May 10 -- On to Melbourne

The day started off with excitement -- just as we were sitting down to breakfast, the hotel fire alarm went off and we all evacuated! Fortunately, it was a small thing -- the chef set off the alarm with cooking issues -- and we got back to breakfast that had now cooled down some. Our flight to Melbourne was a bit delayed, but we got to our hotel at nearly 1pm.

Our plane from Launceston -- at least you could stand up in it.

This is actually an apartment hotel, so we have a kitchen, living room, bedroom, and (ta da) a washer-dryer. Since we are nearly out of clean clothes for cool weather, we were very excited to try this out.  Unfortunately, the directions are a bit obscure, and when we came back from our orientation walk 3 hours later, everything was still wet. When we tried to set it to dry only, it sounded like it was washing again, and another 3 hours later, clothes were still wet. The hotel staff came to look and reset for drying (exactly how I had) and in about 10 minutes, we'll see if we were on the right track after all.

We met the last 3 ladies in our group and set off at 1:15 to explore Melbourne. We have what looks like a fine location -- about a block from a mall/grocery/food court, about a block from Chinatown, a couple blocks from the river, and a couple blocks from the small lanes that make Melbourne interesting to walk around. Our first goal was the food court and lunch. The mall originally was the site of a shot factory -- dropping hot lead from a great height to make ammunition -- and when a Japanese group wanted to develop the area into a mall, they got permission only if they preserved the shot factory. So in the center of the mall, there it stands with a conical glass roof over it.

Shot factory captured in a mall

Next we crossed a street to go to the state library. It is huge and really deserves more time to explore than we had. This is a university town and we could be grandparents to practically everyone we saw. The library on a Saturday afternoon was jammed to the gills with students studying something.

We wandered on down to the river and passed Federation Square with several buildings with unusual designs. Vic told us that when new buildings were needed, there often weren't adequately competent Australian architects so the projects were put out for bids and ideas came from all over the world. Each major building has a designer from somewhere else that tends to reflect their home country, so the design is very eclectic.

Railway Station designed by an Indian

Federation Square buildings look kind of like Gaudi might have inspired them.

 

Interesting pedestrian bridge across the Yarra

Kayakers enjoying a Saturday afternoon jaunt on the Yarra.

An interesting feature of Melbourne are the small lanes with tons of businesses, restaurants, and bars. Initially the small roads were only for deliveries, but they have since taken on a life of their own. We will have another day and a half to explore. One of the places we went had a high-end chocolate shop called Haigh's. I think I know a couple folks back home who will be very happy if we do some shopping there! Fortunately, there is also a store in Sydney at the end of our trip, so we don't have to buy now and hope it doesn't melt as we get to warmer locations.

We completed the day with a welcome dinner for the group at a local restaurant in a nearby lane. Now all we have to do is get the laundry done!

May 9 -- Launceston, Cataract Gorge, Wine Tasting

The start of the Cataract Gorge walk with bridge in the
distance.

Today we got to sleep in a bit before heading out for sightseeing. Our first stop was Cataract Gorge in Launceston, a steep rocky canyon with a river below. There is a park leading to the gorge which had a big swimming pool. Launceston is located at the bottom of a bowl of hills, and in times of heavy rain, can flood badly. Vic said that he had seen situations where the pool was completely under water and it looked like it was already several feet above the river level. We crossed a heavy-duty pedestrian suspension bridge and followed a path along but well above the river. Jim and I took a quick side trip up to a look out point before catching up to the rest of the group. The walk was really quite lovely.

View back to the park. The pool was completely submerged in previous flooding.

