Saturday, April 30, 2011

Bye Bicheno (or au revoir ?)









Well it is time to hit the road again ! I cannot believe that we have been here in Bicheno for four months, the time really has flown. We have truly enjoyed working in the caravan park, I can't pretend that cleaning toilets would be my chosen career path, but it proved an excellent means to an end, and I knew all that university education would come in handy one day. The crew here has been an absolute pleasure to work with, and one hopes that it will be possible to stay in touch with Geoff and Vicki, Steven and Sandy, Bev and Carmen, John and Chris. Some people talk of Freycinet Peninsular, or Mt Wellington, or Lake St Clair, but for me the highlight of Tasmania has been Carmen's cakes. From Bicheno we have criss-crossed the island, and are constantly meeting Taswegians who have seen only a fraction of the places we have. Next week it will be a quickie circumnavigation of Tassie with Mum and Dad, then Daylesford for a bit, then the Nullabor. One of our neighbours told me about his drive to WA in 1960, when it was dirt road all the way, which he did in his Morris 1000, with 6 spare tyres strapped to the roof. Another piped in with a story of his crossing last year, when circumstances forced him to share the driving with a friend, and to drive non-stop. Apparantly the road kill was so numerous, that it was only possible to drive at 50 km/h at night to avoid hitting the dead cows. I think that we might stick to daytime driving !

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Wild West


















We've been asked to work over easter, so when we were given four days holiday within our holiday, we went west young man. We sped past a coal powered, smoke belching monstrosity on our way to the roaring forties wind farm, and the contrast was dramatic to say the least. The threat to the avian population from the rotating bird slicers is so great that we had to be warned about the presence of eagles on the road outside the wind farm. The western half of the island is the least developed, the wettest, the windiest and the most scenic. A local brochure suggests that the scenery has more in common with that of New Zealand than with the rest of Australia. We have been a little hampered by driving a hybrid car (now 45,208 kilometres on the trip, @ a reducing 5.8 litres / 100 kms )and some of the western highways are really only suitable for 4x4's We did however visit the Tarkine wilderness, although did not attempt the famous 'road to nowhere' and we did some bushwalking in the Walls of Jeruselem national park. It has been a pleasant surprise to see some of Tassies famous wildlife alive and well rather than squashed at the side of the road. A going away party has been organised for the 29th of this month, and after a week with Mum and Dad in Tassie, next stop is Perth ! (maybe)

Monday, April 11, 2011

love me doo














Yesterday we drove through the little village of Doo Town, a group of shacks rather than a town to tell the truth (they do like their shacks those Tasmanians). But the habitants of Doo Town have distinguished themselves by naming their modest abodes with deliberately mispelt variations on the doo theme. Here are a few examples, let it not be said that Tasmanian don't have a can doo attitude!

After all this excitement, we dropped in for a welcome cup of tea at the lovely bush block of our friends Sandy and Steve.

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Some blogs go viral - ours has gone fungal











The season of mellow fruitfulness has arrived, and with it, hundred of weird and wonderful fungi. Cecile has read somewhere that only one per cent of all fungi are poisonous, and would like to give some of those mushrooms a turn in the kitchen. David is still struggling with the idea that good food comes out of soil rather than a factory, is reluctant.

At this time of the year,Alison Pouliot at Daylesford's neighbourhood center runs a "know your wild mushrooms course", and Cecile is determined to enroll a.s.a.p., and put her knowledge into practice.

Meanwhile, can you guess which one of the vegetative forms pictured here is a danger to human life?