Leaving Australia

I'm sitting in the Melbourne airport, waiting for our flight to NZed. Last night we took the ferry from Tasmania. It's an overnight trip, about 10 hours. We opted for the day seats, which have been sadistically modified to be be impossible to sleep in. So we slept in the lounges just like everybody else did, despite the well posted rule barring passengers from sleeping on the lounges, or even putting their feet or luggage on them.

A week or so after our Tasmania tour we received notice of a speeding ticket in Tasmania. No word on where or when it occured, or anything else. Just a conviction with no opportunity for rebuttal. Not how I perceive justice working.

Hobart, Clare and Jeff

Another bright spot in our trip is Hobart with Clare, Jeff, Brooke, and Kate. We greatly enjoyed and appreciated you sharing your home and family with us. Special highlights were the Saturday market ,














watching the sailboat race, the hike through alleys up to the shot tower, and of course the wonderful meals. Thank you, thank you.

The other Australia - Tasmania

Ah Tassie - the one state all Australians admit is nicer than the state they live in. And no wonder, with the higest lakes, most remote beaches, most picturesque coastlines, no flies, few mosquitos, and lovable little Tasmanian devils and wombats, it's certainly got a lot going for it. The apt licence plate motto is "Your natural state".

We rented a minivan so we could save on hostel bills by sleeping in the car, which we actually managed to do once. The easier alternative is the numerous YHA hostels, which usually have a family room for $80 or so.

What is lacking is internet access for our computers. We can get internet cafe access through their terminals, but by and large either they can't let us plug in, or their line is too slow to do Skype.

We stayed in the lovely little hamlet of Boat Harbor on the north coast in a S/C (which means self-contained unit attached to or adjacent to the owners place). The owners grand-daughter was visiting, so she and Josie became instant friends, as Josie seems to do everywhere.

The Nut in Stanley is the coastal equivalent of the Uluru (Ayers Rock) Except being covered with vegetation it isn't nearly so impressive. But it is beautiful, and an amazing rock.

From there we motored down to Strahan on the west coast, a singularly isolated and striking part of Australia. But not before camping out near Tullah, one of the less interesting places we've seen. It appears to be an old company town that somehow is still there long after the ore or trees or whatever are gone. But back to Strahan. The last remaining stands of Huon Pine are in this area. These trees live a long time (like 2000 years) and produce wood similar to cypress. For the most part, there's no more logging of native Houn. So there's quite an industry based on pulling old Huon logs out of ponds and working it into various art pieces or furniture. I'm bringing a piece home to work too.

From there we motored on through Queenstown, which looks like the badlands only steeper, and through the national parks that dominate western Tasmania. There were some lovely stands of Eucalyptus in tussocky wet lands. We stopped to go for a walk, but were detered by a major mosquito attack. Later we learned that wetland is home to one of Australia's more dangerous critters, the tiger snake. One bite and it's lights out. It's the first time we were glad to have mosquitos, or mozzies as they call them here. Somewhere along this road we saw another roadside attraction that claimed to be the largest handcarved wall in the world or some such. Turns out to be quite a work of art, in progress. It was interesting to see the progression from pictures to drawings on the wall to rough carved images to the finished art piece. The artist also had some amazing carvings of things like a pair of work gloves laying on a garden tool that looked totally like real gloves. All his wookwork was in Huon pine.

Then north to a YHA in Deloraine that was quite pleasant, as was the town. Just west of there is a "wildlife" park where we at last got to see (and pet) the signature critters of Tasmania, Wombats and Tasmanian Devils. They are both the cutest little critters you could imagine (at least the tame ones in the park) although wombats have impressive claws and the powerful build of a badger, only bigger,
and the little devils can open theres jaws up as if they don't have hinges and display an array of teeth that would be frightening if they didn't display such comical screaming and carrying on when eating.


And on and on through Launceston, Scottsdale, Derby and at last to the east coast at St Helens. This was a big waste of time and driving energy, as there was really nothing on the east coast of interest and the road through from Launceston to St Helens and south was truly tortuous.