View of the gorge from the suspension bridge

View along the walk

Next was a stop at Matthew Brady Lookout. As we arrived at the lookout, a flock of very noisy Black Yellow-tailed Cockatoos arrived too. Brady 'earned' a trip to Australia's prison system, where he  repeatedly escaped and got a total of 350 lashes with a cat of nine tails. I hate to think what his back looked like. After 3 years of this, he was sent to Tasmania (pre-Port Arthur) and he continued his escaping. He finally managed to stay escaped with a group of 13 other 'bushrangers'. He and his posse terrorized the countryside, but he was renowned for his good looks and his courtesies to women. Eventually one of his cronies slipped away and ratted him out, expecting to be rewarded with freedom (he was hung instead), and Brady was captured and hung. His cell was filled with flowers sent as a tribute from the ladies of Hobart. The lookout is a high spot about the Tamar River which would have given him a wonderful view of the river traffic.

View north towards Australia mainland and the Tamar River
at Matthew Brady Lookout.

Two cockatoos fight for dominance of the tree top

Close up of Black Yellow-Tailed Cockatoo

We headed on to the Platypus House at Beauty Point, only a few miles south of the Tasman Sea. They have tanks of platypuses, an interesting video of how the platypus mom tends her young (they used little bitty cameras to sneak peeks into the burrow) and an area for Echidna (pronounced Eh-kid-nah), which sort of looks like a pointy-nosed porcupine. Both species are known as monotremes, which are egg-laying mammals. They suckle their young without nipples when the young stimulate (rub) the milk producing area, which then 'sweats' milk. These mammals predate the standard mammal and apparently would have been out-competed by them except for the isolation of the Australian continent.

Platypus swimming

Platypus digging for food

Echidna exiting his burrow

Stick spider near our bus in Beaconsfield

Beaconsfield Gold Mine -- old and new

After lunch in Beaconsfield (site of a functioning goldmine and mine collapse disaster in 2006 where a mild earthquake trapped 2 men for 2 weeks before they were rescued) we went wine tasting at Moore's Hill Winery. In the interest of supporting the local economy, we bought a couple bottles. We really liked the two varieties we bought, but thought the chardonnay was reminiscent of wet sheep.

Back in Launceston, we visited a design gallery known for their wonderful wood products and saw a number of things we would have loved to take home, especially a coffee table (which we could use) and a hall table (which we couldn't in this house -- entry hall too narrow). Unfortunately, they were expensive to start with and would have cost around $600 to ship home, so I contented myself with a french rolling pin.

May 8 - Cradle Mountain to Launceston

It was very cold and frosty this morning
looking out from our cabin at the billabong.

After breakfast and before our official day started, we took the King Billy hike at the Cradle Mountain Lodge. It wound up a hill on a wood boardwalk through what looked like untouched growth and deadfall, heavily covered with moss to the largest tree on Tasmania, a King Billy pine. It was named after the name given to an aborigine back in the 1800s, and is considered a hardwood here. It was quite an impressive specimen! We did see a couple wallabies on our hike. These were a small dark variety with a mouse-like face called a pademelon (sounds like 'patty melt' when our guide pronounces it).

I am wearing 6 layers and still chilly. The forest
we walked through looked like it was untouched
except for the boardwalk.

Another pademelon

We checked out of the lodge and headed off for our day of hiking and driving. We started with a 45 minute walk across a meadow of button grass (tussock) and coral fern. The coral fern is very tough and a favorite of the wombat, who leave cube-shaped skat on the boardwalks for us to ogle. We crossed a raging river a couple times, and the water in it was stained a dark red by the tannins from the trees. Next was a hike to Suicide Rock at Dove Lake, just under Cradle Mountain itself. The rock is a is granite boulder that provides a terrific view of the surrounding area. The last hike was to a replica of the original lodge in the park before it was even a park. A couple, Gustav and Kate Weindorfer, who found the area in 1906 on their honeymoon, bought the property and built a lodge they called Waldheim. Although Gustav had some nasty luck (4 deaths in the family in 1916, including his wife and accusations of being a German spy during WWI), his interest and initial building led to the area eventually being preserved as Cradle Mountain National Park.

Dead trees the result of tree rot brought on by excess water after the road above was built.

Steam rising from the ground as the sun melts the frost.

