A devil of a time in Tasmania...

Hi Guys...

Its been a long time since I last posted I know... but I do have an excuse...

It's Tasmanias fault... Not that I'm saying that Tasmania is backwards or anything, but it is certainly more difficult to get onto the information superhighway here... Add to that the fact that I'm working 7 days a week (weather allowing) and you can understand the predicament that I'm in!

(Note: I've been forced to post this blog without having all of the photos uploaded (damn Tasmania), but keep your eyes on this album for the rest of the pictures...)

However.... I've made it online now, so here is my story...

We left you last on our way out of Wentworth, having just finished working on a grape farm, and heading south towards Tasmania. Before we went to Melbourne we visited Wilsons Promontory for a couple of days, stopping off at Happy Jacks rest stop on the way... As we headed south we could feel it getting colder, and it seemed that this led directly to a proliferation of millipedes the further south we went...

Wilsons Promontory was very nice, with lots of beautiful views, walks and beaches close by, and absolutely loads of wild life including bright red parrots, a kangaroo called "dude" and wombats! Also giant mushrooms...

We stayed in Melbourne for a couple of nights... on the first night we met up with Phil and Ffion again (see last post), and on the second day we met up with one of Nams friends from her university days… we also saw a fashion show and went back to the museum of moving images and played with all of the displays, including making a rotoscope video of me knocking Nam about Matrix styleeee!

Early on the morning of the second day in Melbourne we made our way to the ferry terminal and prepared ourselves for the 8 hour ferry ride over to Tasmania! The ferry was pretty huge and comfortable, and we kept ourselves amused pretty well, apart from Nam feeling queasy for the majority of the journey!

The first couple of days in Tasmania we went around all of the job agencies that we could find looking for jobs. We were slightly apprehensive about this as we had been told by many people that it was difficult to find a job in Tasmania… Figuring that we had a few days to spare before anything showed up we decided to take a small tour of the island.

We drove to Port Arthur (very nice area of Tasmania with crazy rock beaches and a chocolate factory!) and promptly got two phone calls from different agencies offering us jobs! So much for work being difficult to find!

We took a job on a potato harvester and have been doing that ever since, with a couple of days of for bad weather and a couple off for Easter, one of which we spent picking broccoli instead. We were told that the smallest acceptable size for broccoli was "about a C  cup"... so I spent the whole day groping broccoli... My psychiatrist may hear about this in the future...

Worthy of note in this time was staying in Poatina resort village, which sounds like it would be an expensive place to stay, but which turned out to be very cheap, and to have all sorts of additional bonuses including a maze and a Thomas the tank engine that you could ride round the village on!

The plan for now is to work for another few days, and then to tour round Tasmania and see the sights before heading back to the mainland and Sydney for Nams flight home… more on that in the next post…

Melbourne to Sydney and the Sydney week! (Including my birthday!!!)

The last I wrote was to tell you about my day in Melbourne... Well, we left Melbourne shortly after that, but not before performing the obligatory pilgrimage to the place that every British ex-student in Australia has to visit... We went to …. the Neighbours Street!
 

It was exactly as awesome as you would imagine. The outside shots of Neighbours are actually filmed on Pin Oak Court. I made the pilgrimage early in the morning, and was rewarded by managing to catch the end of a tour that some people had paid to go on! The tour also brought a “Ramsay Street” sign with them! I of course took full advantage of this!

After that we headed north and east, towards Canberra. It took two days, of pretty uneventful driving, to get there. Freeway all the way! We made one stop-off at Glenrowan, which is apparently the birthplace of Ned Kelly.

Canberra was nice. Quiet... but nice. We arrived the day before Australia day, which seemed pretty fitting! We visited the War Memorial, which was very interesting, and then headed over to Parliament House for the free Australia Day concert that was being held there... The concert was fun. Lots of Australian bands that we had never heard of... but we chilled out for a while, and then headed to the front, near the stage to do some bouncing....

The next day we made the long trip to Sydney. Actually... it wasn't that long. We arrived there around 11am and as it was Australia Day we proceeded to do the most Australian thing we could think of... We had a picnic in the park! After this we headed to North Sydney to Josephine's house, which would be our residence for the next five days.

The next day we pretty much chilled out in preparation for the next day.... My Birthday!!! For my birthday we did touristy things! We visited Paddys Market, and Darling Harbour and then we went to the Sydney Aquarium... This was amazing and we saw... duck billed platypuses, turtles, sea-horses, octopusses, jelly fish, eels, penguins, sharks, rays, crocodiles, dugongs, many many fishes and corals and other small sea dwelling animals!

After this I had my birthday meal! Which was a lasagne which I prepared personally... and it was excellent... if I do say so myself!

On the 29th of January we did more tourist things. We walked across Sydney Harbour Bridge, and took a stroll around the city. It was at around this point that I started experimenting with more artistic modes on my camera!

That evening we went out into Sydney with Jo and some of er friends. We went to a few bars (including a very expensive one on a 47th floor that rotated!!) and ended up in a bar playing pool. Nam and Jo proceeded to wipe the floor with a couple of guys that challenged them to a game!

