Brett Writes!

Some fun for Hallowe’en this year … to start with, we were invited to a costume party on the Saturday night, so I went as a Nazgul! We hired a robe, cloak and sword (samurai, but a decent replica with a nice feel to it). The leather gloves were mine (used for a 19 Nocturne Boulevard cover last year), and I covered my face with a balaclava. Sue then convinced me to get on her horse on our block and she took pictures….

(I photoshopped that picture as it was a sunny day with very little of the medieval gloom of Middle Earth during the War of the Ring; I also removed the fences and added a tower ). Didn’t actually ride the horse anywhere (other than in a very small circle), and the reason it actually looks alert rather than bored is that behind me are some emu’s … and he hasn’t quite gotten used to emu’s yet.

And we carved a pumpkin …

Which Sue turned into a delicious pumpkin soup. Sue dressed up as a witch, in an elegant black velvet celtic/medieval gown, a pointy hat and red shoes. Very witchy!

Both of us were suffering from hayfever, which took a little edge off the fun.

24th December is our last (partial) day at the Brisbane Street address in Launceston. We’re going to be travelling and camping until January 11th, and then heading back to WA via a two-day stop-over in Melbourne (where I’ll be popping back up on Skype/ICQ/Email). During the time, I should be intermittantly available by mobile phone. (Nb: don’t forget the three hour difference from WA!!!).

All things going well, we should be back in WA around the 22nd of January (estimate only), and back in Albany early February.

Merry Christmas to anyone who’s reading this!

We recently went on an excursion to Hobart, the capital city of Tasmania.

In Hobart we made certain to visit the German Bakery in Sandy Bay (beestings, lager sticks and pretzels, almond horns and very nice bread), and then to the famous Salamanca Markets (which, I have to admit, had quite impressive array of strange and interesting things).

On the way back we dropped in on the Freycinet Peninsula, and hiked to Wineglass Bay, crossed the isthmus to the other side (Oyster Bay), and then around back to the car-park. Exhausting walk.

On the Saturday before last we decided to climb Mt Arthur — one of the peaks visible from our window, and about half an hours drive from Launceston. It was a lovely walk — about 8 hours. We explored a side trail that led to one side of the peak, and then backtracked and went on the regular track to the top. We had our lunch sitting on the verandah of a small fire-spotting station. The vegetation on the way up was magical — a real enchanted forest feel with lichen and moss covering almost every branch and stone, and the sun lit it up all gold and green. Fantastic!

A striking feature for me was mounds of lichen growing along the ground, quite large, like alien ground coral reefs. Very interesting to see.

All pictures taken with our new camera.

I’ve been getting behind on posting what I’ve been up to for the last few weeks, so here’s a quick summary:

Ben Lomond

We hiked up Ben Lomond (named after the Scottish mountain). There’s skiing up there in colder months, and we were delighted to find there was still some snow there. We walked from the car-park up into the saddle, where we found a long plateau of rocks, shrubs and pools of water with melting snow. Then down again to the ski village, and a trek back to the car along the roads (including a rather dizzying zig-zag). Lovely to find some snow, and there wasn’t any bitter coldness to go with it!

I was able to acquire more excellent ginger beer here. Yay!

Wynyard Tulip Festival

We did a weekend trip to Wynyard for their Tulip Festival. There was food, bands, jugglers, animals, carnival rides and constant helicopter fly-overs. We visited a brilliant photographic exhibition and chatted with the photographers, increasing our determination to get ourselves a better camera. Also took in the art exhibition which had some nice pieces.

We stayed overnight and then the next day went on to visit …

Stanley

Stanley is a quiet town with historic ruins and “the nut”, a large flat-top feature.

Fun activities

Last weekend we had a go at some archery, cable hang-gliding and went on a walk to Badger Head (mistakenly wound up at Bakers Beach due to an error in the guidebook, but we encountered a large number of wombats and played with our new camera so we didn’t feel it wasted).

We’re really liking our new camera!

We’ve been in Tasmania about three four weeks now, and it’s about time I bought this up to date, and posted a few notes and photographs about the journey. We drove more than 3,000 kilometers in 5 days, to cross from Western Australia through to Victoria via South Australia. From there we caught the ferry across to Tasmania. The drive was largely uneventful (all in all, a good thing).

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Well, we’ll be bidding Albany goodbye soon, just for a little while. Sue has a job in Tasmania, teaching for a term over there, so very shortly we’ll be hooning across the Nullabor in our little yellow car, but before then, the madness of packing what we need and trying to cram it all in! If only you could zip physical objects up and then FTP them across … *sigh*

The day after my birthday we decided to revist a hike we did around the same time in 2007: climb Mt. Magog in the Stirling Ranges, and then trek across the ridge to Mt. Talyuberlup, and then down to the road, and back along to the Mt. Magog carpark.

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Out and about again on Sunday; this time returning to the Porongurups (small mountain range between Albany and the Stirling Range), and doing the Nancy Peak circuit. You can go either direction; this time we opted to start in the East-ish side, which climbs into forest with tall trees and healthy looking regrowth since a fire a few years ago. There were strong gusty winds on the the peak, which has the common granite boulders typical of the area. We enjoyed a cup of tea and watched twin banks of heavy cloud roll over the Albany township to the South, and the Stirling Ranges to the North. Then we were off again, down again and around onto a wide track large enough to accomodate vehicles. Walk took about two hours.

Quite a lot of fungi about, but didn’t go mad photographing them this time … sometimes it is nice just to walk!

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Staying at home during severe weather and enjoying hot chocolate while relaxing in front of a heater would be the sensible thing to do, so we decided to venture out and revisit the Little Grove to Sandpatch walk we did in June of last year (the write up is yet another victim of the Server Crash of ‘09).

The walk takes us round from Little Grove (on the harbour) across the Torndirrup Peninsula to Sandpatch (the location of the Albany wind farm), and around in a loop. Most of it is comprised of the Bibbulumun track, which is well signposted and maintained. We started the walk at 10:00 and finished about 14:30; and it’s about 20 km all told.

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