A hillside of frosty button grass

Our group hiking down toward a river with Cradle Mountain in the background

A favorite wombat food, coral fern covered with frost.

These frosty cubic things are wombat scat.
The theory is they like to poop in high places
and this doesn't roll down to where they are.

Jim at Suicide Rock on Dove Lake at the foot of Cradle Mountain

Waldheim

We had gloriously clear, sunny weather, though it was quite cold to start with. I put on six layers, including 2 coats, as I clearly had not anticipated how cold it would be here. Our guide and bus driver were both agog at how beautiful the day was, however, since it rains 290 days a year in the park and is gray and cloudy a lot of the other 75 days. They estimated there are only about 10 sunny days a year and this one was spectacular.

On our way to Launceston, we stopped in Sheffield for lunch. Like many towns here, the initial industry has failed and they have searched to find a claim to fame to bring in visitors. Here, it was murals. There are historical murals all over town and now there is an annual mural contest. The nine best entries are made full size and put on display for a couple weeks of voting. We got to see this year's entries, and found several of them kind of obscure.

The original mural depicting Gustav Weindorfer in his lodge after his wife's death and his abandonment by friends except the wildlife.

On our bus trip, Vic, our guide, told us why we apparently don't see aborigines here. Aborigines arrived in Australia over 45,000 years ago and during the ice age while Tasmania was still part of the Australian land mass, they wandered here 25,000 to 30,000 years ago. When the ice melted, they became a separate group from the mainland and lived a nomadic life here.  They were seen during the early sightings of the island in the 1700s, and were not in evidence when the English established their colony at Hobart in 1804. Estimates of numbers range from 3,000 to 15,000.For some years, before the English got enthusiastic about settling here, they got along okay, (except for the part where the English captured men as slaves and the women as sex slaves because of the heavily male-dominated population) but once the colony started to take over, the English initiated the 'Black War' and the natives retaliated against the random killings. The government offered a bounty on any dead native of any age that could be brought in. Given that the population already included a number of people who were not entirely law-abiding, this was a pretty effective way to eliminate a species. The last 200 were rounded up and sent to a reservation on Flinders Island and from there, petitioned Queen Victoria to return home. The last 47 were successful, but were still held on a reservation on Tasmania and the last full-blooded aborigine died in the late 1800s. Because the English early on took the women as sex slaves and some of the women voluntarily associated with Europeans, there are still people who can claim aborigine heritage, but no one native to Tasmania has the appearance of those people and the language has been lost.

Once in Launceston, we took a short walk around town. We elected to skip dinner, having had many more meals than normal and I got to catch up on our blog and photo downloads.

May 7 - Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary and the Drive to Cradle Mountain

We headed out of Hobart today to go north and west to Cradle Mountain. On the way, we stopped at Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary, the only private reserve for injured animals in Tasmania. Tasmania has the dubious distinction of being the road kill capitol of the world. Many of the native animals have not developed a road sense, and they (or their offspring) are brought here to recover. In one case, a wombat was killed by a car and a driver stopped and discovered a joey (all marsupial babies are joeys) only a few months old still in the pouch. Bonorong was contacted and made arrangements for the baby to get personal care until it was old enough to move into the sanctuary. In general, they work to release the animal to the wild once they are ready. In the case of baby wombats, this means about at two years, when they become teenagers who are no longer compliant. As youngsters, they are cuddly, but when they mature, they definitely want to be on their own. They do not bond with people and are quite successful after release.

Wombat after the keeper's shoelaces

Wombat being held - very stiff but silky fur

Tasmanian Devil lured out by food

Koala scratching

Koala walking -- notice that of the 5 fingers, two are thumbs

Baby kangaroo watching the world go by.

