HOBART

since my last post i rode across the island to Strahan to meet an ADVrider buddy...  spent a few days there and then headed back SE toward Hobart, passing Derwent Bridge and stopped to gorge my eyes on this:

http://www.thewalltasmania.com/

haven't felt like taking pix or writing for past few days, so lack of access to internet not a problem.

will find a decent high-speed internet place from which to upload some pix because most internet locations here are just frustratingly slow.

                                     click on image to enlarge

If only we'd stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time - Edith Wharton

RETURN FROM ARTHUR RIVER

arthur river, really "the edge of the world" :   howling wind,  even where i was staying, two km from the beach,  the sea at night sounds like a freight train: no break in the waves' constant roaring up onto the shore. 

at the EOTW marker on at the end of Gardiner Point, difficult to stand up in the nonstop wind.... and equally powerful to know that there is NOTHING west from that point until South America, 10,700 miles away; the line misses South Africa by 300 km.  As the sun sets into the ocean here,  it is rising on Patagonia........

pix when i have a faster connection.

z

If only we'd stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time - Edith Wharton

Stanley

2/26-27

Just slept in the smallest hostel room ever: 9x12 feet, with two beds; fortunately, all mine.

A sweet and comfortable little town at the end of a curving promontory with a sheltered bay like Provincetown and below an ancient volcanic plug, Stanley represents so many aspects of Australia. From a British-chartered exploitation by the Van Diemen's Land company with the aid of transported convicts to contemporary tourist draw. Now known for incredibly neat streets, old colonial houses, a substantial old hotel, a large number of restaurants from fish and chips to a place as well designed as anything in Sydney or Boulder -- tea shops, and a Tasmanian specialty food store -- and two huge, spotless beaches, one on the bay with a large sterile caravan park (and the YHA with the prison cell room) and another facing wild Bass Strait.

In the town center, a statue of an Anzac soldier, Aussie hat with upturned brim on bowed head, hands resting on the butt of his inverted rifle, as if the Great War had just ended. I see these monuments in every town in Australia and NZ to their dead of WWI. Odd that WWII is barely hardly mentioned, tho this one does have extra metal plaques for Vietnam dead.......obviously WWI was an enormous shock to these small provincial places, physically but not emotionally separated from Mother England. 60 men went from this area, Circular Head alone, including two brothers named Cranswick. Always seems more touching and greatly sadder that only the initials of their first names used, as if their lost individuality was far less important than their family connection.

A. Innes
W. Coffey
R. Cross
F.C. Ross
C.R. Dixon
All good solid British names, so unlike the names in American cemeteries that speak our pan-European heritage.

Notes:

aussies, brits and kiwis don't rinse hand-washed dishes; today i poured a glass of water and was disgusted to see the surface of the water covered with soap bubbles.

the SUV conceit here is a plastic air-intake snorkle coming out of the engine compartment and up along the driver's corner of the windshield, implying -- just like in America -- "I could take this baby into serious bush and cross rivers, if i WANTED to."

walking back to the Hostel: pitch black, air smell gloriously strong, oxygen high.

Group of 7 motorcyclists from Melbourne comes into hostel; one Harley with the license plate Cerdo -- hog in Spanish -- couple of large Honda crotch rockets, and the smallest -- and bravest -- guy on a 250cc Honda Nighthawk. Touring on that is probably only a tad better than a Vespa scooter; how does he keep up?

The usual rider's conversation begins: where you been, how long you been in Tasmania, what do you ride at home, and again i can again barely understand their " 'Strain". I'm in a small room with seven big men guys saying what sounds like

"whadyatiningbuatmorrah?"

"onohatogulatry....buhmaktlet effy'waarnn...."

"yeiah! bawenggabtah forhebugahs."

"godunyahh! kentntmakhtlaat! nuddabeeeir?"

i discover that of them three are immigrants: from Canary Islands, Portugal and Austria, but that has nothing to do with my lack of comprehension because i can actually understand the Portuguese guy's English the best -- and he's been here 25 years.


***

tomorrow: past Cape Grim toward  the great Tarkine, home of the thylacine  and Arthur River, a town that calls itself the "Edge of the World" -- and a nocturnal visit with Tasmanian Devils ripping up dead flesh' courtesy of Geoff King

which means i probably will not have email or mobile access for a few days.

ANY THOUGHTS ON A SLIDESHOW, BELOW, VS PIX WITHIN THE TEXT AS I HAVE BEEN  DOING UNTIL THE LAST TWO?

click on slideshow to enlarge

If only we'd stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time - Edith Wharton

Penguin to Stanley

 2/25/2010

PENGUIN TO STANLEY

Another perfect riding day: 70-75 degrees, hot in the sun, cool in the shade, like a Colorado summer.

riding out of Penguin stopped to talk to road bicyclist who told me he rides EVERY DAY no matter what the weather ...and he also has an older BMW R100RT.  small world of bicycles and motorcycles.

highway beautiful along the sea until Burnie -  a large port with a busy downtown (seemed busier than i am now used to since streets narrow), always find interesting details, and then lovely Art Deco architecture is still very present in Australia

Fish Frenzy -- perfect succulent Smithtown oysters -- mildly sea-salty and a solid meaty quality -- and a chowder with pumpkin, so an unusual hint of sweetness.  wide windswept beach.