In case you hadn't noticed, we're achieving the dreaded "Tourist Burn Out". We've been so many places and seen so many wonderful cities, beautiful views, great beaches, op shops, whatever, that the thought of going somewhere to see another one is more than a little abhorrent. Stopping and staying at a friend or even a friend of a friend's is a good temporary remedy for TBO. So is WWOOFing. But ultimately I think the only real cure is to not be a tourist. So we say we traveled to all these far off lands to meet the people who live and work here, to live and work with them. It's not our goal to see the seven wonders of the world, or the major tourist attractions of (where ever we are at the moment). Well that's what we say, but it's not how we've been traveling. Consider: rented a car in Hawaii, toured around the north coast, stayed in a motel (after house-sitting for a week); WWOOOFed on French Island, which is on the non-tourist side, but we left after 2 weeks beacause we couldn't easily travel (tour) from there. Then we stayed in a motel again, and a vacation home in a vacation town. After that we drove a tourist road for a couple days, then got to stay with friends (again, to the good). I'm pretty sure we would agree that most of our best times were when we were stationary and somehow connected to someone. So my point is that we're being tourists and not enjoying it. How do we stop?

Oongha, Adelaide, and Kangaroo Island

Having safely arrived at Oonagh and Jason's, we were greated in the finest Australian fashion - "There's a cold one for ya in the Eski, here in the ga-rage. We'll get the barbi going shortly." Right on! I can tell right away I'm going to get to the real Australia now - kangaroos, Coopers brews, didgeridoos, and all!

Interesting, their house is solid brick, even the interior walls. Everything except the floor, which is a fine example of that gorgeous dark Koaua wood I've been seeing. A lot of the houses here were built that way, not so much from lack of wood, but because that was the style back home in jolly old England at the time (definitely because they'd used all the trees to make coke for the Industrial Rev - brainless sots!)

But I digress. We met Oonagh's dear mom, who took us to the Cleland wildlife park, where we got our fill of tame Koala's, Kangaroos, and Wallabys, along with an assortment of other indigenous critters that one would not want to meet on a dark night down the track somewhere. It was marvelous, and the kids just loved feeding hand-picked grass to the little Joey's.
















We also got to go out Kangaroo Island and stayed in a wonderful house on Emu Bay, on the north side. Connor and Jason went fishing, which suited Connor very much.

I went kayaking, which was an interesting exercise in balance, more difficult than I expected, but fun. It takes practically no effort to drive a sea kayak as fast as it wants to go (sailors know this as hull speed, 1.2 * the square root of the water line length in feet). Any faster is quite a bit more work for little gain. So I was able to zoom along at a respectable 6 k/h with just little dips in the water with the paddle. Oonagh and Francie cooked and everybody was very ready to spend the next 6 months right there in Emu Bay. We also went to the far end of the island and saw some cool rocks and stuff. But alas, all destinations become departure points sooner or later, and we were too soon headed back to the exorbitant ferry (over $200 for our family walking on, for a 3 hour tour - each way!)

The next day we packed up and headed out for Melbourne to catch the ferry to Tasmania. We took the straight route, right across, hoping to see some interior sights - like kangaroos bounding across the endless flat dry plains of Australia, or indigenous folk. But alas all we saw was rolling hills of grassland with cows and sheep munching away, apparently oblivious to the fact that they are upside down relative to most of their brethren.

Oh, we did get introduced to another of Australia's charming tourist "features". Driving into Melbourne from the north, looking for a place just south of downtown we got forced onto a toll road, which took us way past where we were going, apparently charged us a toll automatically, and didn't give us any clue how to deal with the bill. In fact there wasn't any indication we'd incurred a fee until the car rental billed us for paying it, along with a $50 (!) handling charge. Most expensive 5 miles of toll road I've ever seen. Really nice way to treat tourists. Beware.

