October 28, 2004
Welcome little Snowden
Congratulations Jason & Jennifer! We are so happy that God has blessed your family.
Happy birthday to Kelsey Lynn.
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October 25, 2004
Nothing worse
...than seeing a snake. Especially when you are living in Tasmania, where every snake has the potential for death. All snakes in Tassie have powerful neurotoxins in their venom. So when you go on a bushwalk and see a tiger snake, that’s the main thing you remember about the walk. All I can see in my mind when I think of Waterfall bay is the black tiger snake only one short meter ahead. We don’t have any pictures of it because I was too busy running the other way. By the way, did I mention that we saw two snakes on that walk?
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Staying up Late
In honor of how I feel tonight, I am posting this picture of Sleepy Bay. (I’m waiting up for Rob to come home from the evening shift at the LGH.) Isn’t it gorgeous? It doesn’t really deserve it’s name. Sleepy Bay has some huge waves and lots of bushwalkers. It’s one of the Great Short Walks of Tasmania.
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October 21, 2004
Oz Kindness
We drove into the national park on the Tasman Peninsula to get to a nice bush walk. I drove our sturdy Ford Falcon around a bend and slightly down the hill toward the beach. Then I felt the tires sink a bit into the soft earth. It only took me a second to realize that I had made a mistake. I had drove us down a hill onto soft sand. I put the car in reverse and just as I feared, the tires spun digging us deeper into the soft sand.
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October 18, 2004
Mom Lam, this one's for you!
We tried to find a pearl, but as you can see, no pearls to be found. When you get here we’ll take you to Oyster Bay to look for yourself.
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What's black and white and cute all over?
I’ll give you a hint:
The east coast is home to the fairy penguins. We had heard about them before we went and thought we would have to take a tour to see them. As it turns out, penguins are rather easy to see without a tour! They were all over the place, walking down the roads, hiding in the bushes, sitting in people’s yards. You just need a torch (flashlight) and a jacket. These penguins are small (about 7” or so) and adorable. We saw them each night in Bicheno, lucky us.
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East Coast
Having a few days off, Rob chose to go to Bicheno on the East Coast for his birthday celebration. We hadn’t been there yet and had heard from everyone that it was a must. Bicheno is lovely, small town, beautiful walks and beaches, national parks nearby, vineyards and olive groves, good food, and some adorable wildlife (more on that later.)
Our B&B was right on the coast, so it was a quick walk over the dunes to the beach.
We took some nice walks, relaxed on the beach, saw the sights, ate good food, basically enjoyed life. Our lovely hosts at the B&B made a special birthday breakfast for Rob and also got us some cake! (Thanks Ron & Merle!) It was a beautiful day in spirit, but not in weather. We had a rainy day, with short periods of bright sun, enough to spend a short time on the beach.
On Saturday we left Bicheno and headed out toward Freycinet National Park, which is home to the fabulous Wineglass Bay Beach. We did a lot of the shorter walks around Freycinet, including some at Oyster Bay and the Cape Tourville Lighthouse. For the beach lovers out there we did a quick walk on the cold but amazing Friendly Beaches. Enormous stretches of pure white sand, perfectly clear blue waters, incredible views. We wandered over to Swansea just for the chance to stop again at Kate’s Berry Farm, home of wonderful dessert treats.
It was a relaxing and fun trip, one we hope to repeat before we leave.
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October 10, 2004
Guess who's turning 28!
Sometimes it’s hard to be so far away from home. On October 15 Rob will turn 28 – but we will miss our friends and family as we celebrate. So join in on the fun and send him an e-card for his birthday!
Posted by at 11:25 pm | Comments (6) | Permalink
Stepping Out
Every time Rob gets more than a day off, we try to get out of town. Tasmania is a big state and we want to see as much of it as possible before we have to leave. So, this past weekend, we were off to the Tasman Peninsula. The main tourist attraction in the Tasman Peninsula is Port Arthur, which some of you may have heard about in the news several years ago. Port Arthur is a tourist destination because of its convict history – it was a secondary prison for the worst offenders from 1830 to 1877. Many of the old buildings still exist and there are tour guides who explain the area and tell stories of the convicts. Port Arthur is very interesting, but that was only one stop on the trip.
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October 05, 2004
Sydney Photos
At long last. Click here to view our syndey photos.