West from Burnie

steeper rolling hills and the highway swoops thru as it begins to feel more tropical here: gum trees more stunted and growing right up to the road, lower foliage as compared to the tall straight stands of them just 10mkm ago.

Sisters Beach: no accommodations I hoped for , but a 2 km beach, empty other than the four others.  getting tired in heat, so  drop the riding gear (another reason to wear running shorts under my riding pants!) and a very quick swim in the bracing water.

Despite the many times i've grabbed this kind of energizing break when touring,  why am I still so reluctant for the minimal effort to do something so delicious?   Maybe reluctant to leave bike  tankbag when i am not sure about security here......when in fact gear is as secure as most remote places i like to go.

while drying off, I watched a large man bit younger than me get out of his car, walk the 20 feet to edge of trees lining beach, take a photo and go back to stand at his car door next to my bike and look at it.
i could almost read his mind as he imagined himself on that beautiful piece of promised freedom, and then thinking, "no, couldn't do that........"

He was 50-55 at most; I'm 62.

WHY DO MEN ALLOW THEMSELVES TO BECOME SO OLD AT SUCH A YOUNG AGE????

***

Having probems with the upload from Picasa web albums, so here's a slide show 'til i figure it out.
Anyone know how do do it?  i sure can't figure it out....

click on slideshow to enlarge-- and notice that you can see pix full screen by using icon on far left of screen above pix

If only we'd stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time - Edith Wharton

PENGUINATION

2/23/2010

LATROBE TO PENGUIN

Left Latrobe when Anna pointed out that  local paper, The ADVOCATE, reported on my arrival in not too flattering terms (and i am referring to the LARGE, not the small headline).

click on photos to enlarge

PENGUIN (really, that's the name of the town -- you'll soon see why)

The short ride here along the coast road is glorious and easy: the road kissed the sea about 20 minutes from Latrobe and meandered along the blue turquoise thru a soft country of golden hills laced with Eucalyptus and pine.

 

  

 

with many original Aussie country-style houses and farms.  these older houses have four-sloped corrugated tin roofs and verandas covered with the same metal, with a beautiful turndown at the edge.
 
Turner's Beach, Leith, Ulverstone... where i was surprised to find two Waratahs pecking away in the park, as comfortable as pigeons, among the seagulls.

 Entering Penguin:

This sweet seaside town should actually be called "NO Penguin(s)."  The big tourist draw here, besides the small beaches tucked into almost every nook,  is small Fairy Penguins, who come here from September to April and can be seen as they return to their beachside burrows every evening at dusk after fishing as far out as 60 in Bass Strait.

Despite all my inquiries and wandering along the beach at early dusk, most people had no idea where i might see the Little Penguins come waddling up the beach.  I first asked a man preparing for a run, and he confidently told me to go to the beach beyond the Boy Scouts' building, down at the west edge of town. Early evening i packed my binoculars and walked down; not a Penguin in sight.  I walked toward some fishermen at the end of the wharf, but they were Chinese and obviously there for culinary, not vacation, fishing.  while friendly, after five smiling minutes of "Penguins?" and responses from the younger that seemed either to be Aussie-accented Chinese or Chinese-accented Aussie -- neither of which i could understand -- i gave up, smilingly thanked them, and turned away.  At that point the older one asked me in clear Aussie English, "You're looking for penguins?"  But he had no idea either.

I then approached another fisherman, a solid chunk of suntanned Aussie securing his boat to his trailer, but when he couldn't understand me, i started wondering if there were something wrong with my Ameri-glish.  After a few more moments of confusion, i realized he was completely soused and left to ask yet another man,  who I had seen just come in on his boat.  He was so dully drunk that I could almost observe the long moments required for the concept of "penguins" to reach his cerebral cortex, or wherever he processed such complicated and surprising questions.  When he was able to grasp the word and my desire for penguins, he responded with arm-waving directions and mumbled suggestions indicating some penguinish possibilities just to the east, near Ulverstone, or perhaps somewhere beyond, near New Zealand.  My penguin pursuits were obviously over.

In compensation, i had seen more Penguin signs, memorabilia, souvenirs and earnest and honestly-named businesses incorporating the town's name than i ever imagined a town could allow:

 

 

 Non surprisingly, Penguin's namesake is commemorated  by a 10 foot tall cast concrete penguin, a draw for the obligatory tourist pic, facing the main street directly across from The Groovy Penguin Cafe.  This place was recently bought by an Aussie woman who lived in Colorado for a while, so i wanted to meet her, but both she and her partner are out of town.  I'll get 'em on the way back; this highway literally ends at the west coast in Arthur River.

