Tarraleah Estate

... somewhere in the universe, but they really were quite lovely..overly friendly. maybe i was one of the wayward souls needing to be put back on the 'right' path...The place did have a strange appeal to it and the warm invitations to stay for coffee were reluctantly declined for fear of never leaving again. Sadly I couldn't help but think of The wicker man whilst i was here. Sorry!

A good thing about this road trip was getting off the beaten tourist track. The unveiled sights ...

... that we had a slow puncture. We carry 2 spares so swapped one over and still OK with a good spare left. Tasmania, like many parts of Australia, is suffering drought conditions and this is obvious in the low levels of many of the lakes. This photo of a boat launch site at Arthurs Lake gives one an idea of the effects of the drought on the lakes. It is beautiful countryside and the scenery is quite Alpine in places. One short walk took us through ...

... même dangereuse à cause des animaux qui commencent à sortir. Les wallabies notamment se tiennent beaucoup sur les côtés des routes pour manger et ont un comportement imprévisible. Alors qu'ils semblent bondir pour se sauver dans la brousse, ils changent brusquement de direction et se retrouvent sur la route. Il faut donc ralentir beaucoup mais certains surgissent des buissons exactement au moment où passe la voiture. Un wallaby nous fait le coup, on l'a à peine vu ...

... Wall in the Wilderness' which is the ongoing project of an amazing sculptor/artist/woodcarver. It is expected to take over 5 years to complete and will measure 100 metres in length and 3 metres high using 10 different subjects to portray the history of the area. As a visitor one is not allowed to take any photographs so I found a website that had some and this is one of the details from the 'wall'. If you are ...

... up in Hobart on Friday afternoon, drove back to Bronte Lagoon with no problem and after a relaxing weekend of practising my casting (!!) we drove it 200km to the aptly named village of Snug, for an overnight stay ready to drive onto a ferry to Bruny Island in the morning. This is Liz now and I had a relaxing time in the lakes country while David was attending classes. I had an interesting ...

... dollars to make it into a tourist attraction. It would be a beautiful quiet spot to relax for a few days; very upmarket accommodation; they have converted all the old buildings to give a choice of accommodation options. So we continued, well-fed, happy and relaxed, until a few kms on the car started to give us problems and we broke down on double white lines on a hilly, windy road; oh dear. When we stopped we saw a trail ...

Last Friday (Feb 1, 2008), we flew from Brisbane to Devonport, Tasmania, via Melbourne. We arrived in Devonport and frantically ran around trying to finish outfitting ourselves for our backpacking trip on the "Overland Track." The Overland Track is said to be the premier "bushwalk" in Australia. In Australia, like in New Zealand, backpacking means staying in hostel type accomodations. What we Yanks (ps, the knickname for an American over in Aussie is Yank ...

... on Saturday, ready to go. I still had not really planned out my trip, but I did know that I wanted to see Cradle Mountain State Park. It did not occur to me, however, that I would be riding the better part of the day uphill. After about 75km, I couldn't take any more and decided to hitch the rest of the way. A nice fellow on his way to climb to the summit (1600 meters) picked me up and took me to the entrance in about 15 ...

Went for a lovely walk along the beach at Henty Dunes after breakfast, decided it would be a good idea to do the long-jump seeing as we had lots of sand to play with, it was a close-run thing between Thomas and Carlos but Carlos' second attempt was a metre longer so we declared him champ; he's now in training for a late entry ...