December 3
Ok, so I haven't blogged for a while, not because I haven't been doing anything, rather it has been to wet to pull out my computer, so this may be a long blog, so please feel free to poor yourself any required refreshments, grab a bag of cookies, and perhaps use the bathroom first.......................Ok, here, we, go.
We took the ferry across the Bass strait from Melbourne to Devenport. The ferry left at 7:30pm under overcast skies with the odd rainstorm mixed in. We spent the time mostly walking around the ship, taking in the night air. I caught the last 15 minutes of Ice Age 3, before sitting down to watch a movie about the early years of Queen Victoria, which turned out to be rather good. Anyway, shortly after, around 1:00 in the morning, we retreated into our designated "Ocean View Recliners" and did our best to sleep away the rest of the night. We arrived at Devenport 5 hours later, I only just falling asleep then. We then had to got through quarantine, a rather annoying experience, but I understand it was necessary in order to protect Tasmania's unique habitat, it was kind of like going through customs after a long flight with no sleep. Anyway, after clearing them we hit Wolly's (Woolworths, a grocery store) for sausage, eggs and toast. One nice thing about Australia is they have all these free BBQ's which you can use, we found one of them in a park and made a much needed hot breakfast, to wake us up and warm us up. Proceeding down the East coast of Tas (Short for Tasmania) we proceeded to get rained on, quite a bit really. As we found out later, the day before we arrived they were fighting bush fires because of a drought, three days later they announced it is now the 10th wettest year in Tasmanian history, and still a month to go, fun hu. Well our plans for surfing in the sun this week kind of got washed away, the water was right up to the bottom of quite a few bridge decks that we drove over, that should give you an idea on how much rain we had. Anyway, we powered through the rain, the first day we did a canyon walk down this gorge outside of Launcheston that ended in an old power station. We then drove up over a mountain to see some impressive waterfalls and then continued on to the coast where we camped, in the rain. I slept in car, Chris slept in tent. Next morning we drove about 25km down the road where we made a group decision to park and find a Hostel in St. Helens, as the rain was getting worse. We hung up our wet gear, cooked a nice supper and did laundry, as it was sorely needed. That was day 2, and now that I look back at it i wonder why I didn't write my blog then, anyway day three dawned in, you guessed it, another rainstorm. We decided to look for some things indoors, and stumbled across this pamphlet for pancakes on top of Mt. Elephant where we found this little restaurant who makes really good crapes/pancakes. Chris had black forest (Cherry, chocolate, and cream) with ice cream. I had the Apple Cinnamon custard crepe with cream and Ice cream. Needless to say, very good, especially when the rain was pouring down outside. We drove back to the coast and camped at Bicheno in a national park. Day four dawned with cloudy skies, and I took the opportunity to surf, something I was thoroughly missing since we drove by the 3 best surfing beaches in Tas without an attempt do to high winds and cold weather. The waves were impressive and on several occasions found myself looking up from my board as a wave crested over me "this one is going to hurt" followed by "why is this fun again?" Those thoughts are usually followed by the wave hitting me with the force of a 12 ton battering ram, and usually significant amount of pain. However I got through and was able to ride some very nice waves making it all worth while, enough that I would paddle back out there and get pounded on some more. If there is anything I have learned about surfing, is that there is a lot more luck involved than you would think. You have to be in the right place at the right time, and as dad would say, it's a crap shoot. Later that day we decided we would do a 3 hour walk into Wine Glass bay, even though it was raining wallabies and kangaroos. We got soaked, we walked 2 hours in, saw lots of low cloud, hidden peaks, and a wet windy miserable beach. Would have looked beautifully, though I did get one good shot of Chris and a mighty wave. We returned to the car soaked to the bone and headed to a campground at a place called Friendly Beach, even though the beaches didn't sound very friendly at the time. Needless to say, that was a chilly night. The next day we crossed onto the Tasman Peninsula and saw some very awe inspiring sights. Around Eagles Hawk there are 3 main features, the cobblestone highway, which is a natural rock feature that looks like a cobblestone road made centuries ago by some forgotten people, but is actually just caused by the ocean and drying salt. Really cool, but that was a cool warm up for this, fossil bay. This was probably one of the most terrifying things I have ever seen. The waves were crashing with a power I have never seen, or heard before, the power was unimaginable,
and the sound was deafening. Perhaps the irony is that I have been complaining about the stormy weather, but because of that wild weather the waves in fossil bay were so astounding. It made the blow hole, and the poorly named Devils Kitchen pale in comparison. We did a short hike up to waterfall bay and enjoyed the suddenly not raining weather. That night we camped at Fortescue Bay where the waves still pounded with a deafening sound, that had me wishing I had ear plugs. But we did have our first camp fire with wet wood, but I got it going, because it was a very cold night. The next day we hit Port Arthur, which is an old convict colony, it was cool, and I will be writing a blog later about convicts and the history of Australia later, but for now, I was hoping to find more when I went to Port Arthur, problem is, there isn't much left. There used to be over 200 buildings some stone, some wood, but when the prison shut down a tourism wave hit and people from all over (mostly England) came over to tour the old colony in the 1900's. As souvenirs they would take pieces of the stone buildings home with them.
