Feb 2006

What a crazy few days this has been.... a story of being in the right place at the right time...
I thnk my last entry left off where I woke up in some guys car.... then was waiting for something to do to find me... and it did.
After that entry I got my cheap sushi and sat out on a bench in the elizibeth st. outdoor mall... seated myself near a really great street musician, playing guitar. just as I'm finishing eating, he's finishing playing and comesn up to me, asks: "how would you like to go out on a boat today? I need a hand with a couple of things, and you get a free boat ride out of it" - I couldn't disagree with that... so we hopped in the van and headed down to the water. he had a 47 foot sailboat and needed me for a deckhand... cause you can't bring a boat that size in all on your lonesome... so I got a crashcourse. him yelling orders, near misses... high waves... and an engine that doesn't giver any better than high idle.. all in all a great experiance... we got stuck out in the middle of the bay.. winds were too strong for the little motor and the sails were still down.... so we had to get into a little shipping port near some navy vessels and wait it out before making another shot for battery point... we made it alright... good times
Went back to the hostel and checked in for a proper room and spend the rest of the evenning and the next day meeting people. had a wonderful time and went out the next night out into the (suprisingly) booming Hobart night life... had a blast...
took off in the morning... took a city bus to the edge of town and stuck out my thumb. within 20 minutes I got picked up by a couple. they asked me if I was going to the show... I didn't even know it, but Xavier Rudd was playing at a small festival near in a little village, Luishem (spelling is wrong) not even an hour out of Hobart. They took me there....set up my tent int he free campgrounds. I met a bunch of really cool people who taught me a bunch of things about archetecture, solar heating and photography....really ggot my creative gears turning... weather turned to shit - Tasmanians don't xcare. they stick it through, knoweing that the weather can completely change one minute to the other... and it cleared up just as the stars were coming out for Xavier rudd... and you could never imagine my luck. there were standing seats, right on the side of the stage for media people, but they let us stand there, right on the side of the stage, 20 feet from Xavier Rudd - and it was totally free. We had better seats than the people who payed $50 to be there, I shit you not. and when I found that spot, there were a couple guys from my hostel there... so we all hung out. was great. and I got some really great phot's/video for you Xavier Rudd fans back home.
Spend the night in the campgrounds - with all of the Tassie locals, partiing it up. I think I was the only forgeiner out of the 50 -100 people I met that night... I was "Mr. Canada" and they got me nice and drunk, feeding me candaianj club and local beers, inventing imaginary animals for me to ask other people about... I learned their tricks pretty quick. they were impressed.... I can't even explain how nice and friendly these pople here are. never experianced anything quite like it.
Set off in the morning to continue on to the Tasman penninsula, where I presently am. spent the afternoon touring around witha guy from near here - seeing all of the geological sights and sheer cliff coastlines here - (some of the most magnificent I've seen)
Staying at an eco-hostel. camped outside with a sheep and some ducks in the yard. all of the water onsite is natural rain water, the toilets composting toilets. outdoor kitchen. bloody great. $7/night and $5 to rent the bike I rode down to eaglehawk neck, where I sit typing. I plan to cycle down to Port. Aurthur today... 20km or so...
but I've got to go. Internet is $12.00/h here. bloody expensive.
talk soon.
I'm off to sydney in a couple days to meet up with Chryysi. probably write then.
Take care!

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!

