Tassie

I chose to come to Tasmania for its history and its supposedly beautiful landscape. I was not disappointed. I'd heard mixed things about it before I arrived, all Melburnians emphasised its small population. One man from Queensland was very bitter about 'the rest of Australia paying for Tasmanians' indulgent lifestyle', which seemed a bit extreme... I did wonder though when the airline I was flying there with said 'oh, don't worry about your ID' as I was checking in!

The first thing I noticed about Tasmania is that, compared to the rest of Australia, it is positively mountainous, covered in trees and that it has an unusually high number of roadkill. I am not alone in noticing the high numbers of trees; one Tasmanian told me how he'd gone to the UK and was surprised at how few trees there were. He was in Cumbria, asked someone about it and was very surprised when they replied 'Oh, the Normans got rid of those...' The trees are not only numerous, they are also rather beautiful with stripey trunks. I won't bother showing you the large number of attempts at artistic photos that I've taken of them...

Where I went for a swim on my bike ride!

The high amount of roadkill, given that there is a relatively low population in Tasmania, is, unsurprisingly, due to the large amount of wildlife. I was struck by this almost everywhere I went. Whilst on a bike ride I came across one wallaby, two kangaroos and an echidna (very exciting), whilst walking I saw two more wallabies, whilst driving I saw kookaburras and yellow tailed black cockatoos and, less fun, this is the place I got most mosquito-bitten too. I also saw Tasmanian devils, Australian fur seals and albatrosses, but I'd deliberately gone to see them, so I'm not sure it really counts. If I'd caught a later ferry, I also would have seen a pod of dolphins but unfortunately missed out on that.

Tasmanian Devil

I had a whole conversation with this wallaby...

I mostly stayed with Mandy, another family friend (to be honest, the links are getting increasingly obscure here, Mandy's parents showed me photos of when I'd last seen them and I was in my first term of school), who was extremely generous and let me stay on her boat for most of the time and lent me her car for a lot of it. That was brilliant and I think the best way to see Tassie is to drive around and see the very beautiful landscape. I did this around the Huon trail, which is quite close to where she lives, and also went for a sail with them around Peppermint Bay, much cheaper than paying for the cruise and much more fun.

In Mt Field National Park

The car also meant I was able to go up to Mt Field National Park, which was hot but good to walk around with lots of waterfalls and views, as well as able to drive up to stay with Mandy's parents in Coles Bay. This is near Freycinet National Park with Wineglass Bay in it. This may have been my favourite walk on Tasmania that I did, particularly as I was quite pleased by beating the estimated time quite significantly. (Unlike when I went for a bike ride on Bruny Island, that is extremely hilly!)

Wineglass Bay

I also went for a boat cruise around Bruny Island. This included a bus ride that really reminded me of the Flight of Conchords song. For example, 'the only Anglican Church on the island, the only place you can get roast penguin, etc. etc.' (Incidentally, the driver was asking me about sailing and compared Contessas to women 'they look good and they can take a thrashing', I wasn't sure what to say to that!) The cruise was a success though, masses of Australian fur seals, which was good fun and some cool bits of coastline. We also stopped at the 'Get shucked' van and I had the best oyster I've ever had, very much recommended.

Australian Fur Seals

'Get Shucked'

Bruny Island

I did do some things that weren't enjoying the landscape. I took a trip down to Port Arthur, which was where reoffending convicts were sent. It was a big area and in a very beautiful spot and I actually really enjoyed walking around it. They were at pains to emphasise that, whilst there were horror stories, the main aim was to reform convicts. Although they admitted this was more out of financial than moral interests. I did come away thinking that it did do that pretty effectively. They also had the beginnings of a welfare system there. It was a good trip as well as it's on the Tasman Peninsula, more interesting coastline and views.

Port Arthur

Tasman Arch on Tasman Peninsula

Tesselated Parvement on Tasman Peninsula

Tasman Peninsula

Driving back again...

I also visited MONA (Museum of Old and New Art). This was kind of amazing, more for the concept than the art. They clearly just had fun with an art gallery. It is on the waterfront a bit back from Hobart and all underground, the building is actually quite remarkable. Nothing is labelled, you have an iPhone type thing with GPS that, mostly reliably, gives you information on the art. If you want more information, you click on the 'art wank' button (!). It is also not organised by era, there is a lot of ancient Egyptian next to very recent pieces.