The Great Ocean Road and Princess Highway

OH boy, a road trip! We had secured a car, from Thifty again, as the local boyz didn't want their 2nd hand heaps leaving the confines of Melbourne, and they were charging almost as much for a 10yr old Camry as Thrifty charged for a new Mitsubishi Lancer. Except that Thrifty pulled a switch on us, giving us a Hyundai hatchback instead of the Lancer, which we had just managed to squeeze into last time. I expressed my doubts, but he assured me there were no Lancers to be had as their time was up and they had to go back. We used this car on the Dandenong trip where it served adequately, since we didn't carry all our baggage on that day trip. But the next day, attempting to load everything in, we realized it just wasn't going to work. So Francie called them up and wheeled and dealed and we wound up with a Camry sedan for a few quid more. Never underestimate the power of a woman with a goal.

So in our brand new blue Camry we ripped off down the Mornington freeway to the Sorrento ferry. It seems they only charge $40 to take a car across, so we deemed it cheaper (and more fun) than driving up around through Melbourne. On the ferry we met a daft older couple on their way to Apollo Bay for a weekender. They were very sweet, telling us all the good things to see and do. Of course we did none of those things, but that's what road trips are all about.

We bypassed Geelong via Ocean Grove and Barwon Heads, no doubt missing kangaroos on the golf course and a myriad other tourist attractions.

The Great Ocean Road resembles Hwy 1 in northern California circa 1960. A twisty little road clinging to the sides of cliffs or the beach, diving down into the canyons cut by streams running to the ocean, slowing for tours of small tourist oriented towns every so often. Very enjoyable, and obviously being enjoyed by many motorcycle groups and a few other tourists. There were lots of little bays and headland vistas to stop and either let the kids play or take pictures. Just short of Apollo Bay we passed a little B&B type place, the Cookaburra Cottages. Connor immediately started emoting that it was so cute and this was the place we should stay at and could we please stop, and he was tired, blah blah blah. Well, it was only 4:30 and we hadn't left Frankston until 11 or so, and it was a LONG way to Adelaide and we had a time scheduled to meet Oonagh, blah blah blah, so I was willing to look but didn't want to stop yet (wasting daylight and all...).

Cookaburra Cottages is a collection of self-contained cottages with an herb garden, a pool, and critters to look at. but it's also a working farm, and has an exercise center (members only) and bike and swamp buggy rides for tourists. It appeared to be all run by this wonder woman (obviously of hippie descent) and her strapping 20 something son. Really far out. So we stayed, despite the rather steep $160 bill for a room, no brekkie. Well actually she gave me a big piece of banana cake when I remarked how good it smelled in the office. It was delicious.

The next day we stumbled into the Saturday artists market in Apollo Bay. Nice, very tourist oriented pottery, woodcrafts and other artwork. Also a giant sand beach in the bay that you could walk on forever.

On down the road we went, stopping at the Mait's Rest rainforest in Otway NP for a walk and taking in the main tourist attraction on the coast, the Twelve Apostles, of which only 8 are still standing. Time marches on, even for rocks. This stop was not popular with Francie but it was very popular with the tour bus set. There's a causal relation there I suspect. Later we stopped in Killarney for a very nondescript lunch. Lots of Irish settled here it seems, with other town names like Koroit and Kirkstall and Port Fairy (who but the Irish would have a fairy port?) The unlikely town of Mt Gambier has a rather interesting geographic anomoly or two. The one that caught my eye was a large sinkhole right off the main road through town. It was made into a garden and a park with steps leading down to the bottom and friendly brushtailed possums begging for food. Very pretty, and so small town Australia!


Made it to the western beach, facing the fabled Great Southern Ocean at Beachport. It seemed pretty tame, I suppose because we were looking at a bay of sorts. We stayed in a nice old hotel, Bompa's,
which served a mahvelous breakfast the next morning, then off to Adelaide. By this time we'd had quite enough of twisty little scenic road, so the straight lines and boring vistas of grassland offered by the road north to Adelaide was a welcome relief. This Zen meditation was interrupted by one of Australia's iconic large roadside objects, this one resembling a lobster (locally known as a crayfish).

Not all who wander are lost

One of my hobbies is maps, in particular electronic ones, and their use with GPS. I have used OziExplorer for about 10 years, especially for marine navigation. It can use almost any bitmap image that one can figure out latitude/longitude placement, plus a bunch of proprietary formats. For US maps one can go to NOAA or BSB or any of several state sites.

