Hitchhiking

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!

I don't know where to start....
Summary of events, I guess...
Got out of Adelaide... took the bus threough the Coorong down to the limestone coast, Mt Gambier.
Funny story... Got there after dark. Asked the busdriver where to stay. he reccomended hostels and things... but they were far. I asked about "potentially free places" and he pointed to the hill behind us. said it'd be alright. so I set up camp under a beautiful Eucalyptus tree and made myself at home in the city park. Climbed up a tree and nearly fell asleep under the stars. That was my first real time alone since I left. Beautiful. Perfect.
Spent the next day wandering abuot the town. Lots of fascinating geological sites in Mt. Gambier..(a little geologist rubbing off on me) beautiful Blue lake, a lake in the crater of and old Volcano. lots of sinkholes around there. Took a tour in some Caverns underneath the city. decended about 28 meters under downtown. Used to use them as a garbage dump but decided theyed make a better tourist attraction. Spent the day checking around. lots of beautiful sinkholes and things (some girl just game me two beers - what is not to love about this place?) annny how... Walked 10 km out of town later that evening. no rides. understandable. the sun was going down. Set up Camp along some old abondoned railroad tracks just past the "10km to Mt. Gambier" sign. Exellent nights sleep and up bright I got picked up by a nice elderly coulple. Locals. They drove out of their way to show me the sights along the way, insisted on buying me lunch and took me to the grocery store for supplies before dropping me off at the start of the "great ocean road", just accross the border into the province of Victoria. which I continued to hitch on. Next ride was from a Young local guy, about my age on his way to his Job milking cows at a local farm. He offered me to stay with his family after he was off work but I turned the offer down, in favor of continuing on. Dropped me off into a cloud of pesky flies which stuck to me like glue for the next near half hour... I swatted them, never killing a one (the flies are fast here... and annoying as hell) untill a young german couple picked me up in a really sweet camper van. They were there for the sights too... so we stopped at every viewpoint along the way. wonderful people... drove me to a nice (fly free) drp point - where I caught a snack and continued thumbing until I got picked up by ocal surfer in a Van loaded full of surfboards and gear who was headed for where I was shooting for - Port Campbell, which is where I am presently staying. Beautiful viewpoints here. I can't wait to post photos - which is not often possible at these internet terminals...
That is just a summary of events - happenings... it does not reflect my real experiances of these events with any degree of accuracy - this is where the limitatations of my grasp of the english lauguage and the cost of this internet terminal, leave all you readers in the dark.
What to say in the minutres remaning... The ecology of this coast as compared to the Adeladide area is completely different. First off, it's refreshingly cooler here... about half the temperature. There are some variety of grassland snail which is attached to almost everything along the road, even 50km inland. wierd. Oh - and I saw about a dozen Kangaroos and a few Emus on my busride out here - really funny critters, they are. Lots of funny little furry critters running quickly into the bush as I walk. god knows what they are...
Been meeting lots of locals - all are very fascinatred by me for some reason. Can't say that's not a good thing. Everyone reccomends a few things to check out - so I'm making an average of them all and biding my time accordingly.
All in all, excellent Journey so far. Very hard not to enjoy this coastline. I've tried to photograph it... but even a series of a dozen photos pieced together would not even cover the full scope of these beautifulo limestone cliffs and archways. phenomenal part of the world.
Alright. time is almost up here. and internet acess is exceedingly expensive here, so I should cut it short, although I'm sure I culd ramble on four hours.
I'm thinking of you all back home - but enjoying myself too much to think too much. (that's a really great thing) I'm being safe and all that jazz. I will put up another entry when I have an oppurtunity.
cheers.