Some animals cannot be released. Tasmanian Devils in the wild are experiencing a devastating facial cancer that has wiped out over 80% of them in the last 20 years. The cause and a cure have been elusive. Areas that don't have evidence of the disease are physically segregated to keep sick animals out and devils are being bred and kept at sanctuaries such as this in the hopes that their offspring can be released once the disease is beaten. They also had 3 koalas, which came to them after fires that destroyed their habitat. Koalas are picky eaters, only eating about 15 of 900 varieties of eucalyptus, and only a couple of them grow in Tasmania, so there is no native koala habitat here. The sanctuary was formerly a petting zoo and there are several emus and kangaroos that remain from that time. They have become so accustomed to people that release would not be successful.

A Quoll

Jim feeding kangaroos

A mob of kangaroos

We spent the rest of the day driving, with a short lunch stop in Ross, site of a beautiful convict-built sandstone bridge. The two stonemasons got creative and won their freedom for the additional decorative work they did, including a bust of the state governor's wife of the time. Many of the homes here are built of sandstone, and the elm-lined streets are lovely. Dutch elm disease has not made it down here.

Convict-built bridge in Ross

Sandstone detailing on each arch with portrait in the middle

We made another stop in Campbelltown, which has a really interesting project: a decorative row of bricks long the sidewalks with information about various convicts and a brief bio. It is now a badge of courage to have a convict ancestor instead of the badge of shame it was in the past.

Finally, we made our way to Cradle Mountain National Park. We stayed at the Cradle Mountain Lodge. Our cabin overlooked a billabong (aborigine for pond) that supposedly houses a platypus, but the entire time we were there, the pond surface was amazingly flat. Before dinner, we went for a short walk along a river, called the Enchanted Walk and spotted a couple kinds of wallabies. After dinner, we headed out on a king-sized 4-wheel drive to look for wildlife. I guess it was successful because a number of wallabies and wombats were sighted, but it was seriously cold because both front windows were open and I was glad when it was over.

Lynn on the deck of our room, overlooking billabong.

Wallaby spotted during a short hike before dinner.

Another kind of wallaby -- pademelon -- on the pre-dinner hike.

May 6 - Starting Exploration in and around Hobart

The first thing I noticed here is that it's fall! Sun comes up late and goes down early. Plus, although the weather was supposed to be low 50's and I thought we were prepared, I didn't account for how much nastier it is when it rains and that the winds are coming in pretty much unimpeded from Antarctica. There is not much between us and there at the south end of Tasmania.

Last night, we took a short walk in Hobart to a fish restaurant and crashed early -- in bed and asleep by 8:15pm. Waking up at 5:15am was not bad -- amazing to sleep thru that long the first night and 17 hours out of our normal schedule. Today, we started with a brief tour of Hobart, then took a side trip to Port Arthur and visited a wonderful presentation on the convict history of Australia and Tasmania at the prison that was maintained there.

Interior of Hobart Town Hall

 This was supposed to be an official optional trip, but not enough people signed up, so our guide, Vic, graciously rented a car and took 4 of us off to Port Arthur.  Along the way, we made a couple scenic stops -- at a blowhole and Tasman Arch (named for the Dutchman, Abel Tasman, who discovered the island -- he was also a big player in New Zeeland with a National Park named after him). We also drove through Doo Town and discovered that most of the cottages were named with 'Doo' in the title:  Doo Drop In, Doo Me, Dr. Doolittle, Just Doo It and many others.

Main Prison at Port Arthur

We got to the prison museum in time for lunch and a quick tour of the section of the facility that talked about the lives of 52 different inmates. To add to the interest, when we got our tickets, we each got a playing card and got to follow our inmate's path to incarceration and afterwards. Both Jim and I drew the cards of young men who were accused of stealing. Mine was a 15 year old who stole food and was sentenced to 7 years 'transportation' (which meant being sent to Australia, from which the likelihood of returning was quite small). He learned a skill at the prison and had a successful life after release. Jim's had stolen a bunch of umbrellas at age 13, but he was less successful -- an inveterate gambler who apparently came to no good. In England at that time, you could be charged as an adult at age 7 and sentenced to hang as early as age 9. One man got life in prison for stealing a handkerchief.