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Oz Medicine
The other night I was working a shift in the emergency department when the ambulance brought in a lady that had just been discharged from the hospital the same day who was having difficulty breathing. I heard a shout from behind the curtain,“somebody help me I can’t breathe!” I walked into the resuscitation area to take a look. I saw a large woman sitting upright inthe bed obviously having difficulty breathing. I introduced myself. I looked into her eyes. They looked glazed over. She answered a few of my questions with answers that drift off into uncomprehensible words. Then she gave me one final look before her eyes rolled back into her head, she slumped over in the bed, stoped breating and became unresponsive.
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TWC
I’ve been begging Rob for about a month now, asking if we could please go to Ross to visit the Tasmanian Wool Centre. It’s been put off several times, rescheduled for later, and finally the time came this morning. We made the drive out to Ross, about an hour away from Launceston. We checked our restaurant guide and picked a place for lunch in a bigger town near Ross.
After reading about Ross and seeing the tourism information, it seemed like an interesting place. As a knitter, the TWC sounded pretty cool – information on the whole wool process, from the sheep to the shirt, interactive displays, stuff to buy, meaning yarn. I figured this might be a place to find a deal. As it turns out, the TWC is the most expensive place to buy yarn I’ve been to in all of Tasmania, including the Salamanca market. The interactive displays turn out to be different widths of dirty wool you can touch and that was the coolest thing about it. I don’t think I learned much at all, if anything. Ross also turns out to be a letdown – lots of historical buildings and a bridge built by convicts, but nothing particularly stunning. Every small town in Tassie has old buildings.
Lunch was great though. We stopped at Zep’s in Campbelltown. Surprisingly good and creative for such a small town.
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October 03, 2004
Spring Forward
For those who are interested in time differences between Australia and the US, we have just had a change. Time change, that is. Daylight savings. We’ve sprung forward by one hour more. I’m not sure if the US has already had it’s fall back, so if you are living in Kansas City, St. Louis, or anywhere else in the Central Time Zone and have recently set your clock back by one hour, then we are now 17 hours apart. (If you haven’t changed the clock, logic states that it would be a 16 hour difference until you do.) The easiest way to calculate this 17 hour difference is by adding five hours to your current time, then switching from a.m. to p.m. or vice versa, and you will know what time it is in Tassie. Click here if you are too lazy to do the math.
The strange thing about Time Zones in Australia is that they are determined by state and not nation. So Tasmania is on Daylight Savings, but Queensland isn’t—they tried it and didn’t like it. So they are in the same time zone, but not on the same time. Bizarre.
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Mucking about
Sorry to disappoint you all, but we were unable to do the Walls of Jerusalem bushwalk due to weather. It was raining pretty badly so we decided instead to visit the Northwest coast and went all the way to Stanley. Besides being known as Australia’s Tidiest Town, it is also the home of the Nut. Rob and I decided to take the short and extremely steep walk up to the top and then had a look around. It provides a lovely view all the way around, since Stanley is at the tip of a small peninsula. Beaches on each side of town. We also stopped at Boat Harbour Beach, which now qualifies as one of Rob’s favorite beaches in Tasmania. I’d still prefer Wineglass, even if I have to walk for 2 hours to get there.
After church today we went to a Chinese Restaurant for Yum Cha, or Dim Sum as we know it in the US. It’s not called dim sum here because all of the snack shops in Australia have their version of a certain type of dim sum, the shao mai, which they call dim sim. A slight distinction, but an important one. Like saying that crab rangoon are chinese food—not true.
Later in the day we went for a bushwalk to Lobster Falls. (Don’t ask me about the name, I don’t know.) The walk is short and fairly easy. The falls are fantastic, very remote and intimate feeling. Rob took lots of pictures which will be added soon. The problems came with the walk back. It’s about 45 minutes, but it started to rain and get cold. That’s when you start to rush, since rain jackets were left at home. When you rush, you have a greater chance of say, stepping into a huge bog of mud and ruining one of your shoes about 10 minutes into your 45 minute walk back to the car. eew. As you can imagine, those shoes are now dedicated solely to bushwalking and will not be making the return trip to the United States. The good news is that I’m going shopping tomorrow.
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October 01, 2004
Bushwalk
Today we are visiting the Walls of Jerusalem. Actually, it’s a National Park here in Tasmania, only about 2 hours away from us. It’s a 6-8 hour walk, the longest we have done so far. I’m even consenting to bring safety gear in case we get stranded or hurt, etc. We’ve got our packs, our food and our walking shoes. And Rob’s got the camera. It’s exciting—this is by anyone’s standards a long bushwalk. (Bushwalk is Australian for hiking through a wilderness area.)
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