At MONA

In MONA, showing what was on news the most that day.. '2Day'

I also wandered around Hobart a bit. A great spot for a city, on the water with Mt Wellington behind it. I enjoyed Salamanca Market (doing Christmas shopping in the sun is much more cheerful!) and was taken to 'Rectangos', an outdoors bar with a band in a little square. I very much enjoyed my time in Tasmania, I was lucky with the weather and was really impressed by how beautiful it is. Not often included in trips to Australia, but I'd recommend it!

Hobart

More of Melbourne

I am sorry, blog readers, for the delay in writing. I have been staying in other people's houses and also on a boat and it's a little harder to have Internet access long enough to sit and write up my blog. However, I will now write a couple to update you!
 
  Since last writing, I spent a little longer in Melbourne staying with Barb. Unforutnately this did not include further visits to schools, as I had expected, but it meant I got to see a but more of the city.  This included two more art galleries, the NGV International and Heide Gallery. The former goes alongside the gallery I had visited previously, but is all international art, very predominantly European. It is in a rather impressive building with a very striking great hall. It was also, being near the end of the year, filled with school children learning to draw the ceiling etc... Heide, however, is a little bit out of Melbourne and is a big expanse of land (watch out for snakes). I was lucky enough to be shown around by Barb, as she has done tours here, and the amount of space means that it has some great sculptures. Unlike other sculpture galleries I've been to, they are also really spaced out, so you can take your picnic and wander around, get lost and come across some unexpected sculptures. Which is what we did!

Ceiling of Great Hall in NGVI

Melbourne is renowned for its sport watching. The MCG (Melbourne Cricket Ground) is absolutely huge and some Melburnians will have their name down to become members from birth (it'll take more than twenty years!) The Australian Open also happens in Melbourne, along with AFL. The sports museum was highly recommended here, so we went and had a look. If you have not just had a whole load of Olympic information rammed down your throat all summer, or if you are obsessed by cricket or AFL, I would recommend it, but Barb and I were a little disappointed... To cheer up, I went to see the new Bond film, which was also highly recommended but, again, I was disappointed! I had heard it was absolutely amazing and, while it wasn't bad, was not particularly impressed. As though we want Bond to have a childhood...

I also went with Barb to visit Somers, which is a beach further around the peninsular where Barb has a summer house. Unfortunately it was not very warm (apparently there are often dolphins there that you can swim with!) but it was rather beautiful, even in the rain! Finally, we went up the Eureka tower, which is 88 floors above Melbourne and got some lovely views over the city. I and one of Barb's friends also went 'over the edge', in this weird glass box that sticks out the side of the building. Rather daunting but recommended!

I very much enjoyed Melbourne, it is a good city to visit and I can see it being a really good place to live. It is certainly different to Tasmania where I headed next...

Melbourne (The City of Brides)

So I am currently staying in Melbourne with Barb, my honorary godmother, in a lovely one-storey (definitely could not describe it as a bungalow) house. Initially, I spent quite a bit of time enjoying the house and meeting Barb's grandchildren (Henry and Bridget, excellent names) and children, rather than exploring Melbourne. This was particularly the case on Thursday when it reached 39 degrees, followed by the hottest night since 1901.

However, I have now seen some more of Melbourne and am really enjoying it. I can't help but compare it to Perth and the contrast is very striking. Melbourne is a bustling city, much more cosmopoliatan with a big mixture of architecture (see below) and often feels quite European. This is partly because it has a ridiculous number of cafes and they seem to be full nearly all of the time. Perth, by comparison, has hardly any independent cafes and the architecture is really very similar all over.

Firstly, I did a tour of the 'laneways' of Melbourne, with lots of cafes, arty shops and old warehouses that have been made into various things. There's also a lot of street art or graffiti (depending on who you're talking to) with brides having their wedding photos next to them! You see these women dressed up in full wedding dresses crossing the road on a week day to have their photos done while their groom is on his phone texting, very strange. I then went to the Ian Potter Centre, which is all Austrlian art, as opposed to the gallery opposite which has International art. The Ian Potter Centre is an amazing building near the River Yarra. (Incidentally, the Yarra is very bendy and narrow when you consider how many boats do the Head of the Yarra and, apparently, it almost all bends one way - bad luck bowside over 9k!) I also went down to the beach and looked at the beach huts (bathing boxes here) with a view over the bay.

