Tasman Adventures

crazy adventures since my last entry...
I walked for about 12 hours from James's place before I got a ride... camped one night about 10km down the road... at a tree farm... growing blue gum trees
(a little aside about the logging/tree farming practices here - the local forests are cut and reduced into woodchips, sold to the japanese for pulp. whatever is left or not used is firebombed by helicopters, burn to the ground. then the ground is laid with 1080 poison to kill all incects, weeds all forms of life. North ameriancan pine trees or blue gums, are planted in rows and fences are put up. The ecosystem is effectively ^&$@'ed right up. The water is poisoned.... dream within an aside - whilist sleeping at the tree farm I had a dream (this is before I knew anything about the practice, just thought it was weird that there were no bugs there, (at all)... in the dream, there were Koalas in the trees. I was admiring them... beautiful creatures.. some rough and tough blokes came in with chainsaws and shot the Koalas right out of the trees with pistols. I ran to get myself out of the way. I was spotted and they chased me down and shot me down in the same fashion as the koalas....)
resume story.
Stayed the night on a tree farm. During the night there were very sick sounding amimals in the bushes all around me... I tried to seek them out before I went to sleep... but they would run off as I got close. During the night one woke me up... probably a wallabie, as it was hopping really quickly toward my tent! Alarm bells went off in my head... I didn't want anything trampling my tent.. so I shouted at it and it stumbled, turned around and hopped off away..
so yeah... after waking from that dream, and another really disturbing dream before it - I packed my things quickly and hit the road. It really didn't feel right staying there. My dreams made that very apparent...
spent the next 8 hours walking on a road with almost no cars... maybe 2-4 cars/hour. I was determined to walk all the way to the junction if I had to.. which was looking like the case. "only 20 more kilometers!"....
Finally got picked up by a guy from Finland. He didn't understand english very well... even had trouble understanding me as I was advising him that perhaps he should be driving on the left side of the road, insead of the right after he picked me up! (he had just rented the vehical and was not yet used to driving on the left. (Micheal&Raphella and I made jokes about this... didn't think it would hapen) think it was his first time driving a standard aswell - he claimed that there was "kangaroo petrol" in the tank) Kouta was very clumsy, fumbly, tall, opera singer. Actually sang opera for a career... and drove like a bloody mad man. got us places quick though.
Saw my first Tiger snake! about a meter and half long, as big around as a tennis ball. deadly poisonus. unfortunately, Kouta ran over it. he didn't see it - even when I pointed and told him to slow down, he swerved and ran right over it... that still sits a little heavy with me. such a large creature... killed by someoones lack of awareness... anyhow.
We drove half way across tasmania, checking out hiking trails along the way, in search of the tallest eucalypts in the southern hemisphere. Armed with 1:25000 scale maps and a GPS unit, we found them!
Spend the frst night in Maydena. Kouta had a hotel reservation. single room. didn't allow hitchhikers to sleep on the floor (I think he was just too honest) so I tramped out and found myself some nice, old, out of use railroad tracks and set up my tent beside them. cooked up some soup on the tracks and retreated into my tent as the rain started to fall. It bloody well poured all night long. I stayed nice and dry in my portable apartment... the only time you get wet is when you have to pack up your gear while it's still raining in the morning.. fun.
the next day was bloody amazing. We spent most of the day at a little place called Andromeda reserve, in "the valley of giants", Styx valley, to find the tallest Swamp gums, also the tallest trees left standing in the southern hemisphere 98metres, I belive. amazing trek through the rainforest... pouring rain - us suited up in raingear.... the forest is so wet here there are leeches all over.. (I actually have a leech hickey on my neck that bled quite profusely for about an hour) no trails.. we made out own.. climbing over fallen trees, clearing man ferns as we trudged through knee to waist deep forest floor... That was the rainforest fix I needed...
From the Styx valley we drove down through Hobart and out to a place called Lonnsale, 40km out on logging roads (the GPS unit came very much in handy in this area, as our maps were about 15 years old. alot has changed since then) Here we found a tree cemetary. absolutely heartbreaking. but it's the reality of the situation. Logging in tasmania is the biggest buisness in all of australia. destroying this beautiful island...
ANyhow... after trudging through the burned and poisoned landscape out to the very edge of the cut, we found the tallest blue gums left standing. 94 metres or so. They are now directly exposed to this barren land... some of them dead already, partly from the fires that raged in such close proximity...
Kouta was very disapointed that these trees were in such surroundings. I was not disapointed.... I was compelled, awkakended and slightly enraged to see that this was going on... It is done all over here.. I'm learning more and more about it as I go. sick. NO sense it being angry about it though... that won't help. It does very much inspire me to do somehing to increase awareness about these activities here and back home...
I'll put that one down for now..
Driving back from this site at night was really fun. I saw almost every marsupial possible... about 2 dozen Wallabies, a couple tasmania devils, a couple spotted tailed quolls (endangered), couple ringed tailed possums(endangered), few regular possums, some rabbits (introduced) and a bunch of other animals that were none of the above but I'm not sure exactly what they were.... very cool... but you had to drive really slow because there were animals on the road at any given time...
ok. got to make this quick. time is running out.
got into Hobart after the hostel I wanted to stay at was closed. There were some people outside... they were going to sneak me in, but then where do I sleep... This one guy, who was staying at the hostel, insisted that I sleep in his "campervan" because he wasn't using it... local Tasmanian, and I think he was kind of drunk... but I couldn't refuse an offer like that... we walk to it... It was acutally a stationwagon with a matress in the back, parked right on a main street in the CBD (central buisness district; downtown) he setme up. I figured... cool. free place in the city.. set myself up. got a good night's sleep. awoke to crazy traffic... people walking by and some guy in a suit informing me that I'm gonna have to wake up and move my car because it's parked in a loading zone! hahahha. I got my 8 hours... so I got up, packed up my stuff and went back to the hostel. found Shane and woke him up. let him know he was parked illegally and he stmbled down without shoes, even and moved it in a hurry. he hooked me up with a free place to sleep and I saved him a ticket in the morning. win/win.
ok. time is up.
I have to figure out what I'm doing here today. I want out of the city already...
but first, I found a sushi joint with a "sushi happy hour", which begins now...
alright. things are going great here.
write again soon... and put up some pictures when I have time.
I updated the pictures again from James'slace - some of you may not have seen - go back to the bottom of the last entery for the link, if you didn't see them.
times up!