Oddly enough, even though OziExplorer is an Australian product, I've had a really hard time finding useful map images of Australia. However we did find a road atlas that has latitude/longitud on most of the pages. So I decided to try a method I've known was theoretically possible, but never tried: photograph a map (or other image) and tell OziExplorer where it belongs on the grid.

So with a little fiddling with a digital camera over the atlas, and PaintShop Pro to clean up the images I've now got OziExplorer usable images. I read them into OziExplorer, using a bunch of calibration points (because of lens distortion and the page not being flat), and now my GPS can tell me where I am on the virtual atlas page, real time. Not only that, but I can sit down before the next day's difficult navigation and put in waypoints on the atlas image and upload the resulting route to the GPS for use as I drive. So I laid out a somewhat complicated route into Adelaide (a city of 3 or 4M, with lots of outlying suburbs, hills and large parks to navigate).

Then we called our friends we are going to visit who gave an entirely different route. No problem, I just poke in some more waypoints and upload the new route. It worked just fine, we got to their house without any wandering or wondering. Could I have done it without the GPS and mapping software? Maybe - maybe not. It would have been more stessful, and harder for the navigator. So I consider the method a success, although a bit cumbersome.

GEEK and proud of it.

Dandenong Ranges NP

Thu Nov 10 22:17:13 EDT 2005
Dandenong Ranges NP and its tourist road.
We didn't get out of Frankston until after 2, about our usual performance. Consequently by the time we'd gained Belgrave, near the forest reserve it was apparent we wouldn't get to Francie's goal, William Rickett's Sanctuary, before 4:30 when it (like everything else in Australia) closes. Besides it was raining cats and dogs (or is that platypus' and wombats?). So we hung in Belgrave (home of Puffing Billy the choo choo) for awhile, had tea, then went for a drive up the tourist road. This road starts in Upper Ferntree Gully. I'm not kidding, that's really the name of the town. It was pretty, and the trees were amazing, (A variety of eucalyptus called, oddly enough, mountain ash) bigger than anything but California redwoods, but the road was very busy with Melbourne-ites who wanted to get home RIGHT NOW. So I took a side road, going off to who knows where, which turned out to be a real charmer. It went past a botanical garden, a rhodendren garden, and the Poet's Corner Inn, but the most amazing thing was the views through the trees. One minute it looked like Hobbit land, the next it looked like the terrain for Jurassic Park. Truly incredible country. Oh, we wound up in Sherbrooke, where we had dinner at Genie's Cafe, the only eatery open. It was a good choice, serving pumpkin soup and Hispanic specials(?!), including white curry chicken.

Frankston, SA

After touring Mornington Penninsula, we had a house reserved in Frankston, the Peartree house. This quaint little house sits a few blocks from the Frankston beaches and a couple more blocks from the shopping mall. Also across the street from 2 cricket pitches, a croquet court and nearby, the Frankston bowling club. (This is the outdoor variety - very impressive greens that you must wear special flat soled shoes to walk on.)

Unfortunately, being about 100 years old, the house is not proof against mosquitos or other 6 legged flying fauna. So we picked up some citronella candles and mosquito nets today, which seemed to help.

Mornington Penninsula

No man is an island - he's a penninsula. -Buffalo Springfield

So we cut the planned 2 month WWOOFing stay to 2 weeks and get on with our vacationing.

Just in time for Melbourne Cup Day. Yes, it's a national holiday for the horse race. Damn near everything was closed, but fortunately for us the international chains don't take national holidays that seriously, so we were able to get (back) into the Best Western in Frankston.

Vacationing? I thought we were done with that after Hawaii. Unfortunately we're now somewhat turned off to the idea of WWOOFing or other work exchange, and are back to motels, restuarant eating and renting cars. There go the expenses through $200/day again. But it's a dilemma - if we WWOOf we don't have time or the freedom to explore, if we don't WWOOF this trip is gonna be a lot shorter.