I barely know how to begin any of these enteries when I start them - I just want to rant in every direction at once, especially about Tasmania!
Coming in on the plane, I knew I was going to love it here - and it's alot farther than I thought it was... an hour flight but there is alot of ocean that goes by in that hour...
Launceston is apparently the third oldest City in Australia... nice place. old buildings... really slow. the shops were open, but you'd never guess... as the flow of traffic was absent... like Camrose on a slow day, years ago... but with the population of Red deer...
City, nice enough but I wanted to get out right away... so I bought some fuel for my stove (can't bring the stuff on the airplane) and got the hell out of town. just bussed it to the edge of the city and walked... catching rides is really easy here... never really waited more than about 10 or 15 minutes, sometimes it's immediately... first ride here was an Aboriginal fellow - really intelligent and well spoken guy... an activist fighting for his people's rights, next guy constructed wind power generators (interesting fact: Tasmania's only power gerneration is renewable power. Hydro and wind) and yeah. Lot's of great rides.
The country side here has the nice rolling hills of Alberta, but more accentuated... like foothills, mixed with the sublime beauty of Bowen island... It cannot be described, barely beheld by the eyes and overflows my heart. Vibrations of love and beauty swim over my body when I gaze out apon the land. A tear was welled up in my eye near the end of my first ride, at sunset. too beautiful. I don't have the capacity to absourb it all yet!
Made it to a place called Elizibeth Town where I climbed over a lizzard covered, giant eucalyptus tree that had fallen accross a nearby creek.. trecked through the blackberry brambles to a nice slope and set up camp. cooked me up a good mean on a nearby rock while listening to the variety of animals moving about in the bush (haven't seen any alive mamals here yet. Shitpiles of roadkill as there are no real scavenger animals here... just birds) Great sleep... got up, made meself some brekky and hit the road.
The air is unbelivably pure here. It gets really cool at night (glad I've got a bag rated down to 0c, you need one here) like camping in the mountains in Alberta... During the day the air is relatively cool but the sun packs some real heat. And the wether patterns are totally erratic and unpredictable - clouds sailing by super fast - raining while it's shining, windind that blows in circles... totally bizzare stuff.
Great day yesterday...
Spent the day with Grant and Mich, a wonderful couple who swerved across two lanes of traffic to pick me up. didn't even have my thumb out! They took me to Grant's home town, Stanley. Interesting Geological feature, they call it the "Nut", a mini Devil's tower... old volcano whose outside peeled away leaving a tower of harder rock, kind of thing. Got some Tamarack fish and chips and saw some crazy stroboscopic bioluminecient jellyfish creatures in the ocean... among lots of other fish - the water is so clear you can see the fish that you're about to catch, 3 meters below the surface... Puffer fish, skates everyhwere, all that good stuff. They showed me basically the whole north west coast of Tassie in a day. This place is great.. you can drive anywhere on the island in a day, no sweat.
Stayed at Grant and Mich's place last night... wonderful big old house. Couple other travellers, a german guy and a korean guy were waiting on the porch when we got home... had come back after several days in the buch on a crazy hike - We all cooked up some great food and hund out for the evening. I grabbed a ride with Grant in the morning. was on the road by 7am.
Today was a shitshow. I walked through the same town I walked through the day before, got picked up at the same place grant and mich picked me up after the same 4km walk... (they lived back the way I came from, but we had driven about 300km in other directions the day before) and yeah... ended up in Bernie... some young guy insisted that he droip me off at this place he knew of for a quick ride... I figured I'd give it a try. It was a secondary highway with no shoulders and big truck after bigg truck... bloody nightmare. I didn't even give it long... but it had a bad vibe... the contant stream of shit flowing out of the backside of this disgusting logging/mill town. I decided it was worth the Walk to the other side of town. I learned something today. Never underestimate the size of Bernie. I put on about 8 more Km getting to the proper highway. After I got there I discovered that there was a bus in the city that would have dropped me off right where I wanted to go... live and learn. good excersize, at any rate....
got a couple short rides and then got picked up by James, a wonderful kindred soul, who's place I'm staying at presently. It's actually his folks place, who are on vacation, so we have free roam of the place - and it's bloody beautiful. Wood floors and beautiful cabinets, 13 acres of beautiful land... nice dog and cat.... So yeah, we spent the afternoon having great talks and drinking boags (a tassie beer brewed in Launceston - it's excellent) exploring the yard and climbing around in the woods. Cooked up Pasta and steaks for dinner - Wonderful times here! Thankyou James, for everyhting!
Beautiful, welcoming energy. I love it here and have made friends to come back and visit already!
I'm absolutely bombed. it's late here and I've walked at least 12km today with my full pack and a handbag of food... so yeah. sleep is well earned.
Internet acess is hard to come by here (I'm on dialup) so I'm not sure when the next entery will be... try to make it soon to make some record of this beautiful dream I am living!
New Pictures: PHOTOS!