On Saturday, Barb gave me a tour through parts of Melbourne, which seemed to be a tour of bridal photos as well! To start, we wandered through the Botanic Gardens. These are really spectacular and very big, you would completely forget that you are in a city (two weddings). The War Memorial Shrine is very impressive as well, on the edge of the gardens and absolutely vast. We walked to the top and had a brilliant view over Melbourne. We then drove down to the sports area with some huge stadia, all very close to one another, where the Aussie Rules Football is a big deal, along with the Australian Open etc. Then, driving through the city, virtually every park, of which there are a lot, church and town hall, of which, again, there are a surprising number, had more brides.

We finished in Fitzroy, which is a suburb that was obviously once quite grand, as evidenced by the large and ornate town hall (more brides), but is now a bit more edgy. It has lots of independent shops, cafes and winebars, and reminded me quite a bit of London. All the shop facades were quite old and impressive with, again, various bits of street art.

Finally, today Barb and I went on a tour of architecture with courtyards. There were some extraordinary houses, particularly Robin Boyd's house in Wash Street. The house with bare brick inside reminded me of the tour we gave Barb of post-1970s Cambridge, when I'd last seen her.


Ian Potter building





Federation Square

 





A shop in Fitzroy



Fitzroy



Walsh Street



Walsh Street

 

Walsh Street



Victorian ironwork that is quite common



Edwardian style that is quite common





Bathing boxes on Brighton Beach



Flinders Street Station

 

Other than that, I've also managed to visit the Australian TF briefly, including a school. It happened to be on the very hot day and a strike was planned for the next day so attendance was low but there were still students outside the headmaster's office 'they're not allowed to throw water, so they were throwing milk'. I was lucky enough to watch a class and was vaguely reminded of Jonah... I also was lucky enough to visit the university's education faculty, through a friend of Barb's, which is linked with TfA and that was very interesting. Barb's daughter, Julia, showed me a bit of Melbourne's pub culture (I found out they do not call them halves, but a 'pot' or, in Sydney, a 'mini') and Barb and I went with a friend to the cinema as well (to see 'Argo', very tense), so all round I've been very busy and am very much enjoying Melbourne.

The Most Isolated City in the World

So, three barbecues in, I have now seen a little more of Perth itself and it doesn't feel that isolated. The Western Australian Museum is worth a visit for the exhibition on aborigines in Western Australia and for checking you know what all the poisonous spiders look like but not if you want to avoid school children. The Art Gallery of Western Australia was much more impressive, I quite liked the paintings of early Perth and Fremantle, but much smaller than I expected. (ie about the right size to walk around, as opposed to far too big to see properly). We also did some exploring of South Perth and spotted some black swans, the symbol for WA, and Guildford, an older suburb with good cafes! It's amazing how absolutely every older building is sign posted and pointed out.

We also paid a visit to the Caversham Wildlife Park just to ensure that I saw some Australian animals. We felt a little out of place with all the under tens but I got to stroke a koala, sit with a wallaby and feed kangaroos. An unexpected favourite may have been the Superb Fairy Wren though, as it is so familiar but completely bright blue! They also had quite a good farm show with lots of sheep shearing, a very impressive primary school teacher who learnt to whipcrack in two attempts and a bunch of kids that got pushed over and trampled on by hungry lambs. All quite good fun actually!

This weekend was then spent camping. Everybody I've met has tried to terrify me with snake/spider/shark stories, to varying degrees of success, and talks about camping a lot. Darren has a camper trailer so six of us went two and a bit hours north to near Jurien. Izzy and I were amused by the sign 'Lobster Fish Shack, Left Turn, 35 minutes', impressed by the expanse of scrub (quite pretty as we're at the end of spring) and less impressed by only seeing kangaroos that had already died... When we arrived we were staying right next to the beach that looked like this:

We were also staying with Darren's sister and husband who make camper trailers, as well as with a group of other campers nearby. Because Darren had brought Poms along (!), after a barbecue and discovering that you can talk about camper trailers just as much as you can about boats, it started raining which soon turned into an extremely impressive storm. Camper trailers move in the wind much less comfortably than boats! Sunday morning was then spent swimming, playing cricket and reading on the beach.

Then after packing up, we went to the Pinnacles.These are all over W A brochures and, essentially, are limestone formations that have appeared as the sand has eroded away. There are masses of them and they are quite impressive in their huge number. A good stop off on the way home! Off to Melbourne early tomorrow morning but back in W A in December!

Australia!