On Saturday we went into the city to meet some of Nams Thai friends for lunch, and then Jo came and met us and we went for a little walk from Bondi Beach to... Tamara Beach, a few kilometres up the coast. This was a very nice little walk. After this we had to rush back to Josephines to prepare for the Sydney salsa congress that we were going to that night.

We arrived at the congress just in time to get a seat near the front and to the right of the stage. The shows were amazing as expected, though it seemed like there wasn't going to be any salsa for a while! The videos are all on my youtube channel here...

After the shows was the salsa party. This was lots of fun, as I don't get to salsa too often any more. I met up with some old friends, and danced the night away. We didn't end up getting home until about 4am, and didn't get to sleep until even later!

Sunday was a restful day. We mainly did some shopping and prepared for leaving Sydney. We got an early night and said our goodbyes to Josephine.

The next morning we got our stuff together and finally left at around 11am. We headed West, towards Mildura...

That pretty much brings us up to date for now. We reached Mildura... stopping off along the way to put our names in to various job offices. We now have a job to start tomorrow. I am going to be lifting buckets, and Nam will be picking grapes. This will occupy us for most of the next month, so don't expect too many updates in that time.

Hopefully I'll see you in a month, a bit more tanned, slightly healthier, and a lot richer!

Laters

Trev

Adelaide to Melbourne... Featuring The Great Ocean Road!!!

What a couple of weeks it has been... We have driven more then a quarter of the way round the coast of Australia, seen some amazing sights, experienced weather from 47 degree sun to 15 degree driving rain.

The last stretch was the drive from Adelaide to Melbourne which, though it is not so long in distance, more then makes up for it with the sheer density of things to see and beautiful sights...

The first day after leaving Adelaide we drove down the coast to Robe, where we stayed in the Little Dip Natural Park... Robe was very nice and felt very peaceful.

Leaving Robe behind us on day two we travelled to Mount Gambier. This was a very interesting place, being built on an extinct volcano, and having lots of sinkholes, craters and lakes... one of them a striking shade of sapphire!

The next day we crossed the border into Victoria. We went for a walk in Portland, all in the cause of seeing seals... we saw them, but they were very far away. It was a nice walk regardless... We finished the day in Port Fairy... Not a name I'd imagine the sailors liked very much, though it is one of the oldest ports in Australia!

Day four saw us arrive onto the great ocean road. It was going to be hard for this road to live up to the hype... but it somehow delivered... in spite of the intermittent rain. I also managed to get sunburned in site of the intermittent rain!

On the great ocean road we saw the Bay of Islands, the Bay of Martyrs, The Grotto, London Bridge, The Arch, Loch Ard Gorge (featuring the Blowholes, Thunder Cave and Razorback Ridge) and finally the Twelve Apostles...

We stopped the night at Lavers Hill and set off for the rest of the great ocean road... There were many amazing views on this day... though they didn't have names like the ones the previous day... We continued driving after the great ocean road, through Melbourne city, and all the way to Phillip Island... Phillip Island is mostly famous for Penguins...

Fairy penguins to be precise. They are the smallest penguins in the world, being mostly less then 25cm tall, but they still walk in a very amusing fashion. We saw the penguin parade and then headed to San Remo for the night.

The final day of our great drive we re-visited Phillip island to see the Nobbys... worth visiting for their funny name if nothing else. They also had a boardwalk over the cliffs with many interesting sights to see... including some seagull chicks!

After this we headed for Melbourne to our place of rest for the next few days...

And that is the tale of our trip from Adelaide to Melbourne... I hope you liked it...

Trev.







Epilogue...

I feel that it would be wrong to leave you without telling you about our day trip to Melbourne.. We set of early in the morning, in spite of Nams protests as I dragged her out of bed!

We took the bus, and then the train, into the center of the city, getting off at Flinders Street Station. We wandered around the city almost at random for a while, stopping off to check the internet and find things that caught our interest...

We ended up in the North of the city, near the Victoria Market.. so we decided to pay it a visit.

Victoria Market is a wonderful place. The non food section was ok. Just what you would expect from a market, but the food section of the market was a like a dream for me, with a vast array of food, from all over the world, all freshly prepared and smelling amazing. The only problem was that I was visiting it with literally zero cash to spare! If I had had any money, or if I lived in Melbourne, I could have spent a fortune in that place...

Leaving the market wistfully behind we resumed our wandering. Seeing one of the free tourist trams riding past we decided to take a ride round the circuit of the city. We saw many interesting sights around Melbourne on this before getting off pretty much where we got on...

We walked back south from here, down Swanston street. We visited Chinatown, which was less exciting then we thought it would be, and made our way to Federation Square, which was right next to where we set off...

Federation Square was filled with people watching the Australian Open tennis on a huge screen, and was backed by a huge striking building. This building turned out to be the Australian Museum of the Moving Image, so of course we decided to wander in and take a look...

This museum was lots of fun. Our only regret was that we hadn't spent the whole day there! We only had about an hour to wander around and play with all of the interactive displays (including some “classic” computer games!).

We left the Museum and headed back to the train station... satisfied with the day and thinking that we would definitely have to visit Melbourne city again some time... ()