Tasmania Photographs Page 1
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I have not included much of Victoria here in my photo pages and that is largely because the time between my landing in Melbourne Inernational Airport and my sailing off to Tasmania was a bit of a blur. I go into this in a bit greater detail in my log (which you really ought to read if you havn't) but in short, I was jet lagged beyond belief and my notes are all a bit jumbled (messy thinking = messy notes). Anyhow, I saw this statue of Peter Pan somewhere in Melbourne and it reminded me very much of the Peter Pan statue in Hyde Park... although this clearly has an Aussie touch to it with all the tropical birds and jungle critters running around him.

After several days of insomnia we boarded the Spirit of Tasmania. I wish I had written down just how big this boat was, but I didn't. All I can say is that it was enormous. There were well over eleven decks, four restraunts, a bar, a dance hall, a video arcade, a cinema, a museum, a gift shop, a tourist information office, and a phantom pool. The reason I say a phantom pool is because there were signs stating the existance of a pool, but we found none. We had in fact actually brought swim suits specifically for the purpose of swimming on board the boat, and we were mighty displeased to discover that the pool had actually been removed to make room for more accomodation on board. We ended up carrying our swim suits across the overland track for nothing! But I digress from my main point. The boat was huge.

And speaking of decks... we were on the bottom one. Rather typical hostel accomodation, and better ventilated than most. However this still didn't solve the typical snoring, coughing, disease sharing problems that come hand in hand with hostel accomodation. Someone was even kind enough to share their sore throat with me.

Sunset in the strait of Tasman. Interesting tid bit of information: originally the Dutch (who were some of the first folks to hang out on this end of Australia) thought Tasmania was simply a peninsula of the mainland. This misconception was not challenged for a really long time, and over the years a whole bunch of maps showing Tasmania linked to the mainland were drawn up.

On the bus linking the Ferry to Cradle Mountain National Park we saw a bunch of echidnas. The driver kept swerving from side to side to avoid the suicidal spiny critters! In retrospect I find it rather odd that this was the last we would see of echidnas on our trip. Day one in Tassie was it, we never crossed paths with them again.

The Overland Track trailhead. Believe it or not we actually were carrying equal amounts of weight here, my external frame just makes my pack look bigger.

We had our first wilderness critter encounter not more than five minutes down the trail. A wombat was waddling by and digging a hole in the side of a nearby hill. Rather adorable little fellows, kind of bear like minus the pointy teeth and fearsome claws.

During our time on the trail we had a few sightings, they were by no means common.

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