Then the bush fires came through, taking all the wood structures and wooden roofs with them. All that remained behind were the burned out stone shells, and even the stone in the walls were sold for building materials. They have restored some to pale reflections of their former glory, but I was almost disappointed, as I was expecting something more like Fort Louisburg. Anyway, I did learn a great deal about how Australia was founded, but as I mentioned earlier, that will be a whole separate blog. Though I will give port Arthur one thing, they have a real cool playing cards. They have 52 different convict stories, and each convict is represented by a card from a playing deck. When you buy a ticket, you get one of the cards, that allows you to track their story and find out what happens to them. Really cool idea, they made up for the lack of physical presence by reminding you that the buildings house people, and people built the country. The next morning my co-traveler and I walked around the remains of a coal mine and barracks that used to house convicts, cool, and I will explain more in later blogs. That afternoon I dropped Chris off so he could do some 5 hour walk along the cape, and I went looking for a beach to surf on, however I discovered the source of the rattling sound on our car that we have been hearing since we left Canberra. It turns out we blew a rear shock absorber on the car. I spent the next hour pulling the old one off, and then crawling around under the car looking for anything out of ordinary. I found some loose bolts I tightened, but I still have some other questions regarding my car, but will deal with it in Adelaide, until then, still have to replace the shock absorber, should be fun. Anyway, we have since moved into Hobart and spending some time wandering around town. Today we hit the Cadbury chocolate factory and got some good cheap chocolate. It is a very strange story how a chocolate maker from England opened his chocolate factory in Van Diemens Land. I could imagine that conversation with his drinking partner "I know, we are from Buckinghamshire, most of our business, including our best client the Queen, is in London, all our partners live in London, lets open up our first chocolate factory in Australia, a place filled with thieves, rapists, and murderers." Who would have thought that it would have turned into a genius idea. The weather in Tas is the like England, so when Mr Cadbury came over he said "this is just like home" and the factory was set to be built here in Hobart. They get the milk from Tas and sugar is grown and harvested in Quesland. We got so much free chocolate, I think I might get sick. Our afternoon was spent touring and taste tasting the wide variety of the fine drinks made by the Cascade Brewery. 
Founded in 1892 by, believe it or not, by a convicted tax evader. This guy left England with his family and some equipment and built a saw mill on land given to him as a new settler. Apparently he still owed some people back in England several thousand dollars, so he got tried in Aus and sentenced to five years here, and when he got out he converted his saw mill into a brewery, and the rest is history. The most recent history involved is we saw this lone beer tap in the brewery, apparently it used to have 7 friends, what would happen is 4 times a day everyone working would drop what they were doing and have a drink to make sure the quality was good, unfortunately health and safety didn't like the fact that all these employees were drunk, and that tradition was stopped, in 1990, a 100 year old tradition gone, funny thing is when that took effect the production of the brewery actually dropped, so which is worse I wonder, production being high, but all your employees being drunk, or sober employees and poor production. What a strange day, chocolate in the morning, beer tasting in the afternoon, a very good day in Tas. Another thing I should mention is that Tasmania is divided from North South by an invisible line, called the brewery line. in the North they drink only Boggs beer, but in the South they only drink Cascade. You actually have to be care full which one you order in a town, you might have crossed the line and entered into enemy territory. Anyway will blog more later, I am pretty sure you are tired of reading this novel. Goodnight.