Most men and women were sent to Sydney to start and removed to Port Arthur if they were seriously bad news or if there was no place for them in Sydney. Port Arthur had separate housing for the juveniles and actually worked to teach them trades, which seemed to be pretty progressive for the time. If you didn't follow the rules or tried to escape, you could be assigned to a chain gang -- a group of 7 or 8 prisoners chained together with leg irons, which were often very heavy. Men were assigned to work like cutting trees and sandstone. For a while there was even a boat-building operation. If you served your 7 years, you could earn your freedom and a plot of land, and there were people in England who tried to get arrested and sent to Australia to get a second chance.

Initially the boat trip was pretty gruesome, but as soon as the authorities wised up and only paid the captains for live convicts, the survival rate improved greatly to 99%. Immigrants fared less well since they paid in advance and it didn't matter to the captain if they survived the trip or not. It was a nine-month trip and cost the equivalent of a year's salary. Plus if you wanted to go back to England, you also had to pay the government for your original transport, so it cost two years' pay and most of a year of your life to get home.

Port Arthur was a early adopter of solitary confinement as a way to have prisoners reflect on their misbehavior and choose to reform as a result instead of being subjected to harsh physical punishment like flogging with a cat of nine tails. The isolation was extreme. All kinds of care was taken to prevent the men from communicating with each other in any way. Any time they left their cubicles (about 5 x 7 with beds that were strung between hooks and could be rolled up during the day), they were hooded and completely wrapped in cloth to prevent anyone from being able to recognize them. Their prison building had an interesting chapel -- each spot was walled off with a wooden door from the next and there was no sitting during the service. This actually had the unfortunate result of driving many of them crazy. The prison opened in 1833 and was abandoned in 1877. In its later years, it served as an insane asylum.

Each standing slot in the Separate Prison Chapel is segegrated with a wooden door

A typical cell in the Separate Prison. The bed unhooks and rolls up. The only humans you ever saw were the minister and an eyeball at the cell door eye hole.

Over 250,000 prisoners were shipped to Australia, and initially they were ashamed of their heritage after they were released. In later years, though, the convict past has been reclaimed and has become a badge of courage for the following generations.

When we got back to Hobart, we had a group dinner at 'Shippies' a bar and restaurant famous for its connection to the sailing world.

On The Way

We had a bit of excitement Saturday just getting to the airport. Left a half hour early (I have infected Jim with the need not to rush...) and ran into a nasty traffic jam in San Francisco that added over 30 minutes to the trip. Thanks to Erika being ready to hop in and get us to the airport in a hurry, we were fine. Got to enjoy a couple hours 'relaxing' in LAX waiting for our 11:30 pm flight, which was about 15 hours, but skipped us ahead one day. For us, its now Monday, with no feeling of having had a Sunday. Oh well -- we get it back when we come home -- we leave at 10am and get home 6am-ish the same day. We actually both got some sleep overnight.

Now we are cooling our heels in the Melbourne airport, awaiting our flight to Hobart, Tasmania, where the trip starts. I picked up a card at the airport that converted my smartphone to an Australian phone for a few weeks, mostly because I really have gotten used to having internet access where ever I am and the cost of data on my US plan was astronomical (really -- like $19,000 for the amount I used last month -- truly crazy). We'll see how I like this and how much data I really need!

In any case, no photos yet, but the real fun starts tomorrow -- keep watching this space and we'll try to do daily updates during our 3 weeks here.

The Next Adventure: a New Continent for Lynn

Saturday, we head off to Australia, the last continent Lynn hasn't set foot on. We are doing a kind of a circular tour of major locations plus Tasmania -- Tasmania first, followed by Melbourne, Adelaide, Alice Springs/Uluru (Ayers Rock), Port Douglas (Great Barrier Reef), and Sydney. We will be 17 to 18 hours ahead of Pacific Daylight time, so while you are sleeping,we'll be out galivanting around, and hopefully posting our day's activities in time for you to read about it at breakfast.

Watch this space!