Another problem is that living in motels and visiting tourist places makes us - tourists. We meet only other tourists, aren't getting any real connection to the the locale, and because every place we've stayed so far is rather out of our budget, we keep moving on to the next. There's no sense of stability or settled-ness for the kids, or us for that matter.

But all that aside, this is one gorgeous piece of Australia. The beaches are beautiful and uncrowded, the headlands are spectacular, and even the little (touristy) towns are quite nice, although each and every one has a KMart, a Coles and a Safeway. Still it's amazing to find this much mostly pristine land a couple hours from a city of 4 Million.

After a couple nights in the non-descript (that's it's appeal, right?) Best Western Frankston, we rented a car (Thrifty, $33/day for a small 4 door) and made tracks down the Mornington penninsula. After the shopping mall known as Frankston the little tourist/holiday towns of Mornington, Rosebud, Rye, Sorrento, and Portsea were an improvement. There were beaches (although the water was cold enough that I didn't stay in very long), upscale shopping, coffee schoppes, gelatto grotto's and - thrift stores (colloq: Op Shops).

Yes every little main street had not one but several such stores, which it seems Francie cannot go past with developing a severe itch in her shopping appendage. So we'd stop at every one. I'd hang out on the street and watch the Sheila's go by, the kids would get bored and bug us to buy ice cream, candy, movies, arcade time, whatever, or to go to the beach (which after all is why we're here, right?) So after an hour or so of this we'd go find a beach, the kids would immediately hit the water and we'd go for a walk and decide which expensive restuarant to have dinner in. We sampled food and looked at rooms in the Portsea Pub and Sorrento's, eventually settling on the Rosebud Inn for the night. It was sweet, nothing fancy, and nicely priced, with a beach right across the road.

Everything here seems to close up at 4:30, maybe 5PM. We got to the Nepean Point National Park about 5:30, only to find it all locked up. So we went to a "back beach", London Bridge. The back beaches, facing Bass Strait are the place to be! They have nice big rollers, big rocky headlands, really spectacular sand stone shelves extending out into the surf, alternating with magical sandy beaches - and almost nobody there. In the 2 days we spent walking and climbing there, we saw 4 surfers (all together), a half dozen other local folks and no Germans.














So here's an oddity. I've been in Australia for most of a month now, in Sydney, Melbourne, French Island and the incomparable vacation land of Mornington. But I still haven't see a single kangaroo, thrown (or even seen) a boomarang, or heard a didgeradoo. Did I miss the real Australia somewhere back there in the rolling grassy hills between Sydney and Melbourne?

While waiting for Francie to finish her tour of the local St Vincents in Rosebud, I ducked into a toy shop. They had all manner of puzzles, board games, card games, some kites, several frisbees, and a whole wall dedicated to practical jokes around farts, but not a single boomarang or didgeradoo. Oh, there was a puzzle featuring pieces shaped vaguely like a kangaroo, but that's all. Upon questioning, the proprietor confessed they don't sell indigenous items, but if I wanted a real boomarang, Victoria Street up in Melbourne has a store that sells certified indigenous items. I was sure to find a didgeradoo there. And he even thought I might find somebody who knew how play one, but he wasn't sure about finding somebody who knew how to throw a boomarang.

I noticed that the newer condo type houses in Frankston all had canvas shades hung tight over their patios in a quaternary curve, either 3 or 4 cornered. This reminded me of going to the best tent maker in Albany and asking for a boom tent cut with a quaternary for my boat. He had no idea what I was talking about, and never did produce the desired curve. So much for tent math...

We had breakfast and some internet time at the only internet cafe I've seen since Hawaii in Sorrento. It's called the Sunnyside Up (yep, just like the Sunnyside Up in Corvallis), and while the internet access wasn't free, the food was good and the atmosphere polite.

After breakfast we walked on the beach across the street from the cafe and right next to the ferry terminal. There was a school group there, middle school girls, having a very good time splashing in the shallows. Their teacher called them in for a lecture, which I audited. (Picking up tips for teaching our kids.) I learned that there are 2 kinds of ocean waves, constructive and destructive; they can either build beach by leaving sand or tear down beach/headlands by removing material. The penninsula has obvious cases of each on opposite sides.