Ok, so I haven't blogged for a while, not because I haven't been doing anything, rather it has been to wet to pull out my computer, so this may be a long blog, so please feel free to poor yourself any required refreshments, grab a bag of cookies, and perhaps use the bathroom first.......................Ok, here, we, go.
We took the ferry across the Bass strait from Melbourne to Devenport. The ferry left at 7:30pm under overcast skies with the odd rainstorm mixed in. We spent the time mostly walking around the ship, taking in the night air. I caught the last 15 minutes of Ice Age 3, before sitting down to watch a movie about the early years of Queen Victoria, which turned out to be rather good. Anyway, shortly after, around 1:00 in the morning, we retreated into our designated "Ocean View Recliners" and did our best to sleep away the rest of the night. We arrived at Devenport 5 hours later, I only just falling asleep then. We then had to got through quarantine, a rather annoying experience, but I understand it was necessary in order to protect Tasmania's unique habitat, it was kind of like going through customs after a long flight with no sleep. Anyway, after clearing them we hit Wolly's (Woolworths, a grocery store) for sausage, eggs and toast. One nice thing about Australia is they have all these free BBQ's which you can use, we found one of them in a park and made a much needed hot breakfast, to wake us up and warm us up. Proceeding down the East coast of Tas (Short for Tasmania) we proceeded to get rained on, quite a bit really. As we found out later, the day before we arrived they were fighting bush fires because of a drought, three days later they announced it is now the 10th wettest year in Tasmanian history, and still a month to go, fun hu. Well our plans for surfing in the sun this week kind of got washed away, the water was right up to the bottom of quite a few bridge decks that we drove over, that should give you an idea on how much rain we had. Anyway, we powered through the rain, the first day we did a canyon walk down this gorge outside of Launcheston that ended in an old power station. We then drove up over a mountain to see some impressive waterfalls and then continued on to the coast where we camped, in the rain. I slept in car, Chris slept in tent. Next morning we drove about 25km down the road where we made a group decision to park and find a Hostel in St. Helens, as the rain was getting worse. We hung up our wet gear, cooked a nice supper and did laundry, as it was sorely needed. That was day 2, and now that I look back at it i wonder why I didn't write my blog then, anyway day three dawned in, you guessed it, another rainstorm. We decided to look for some things indoors, and stumbled across this pamphlet for pancakes on top of Mt. Elephant where we found this little restaurant who makes really good crapes/pancakes. Chris had black forest (Cherry, chocolate, and cream) with ice cream. I had the Apple Cinnamon custard crepe with cream and Ice cream. Needless to say, very good, especially when the rain was pouring down outside. We drove back to the coast and camped at Bicheno in a national park. Day four dawned with cloudy skies, and I took the opportunity to surf, something I was thoroughly missing since we drove by the 3 best surfing beaches in Tas without an attempt do to high winds and cold weather. The waves were impressive and on several occasions found myself looking up from my board as a wave crested over me "this one is going to hurt" followed by "why is this fun again?" Those thoughts are usually followed by the wave hitting me with the force of a 12 ton battering ram, and usually significant amount of pain. However I got through and was able to ride some very nice waves making it all worth while, enough that I would paddle back out there and get pounded on some more. If there is anything I have learned about surfing, is that there is a lot more luck involved than you would think. You have to be in the right place at the right time, and as dad would say, it's a crap shoot. Later that day we decided we would do a 3 hour walk into Wine Glass bay, even though it was raining wallabies and kangaroos. We got soaked, we walked 2 hours in, saw lots of low cloud, hidden peaks, and a wet windy miserable beach. Would have looked beautifully, though I did get one good shot of Chris and a mighty wave. We returned to the car soaked to the bone and headed to a campground at a place called Friendly Beach, even though the beaches didn't sound very friendly at the time. Needless to say, that was a chilly night. The next day we crossed onto the Tasman Peninsula and saw some very awe inspiring sights. Around Eagles Hawk there are 3 main features, the cobblestone highway, which is a natural rock feature that looks like a cobblestone road made centuries ago by some forgotten people, but is actually just caused by the ocean and drying salt. Really cool, but that was a cool warm up for this, fossil bay. This was probably one of the most terrifying things I have ever seen. The waves were crashing with a power I have never seen, or heard before, the power was unimaginable,
