Bruny Island

We took a short ferry ride from south of Hobart over to Bruny Island this past Sunday, overnight to Monday. That's some of our stuff on the white station wagon.



Mike and Ginger set up their tent on the other side of a dirt lane from the 'camper with unit' that Liz and I had reserved. The camper's on the left and the unit is on the right in this photo. It was fun sitting in the diner-like kitchen. The living room had a few lounge chairs, a TV, and a couch/futon piece of furniture with a top bunk. Some of those amenities were especially enjoyed by Owen. And, it was nice to have a place to gather for meals.



There was a communal barbecue in a shack down the lane, but that's a whole separate story for another time. Let's just say, I found it kind of strange to try to cook on a barbie with 3 families on holiday together arguing amongst themselves about what's the best way to cook fish. The gas heated flat griddle that passes for a barbecue here remains a challenge for me. They say that letting flame hit meat is carcinogenic. It was easy enough to grill the burgers and hot dogs on Sunday afternoon. But, I had some trouble determining if our chicken kabobs were done that evening. And, while I delivered the meat back to the camper with unit, someone cleaned the section of barbie that I used. Leaving me to wonder if I'd somehow flunked the barbie etiquette test. Live and learn.

There was a little lake where Owen and I tried our luck fishing. Those of you who know me well, understand that means very little luck. But, I had great fun watching him get the hang of casting out the line. I had gotten him a junior fishing set as a show bag at the Royal Hobart show. It was a telescoping light rod, with a sampling of gear 'perfect for a 6 year old' as the salesperson said. This was the first chance that we'd had to try it out. It had some rubber, squishy, fake bait, and we also tried bread balls that Mike made. And, some leftover hot dog pieces. O was very excited and had lots of fun. Until he lost the bobber. That was a very sad thing. I felt bad that I hadn't warned him enough to expect losing hooks, sinkers, bobbers, lures, and the like. I tried explaining with stories about losing bobbers in trees, snagging them on sea weed, having to cut lines that were stuck. He was rather inconsolable. Pretty much, until I said he could eat the remainder of the hot dog that we'd brought as bait. So, I went and got him another bobber this week. Not so much to throw 'stuff' at a loss, but to say along with it "you'll lose this one too". Live and learn.

We could hear the pounding of the waves from a short walk to the other side of the road and a over bit of a berm.



We went on a hike that was billed as suitable for all ages. Well, the first part of it was anyway. Perhaps we overshot the official easy trail, and soon found ourselves in a muddy, skinny path next to a stream. Liz, Ginger, and I turned back. Mike, O, and Anna investigated further. We all met back at the trail head where we discovered who had collected leeches and who had not. Mike's was just on his sweatshirt. Ginger's was on her ankle. Good thing Liz's childhood had plenty of leech experiences, so she advised that we head back to the camper with unit and pour some salt on the sucker. Worked good. Live and learn.

Liz, O, and I took a sunset walk. O loves to tease the waves. It was a little chilly so he was very careful to not get very wet.



The following day, Liz and I took the easy way and spent some time walking on a sandy beach. While the younger folks with good knees went off on a more ambitious hike. There, they witnessed a guy catch a small shark while surf fishing. Ginger captured the moment in digital video. Owen had the good fortune to see someone catch a fish.



Predictably, Liz and I wandered over to the Penguin Cafe and had some scrumptious raspberry meringue tarts and a flat white . Penguins are a bit of a theme in these parts. There is a special boardwalk built by the ocean on Bruny Island, where you can view little fairy penguins coming out of the ocean and waddling up the hill to their nests. We took a ride out to the observation point on Saturday night. On the ride home, I spotted my first Tasmanian devil on the roadside. They are rather cute. We also saw a few wallabies, but they stayed out of the road, thank goodness. We had gone to another penguin nesting area up in the Coles Bay area, and on that ride home, Mike had to drive like a slalom skier in some sections of the road, because the wallabies were jumping into the road every so often.

We met up again and had a really fine lunch on a hill side in sight of the isthmus that connects the north island with the south island.



After lunch we toured around by car for a bit. We stopped at Cloudy Bay, where the clear skies, indeed, clouded up more. But, it was still a very fine day. O was snoozing in the car, so Liz volunteered to hang back while the rest of us wandered over the hill to a sandy beach that had a large rock field.







There were many, many of these jelly fish scattered along the beach. Actual size ranged from tiny to about the size of your thumb for the balloon-like appendage.





The waves were spectacular, about 4 rows of strong waves. There were some surfer dudes sitting on a rest stop bench, just watching the waves. I didn't know if they were waiting for better waves or resting after a session. I asked them what the red tint to the water near the shore was and they said algae. Well, actually, they said 'alg-eee', but I understood what they meant.



We sure did a lot and brought back many stories from just an overnight trip. I'll see if I can pick some photos and load them up onto the Mac drive soon.

Tomorrow, though, I will be busy at an Appalchian old timey jam session at noon, a Cape Barren Island session at 1:30pm, rehearsal with the Tasmanian Heritage Fiddle Ensemble (that's the mostly teen aged group) at 3pm, Irish/mixed session at the pub afterwards, until the dance starts. Saturdays sure can get jam packed. Good for my calluses.

Mount Wellington cam

Here's a link to the Blundstone Boot website. It maintains a web cam on the mountain that we see from our apartment.

Camping Sunday and Monday

Off to Bruny Island for an overnight camping trip. We'll be staying in a camper at Captain James Cook Caravan Park. M, G, and kids will be in their tent. Perhaps I'll have a fish tale to tell. Or, maybe not. We'll see. Stay tuned.

Grocery shopping

We borrowed the car last week to go do a 'heavy' shop. That is, items that would be a pain to carry the 6 blocks or so from the store to our apartment. The supermarkets here a somewhat like the ones in the US, but not on such a huge scale and not with as many choices. They encourage you to bring reusable bags. We have about 5 cloth bags that we often leave home when we go shopping. Argghhh. Must remember to plan. Some stores charge for disposable plastic bags. TAS is trying to move toward no plastic bags at all in a few years by legislation.

Here are some examples of prices. Sometimes it's a mind-twist to determine if things are expensive or not. Metric to US weights and measures are not calculations that I can do in my head. In the case of this trip to the store, I picked up some mangos that weren't clearly priced because someone told me that they were cheap this time of year. It wasn't until I was doing the calculations for this post that I realized I'd paid 8 bucks for 3 mangos. That seems steep to me now. But, they're very tasty mangos.



I didn't calculate the weight or volume conversion on this chart. But, if you're wondering how many ounces in a kg or pints to liters, here's a link to a conversion site. The US Dollar conversion is based on this website.