superiors - not murder) while imprisoned there. Anyway, people would make murder-suicide pacts and all sorts of horrible things to escape this place in the first few years. Then something changed - they started building boats there and everything turned around. There's a special timber unique to tasmania - Huon Pine that is really strong, has oil that prevents it from rotting in water, and will float two thirds out of the water. So a boat designer trained in boston went to sarah island, started training the convicts to be skilled workers, and turned out tons of really high quality ships made of this great pine. They built a big bakery and a dormitory because the workers (who were now skilled) kind of unionized and forced better conditions. Eventually hobart realized that the island wasn't doing its job as a deterrent for secondary offenders, in fact it was looking pretty good, with people getting training as skilled laborers, so they closed it down and moved everyone closer by to port arthur. so that was a fascinating tour. the guide kept calling people up from the group and having them play parts. a brilliant move. he was part of a theater company. it figures. at the end of the tour he asked me if i had a sister in the area because apparently there's some girl who used to work around there who is my doppleganger. weird.
the rest of the cruise was pleasant enough but pretty uneventful. we passed out that afternoon from the drama mean we had taken as a preventative measure. Next day we headed on to Cradle Mountain (mad props to na for all the driving, by the way. we exceeded 100k each day. that's a lot.) There, we went out to the mountain which is based by a big lake (dove lake). That afternoon we planned to do the popular circuit around the lake, which takes about 2 hours, but we got to a big glacial rock about 20 minutes down one side and sitting on it was so peaceful that we just chilled out there and journaled for a bit, meeting some travelling Ohioans in the process. People are so interesting. we're keeping a checklist of the 50 states to see who is out here travelling. fascinating.
The place i'm sitting at is closing in a moment (isn't that always the way), but i'm going to try to finish this entry tonight, so stay tuned. more fun to follow.
email me
posted by theonetheycallamy at 1/21/2005 01:34:00 AM
3 Comments:
The "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off" bit was also featured in a movie called "The Fabulous Baker Boys", which is about a pair of brothers who are lounge pianists. I haven't seen it in years, but I recall it being pretty good. I think Nicole Kidman plays the singer they audition with the tune, but it would just be too difficult to check IMDB. Glad you're having a great time. You should have Nabia teach you to drive stick (if you haven't already learnt, and I'm just confused, as I'm want to be).
-Alec
You saw an echidna! I only knew that such a thing existed from the TMBG song. What's so weird about all your animal sightings is that from here it's like you're *constantly* bumping into weird creatures (because why would you write about the non-creature moments?) so my mental picture of Down Unda is of you and Nabia in downtown Sydney, pushing your way through (and bumping into) a crowd of cute tour guides, emus, koalas, and Ohioan tourists as Nemo and co. swim in the EAC below.
Making small talk with my pinkies, mate,
MMS
echindna's are very cute. i hung out with one at the taronga zoo.
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