So, after an extremely uncomfortable flight from Singapore I finally arrived in Perth. First thing I thought when I arrived is 'wow, it is COLD in this country!'. Obviously, I have not been in the UK for a while as it was 11pm and about 17 degrees... It is the end of spring here, so evenings are still relatively cool but lovely clear cloudless days. I am currently staying with Izzy, a friend from university, and her boyfriend Darren. She rocked up to the airport in an enormous truck-like car, which everyone seems to have here. Living in Perth, they both work in the mines. This seems to involve using vulgar language (!) and a lot of red dirt. Izzy has not picked up an accent but she has picked up a few choice phrases. 'Giving you the sh*ts' does not mean the same thing in Australia, and they talk about 'capsicums' and strange things in the supermarket.

The first day was spent helping Izzy move (this is the girl who helped antifoul Flycatcher...) from the archetypal Australian house a bit in the country (not bush) to a very modern bugalow more in the suburbs. The first house is small bungalow with a big veranda and a LOT of land with scrubby trees that all just looked Australian. For example, we refreshed ourselves with grapefruits from the tree growing in the garden. Incidentally, moving furniture from houses and barns, as we were, is a lot more exciting in Australia; you constantly have to check for spiders, particularly red backs. (As Izzy had found out earlier! Not bitten but hadn't spotted it) Suffice to say, I was extremely brave but also extremely careful of everything...

Following this, we spent a day in the Swan Valley which has lots of wineries and, slightly bizarrely, chocolate factories. We did a lot of wine tasting which was actually really good fun. Izzy has the act of knowing what she's talking about down to an art, and we ended up coming away with a few bottles (I would recommend Lancaster's 'Shed Red'). Slightly embarrassingly, I did get ID'd and failed to have any, but fortunately they still let me have some. Besides, I put it down to Australians ageing early in the sun!

We then spent a slightly more touristy, historical day in Fremantle (or Freo, because you have to add an o to everything here). Started off with breakfast at Hillary's boat harbour and then we went on to Fremantle, starting with the Ship Galleries Museum. This was mostly to do with Dutch ships that were shipwrecked off the West coast, of which there were quite a few! Lots of surviving cargo that was on its way to Jakarta and some horror stories of Lord of the Flies like behaviour from the stranded Batavia crew. Also a very enthusiastic section on how the museum led the way on iron conservation and iron underwater from an engine brought up about twenty years ago. All round quite interesting, particularly to people like my father...

Fremantle has slightly older, colonial buildings and a bit more history. The buildings, despite being older, all look super clean and therefore newer, I'm not sure if this is the result of the weather, or if they just look after them properly! The most significant building is the prison, which we visited. It was deemed uninhabitable in 1899 but continued in use for nearly another hundred years, until frequent revolts in the prison led to its closure. There were some fairly harrowing details about the high proportion of aboriginal prisoners, but it was very well done.

Izzy and I then went into Perth itself, which is surprisingly small. It is evident that it has grown up quickly - there are endless amounts of suburbs that are all laid out with a bit of green, then a shopping centre, then a load of bungalows. No corner shops, two storey houses nor terraced houses at all. The city centre is extremely modern and reminded me slightly of the skyscrapers of KL or Singapore. However, Perth has King's Park which is an enormous and stunning park with botanical gardens. There is a vast boab tree (see picture) that was trucked 4,200 km from the north of WA down to the garden, as well as lots of other plants native to WA (but not necessarily Perth). I'm lucky enough to have caught the end of spring, so people still have roses in their gardens and there are lots of wildflowers, including in the gardens. Plus there is still green, apparently this will disappear! Mostly, though, it was nice to sit high up in Perth and get some good views and eat a picnic. Hopefully will have a chance to see an outdoor film there, too.

Finally (we've been busy, but I hope the pictures help), Izzy and I went down the coast a little to Rockingham. It has a very shallow bay so marine life flourishes there and we saw an awful lot of terns (crested and something else, bigger than the arctic ones), an awful lot of loud gulls and some Australian pelicans. These were huge and I found very exciting. We caught the ferry over to Penguin Island, as well, which has the largest population of Little Penguins anywhere. They are tiny, only about 30cm high or so. We saw the rescued, unfit for the wild ones being fed, and then we saw two more in the wild hiding in a cave! Very pleased with ourselves, as you don't always spot that. The rescued ones are so unfit for the wild that they get fed dead fish; when they were fed live ones only two were brave enough to go in the water with them and those two got chased by the fish! Beautiful weather, although extremely windy off the Indian Ocean, so lots of lovely views and turquoise water.