and the sound was deafening. Perhaps the irony is that I have been complaining about the stormy weather, but because of that wild weather the waves in fossil bay were so astounding. It made the blow hole, and the poorly named Devils Kitchen pale in comparison. We did a short hike up to waterfall bay and enjoyed the suddenly not raining weather. That night we camped at Fortescue Bay where the waves still pounded with a deafening sound, that had me wishing I had ear plugs. But we did have our first camp fire with wet wood, but I got it going, because it was a very cold night. The next day we hit Port Arthur, which is an old convict colony, it was cool, and I will be writing a blog later about convicts and the history of Australia later, but for now, I was hoping to find more when I went to Port Arthur, problem is, there isn't much left. There used to be over 200 buildings some stone, some wood, but when the prison shut down a tourism wave hit and people from all over (mostly England) came over to tour the old colony in the 1900's. As souvenirs they would take pieces of the stone buildings home with them. Then the bush fires came through, taking all the wood structures and wooden roofs with them. All that remained behind were the burned out stone shells, and even the stone in the walls were sold for building materials. They have restored some to pale reflections of their former glory, but I was almost disappointed, as I was expecting something more like Fort Louisburg. Anyway, I did learn a great deal about how Australia was founded, but as I mentioned earlier, that will be a whole separate blog. Though I will give port Arthur one thing, they have a real cool playing cards. They have 52 different convict stories, and each convict is represented by a card from a playing deck. When you buy a ticket, you get one of the cards, that allows you to track their story and find out what happens to them. Really cool idea, they made up for the lack of physical presence by reminding you that the buildings house people, and people built the country. The next morning my co-traveler and I walked around the remains of a coal mine and barracks that used to house convicts, cool, and I will explain more in later blogs. That afternoon I dropped Chris off so he could do some 5 hour walk along the cape, and I went looking for a beach to surf on, however I discovered the source of the rattling sound on our car that we have been hearing since we left Canberra. It turns out we blew a rear shock absorber on the car. I spent the next hour pulling the old one off, and then crawling around under the car looking for anything out of ordinary. I found some loose bolts I tightened, but I still have some other questions regarding my car, but will deal with it in Adelaide, until then, still have to replace the shock absorber, should be fun. Anyway, we have since moved into Hobart and spending some time wandering around town. Today we hit the Cadbury chocolate factory and got some good cheap chocolate. It is a very strange story how a chocolate maker from England opened his chocolate factory in Van Diemens Land. I could imagine that conversation with his drinking partner "I know, we are from Buckinghamshire, most of our business, including our best client the Queen, is in London, all our partners live in London, lets open up our first chocolate factory in Australia, a place filled with thieves, rapists, and murderers." Who would have thought that it would have turned into a genius idea. The weather in Tas is the like England, so when Mr Cadbury came over he said "this is just like home" and the factory was set to be built here in Hobart. They get the milk from Tas and sugar is grown and harvested in Quesland. We got so much free chocolate, I think I might get sick. Our afternoon was spent touring and taste tasting the wide variety of the fine drinks made by the Cascade Brewery. Founded in 1892 by, believe it or not, by a convicted tax evader. This guy left England with his family and some equipment and built a saw mill on land given to him as a new settler. Apparently he still owed some people back in England several thousand dollars, so he got tried in Aus and sentenced to five years here, and when he got out he converted his saw mill into a brewery, and the rest is history. The most recent history involved is we saw this lone beer tap in the brewery, apparently it used to have 7 friends, what would happen is 4 times a day everyone working would drop what they were doing and have a drink to make sure the quality was good, unfortunately health and safety didn't like the fact that all these employees were drunk, and that tradition was stopped, in 1990, a 100 year old tradition gone, funny thing is when that took effect the production of the brewery actually dropped, so which is worse I wonder, production being high, but all your employees being drunk, or sober employees and poor production. What a strange day, chocolate in the morning, beer tasting in the afternoon, a very good day in Tas. Another thing I should mention is that Tasmania is divided from North South by an invisible line, called the brewery line. in the North they drink only Boggs beer, but in the South they only drink Cascade. You actually have to be care full which one you order in a town, you might have crossed the line and entered into enemy territory. Anyway will blog more later, I am pretty sure you are tired of reading this novel. Goodnight.
How do you make a group decision with 2 people?
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