(more pictures at the bottom of this entry)

Interesting past few days in the city...
Had one day of pouring (all bloody day) rain. I think it was the day after my last entry. Didn't get out much that day...
The next day was beautiful... so I packed light and headed out for the day. Wandered all about downtown.. checked out the Ian Potter Center National Art Gallery of Victoria and the Australian Center for the Moving Image in Federation Square, gave the Botanical gardens a couple hours for a walkthrough - beautiful stuff. Botanical Gardens especially.
Then decided to head out to Fitzroy and St. Kilda beach... which is kind of like the Whyte ave or Commercial drive of Melbourne. Really nice part of town. Ended up meeting a couple of german girls (lots of germans here, I'm telling you) who just got off their plane a couple of hours before. We went out for drinks (beers on the beach) Fed the possums fine german chocolate. There were tonnes of them. first possums I've seen here actually. fuuuuny little creatures. Cross between a squirrel and a cat or something.
anny how. On the beach.I had a train schedual. calculated that I would have plenty of time to get back to Altona. Hopped on my tram to the Flinders street train station downtown. all on time, everyhitng was good. Still had 18 minutes until the last train, so I ducked into the toilets to take a leak. Got down to the train platform just as as the 12:05 tain sped off. no prolem. There was one more in 16 minutes. not the case. the last train only went about a third of the way, which is no bloody good because there is still about 20km more to go. A young guy comes up and asks if there is another train to such and such place. We both missed our trains and ended up hanging out for an hour or so, planning a way to get to a sleeping place. He offered a place to stay, but it meant a $25 cab ride, as all of the trams and busses were shut down. Long story short - I could get a bed in a hostel downtown for the same price and I had german ggirls to meet the next morning... so I found a hostel.. a crazy city hostel. stayed on the 5th florr. elevator and all. hundereds of rooms. had a shitty shower with no soap and went to bed. All in all, payed $24 for a room that I only had for 9 hours. I would have slept outside but I was only wearing a light T shirt and flip flops... and I don't know Melbourne at night - so I used my better judgement and got a hostel - (keep all you "travel safe" people happy)
That was last night. Spent today helping the german girls find a tent to save on costs... wandered through chinatown and visited the National Gallery of Victora for more fine artwork. Had a nice exhibit of Ancient Egyptian, Mexican, Greek, Syrian, Iraq-ian objects. They Egyptian ones were particularly intriging... something about contemplating an object made by the hands of man 5000-6000 years ago... half decent paintings aswell. Nothing as nice as in the Adelaide Galleries though...
Hit the Queen Victoria market on the way out of town, again... nothoing like the Central market in Adelaide... this one was just produce, not the delicious gormet foods you've never heard of sort of market... but hey, half a kilo of grapes for a buck is a pretty good deal... and a big full of all kinds of fresh fruits and veggies for $5. can't go wrong.
OH - I SAW A HIGHSPEED CHASE TODAY! downtown Melbourne. I was in a tram. just saw it down a street I was passing. a black sports car of some sort. The cops had this vehical sort of cornered.... bottlenecked, more like. when I noticed what was going on, the car was right outside my window. It came to a stop and 4 cops approached it. One cop tried to open the door and the driver pinned it, peeled the tires and sped off. knocked a couple of the cops on their asses.. knocked stuff off their belts - radios flying into the air. The car sped down the tram track in the midddle of the roadway, lightning fast, where cars normally don't drive. Came up to a roadblock that was set up - bunch of cop cars and things and was speeding toward a gap when my view down the street got obscured as my tram continued down the track, perpedicular to the street with all the action. My brief glimpse of the action was something right out of Grand Theft Auto - "GTA Melbourne City"
Pretty exciting day in the city. I've seen it all and Now I'm ready to go.
I bought a plane ticket this morning to fly to Launceston, Tasmania tomarrow morning. Even with less than 24 hours notice, the flight cost be $80 AU, (about $72 Canadian) I'm spending about 12 days in Tassie... have only the roughest, sketchiest idea of the route I'm planning on travelling, so far. On the evening of the 16 of Feb, I'm flying to Sydney. I wish I didn't have to fly to sydney... but the time frame for Chrysi's days off and the way everyhting works out, that is the way it has to be really.. So I bought that ticket this evening, as they were already getting really booked for that flight.
So yeah. The next 3 weeks are layed out infront of me. I have a skeleton to work within here.
I'm bombed tired presently. it's late here. just figured I should make some record of Melbourne happenings before I plunge into the wilderness of Tasmania.
sleeep.

PHOTOS!!
(photos can also be found by clicking on "fenderson" under the authours column to your right, then clicking "more photos" under the photos column. Or bookmark the page when you get there...