 

BEING PENGUINISH

 This beach-side town on the North coast  exists in some odd period between the 30's and the 70's; my hotel, the Neptune, once an Art Deco beauty, has been updated with decks out front facing the main street and the sea beyond, a hideous "gaming" parlor, and a "bistro" that is now giving off a nauseating stench of old deep fry grease.  The gentlemens' bar has been brought into the modern age with the addition of various numbers forms and racing tv  screens.  The few younger men stand at the bar staring up at them while older men in the back ignore them.

My room is a bizarre amalgam of 30's design and colors described in Rough Guide's Tasmania as "eyeblindingly bright"": a washstand and an old armoire are illuminated by three large windows giving onto a wrap-around veranda; once that outside light goes, all i'll have to see by is what promises to be a very dim compact flourescent bulb in the 10 foot high ceiling and another, oddly enough, sticking diagonally out of the wall next to the armoir.  .

  However, down the hall in the "guests lounge" is a small table with instant coffee, tea bags and an electric tea kettle; there are two once-white leatherette armchairs and their larger sibling, a couch.  All three have cushions re-covered with a cheap embroidered material, and in behind the door is an ironing board and electric iron, overseen by a bulb-less light sticking straight out of the wall.  There is a similar lighting unit in the stairway down to the lobby, but it has a compact flourescent bulb.

"Ladies" and "Men's" showers are down the hall from my room, and the door to each still has the beautiful 30's porthole window with the original striped glass in it; the hall carpeting was frightening when new in the 70's-- a pattern of what looks like randomly placed dog turds -- and is even more so now after so many years.  On the other hand, since i seem to have entered a time warp, this carpet may be the newest pattern going.  The carpet in my room has room-width stripes of alternating dull tones of scarlet, black, off white, orange, grey, with an occasional exciting stripe of lime green.

i've encountered more drunks here today than in the entire ten days i was in Latrobe with tim and anna, and more than i normally encounter in Boulder in a year.  from the fishermen to a member of a Ducati group I met in the hall whose speech was so muttering that I imagined he might be a foreigner and shy about his English. i finally asked where he was originally from, thinking he might be Italian since he was short and dark but after he was able to utter "Wooloomooloo" (a suburb of Sydney) i finally realized he was at that stage where he was trying to speak, but while his brain was still able to comprehend and want to respond, all labial coordination was long gone.  As i sat and wrote this evening, i could regularly hear drunken outbursts from the bar downstairs and the street below, reverberating off the buildings across the street.  Drunken rednecks apparently are the same in Tasmania or Texas, but here I know they don't have guns.

The best restaurant in town, Wild -- famous for Aussie cuisine (and the menu would definitely be on my wall when i return home), is closed tonight, so i settle for fish and (undercooked, soggy) chips; while waiting for my order, three local teens came in and looked exactly like every dull-faced teen in any working class suburb in America: the guy had his stiff-brim baseball hat on sideways and some baggy hip-hop pants. one of the girls was lovely, and the other 14 yr old girl had pot belly that made her look pregnant.  The tragedy is that one or both of the girls will probably be pregnant before they graduate from high school. 

Tasmania is considered by "mainlanders" to be excruciatingly backwards and inbred; the joke here is that when you tell people you're a Taswegian, they ask, "where's the scar?" -- meaning,  the one left when your  second head was surgically removed.

Besides no penguins, lots of drunks and a gorgeous coastline, i've entered an area where even sober people speak in an even more local version of " 'strain".  The normal greeting wherever i go -- from pub to grocery to bank -- is a lopsided grin and a friendly how'ya goin?  which I love as much as the Texan h'wyew?.  this morning, sitting here writing, a guy came in for some coffee and grinningly told me havinthisandascarper, which means "having this coffee and leaving."  The one person i understood with no momentary confusion was the surprisingly jolly Swiss lady who works at the Tourist Info Centre. I've discovered that the secret to getting what people are saying is to relax the ear/brain processing apparatus and allow the flavor and tone of the words to soak in; their intent, if not always the specific meaning, then becomes clear.

The best linguistic confusion occurred in front of the Great Penguin when I said something to a young tourist couple standing near me admiring the statue; the guy asked, "are you from here?" in a way indicating to me preparation for further tourist questions. Since his fluent English was obviously not Aussie, i thought he might be a foreigner comfortable in English. He was: turned out he was from London. And he thought I was Austrailan?????  Ah, the many variants and confusions of the Queen's English...

If only we'd stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time - Edith Wharton

first decently long ride

A gorgeous Sunday, took a ride  

click images to see full size

 

View Directions to Evandale Tasmania, Australia in a larger map

sweet green roads thru idyllic countryside; cars a refreshing rarity

 

I've learned to understand and agree with Tim's description of Tassie as the "road kill capital of Australia"; there was not a single kilometer of my ride -- especially on these sweet  back roads -- where i was spared riding thru a cloud of rotting roadkill.  Absolutely reminded me of the eggplants I cleaned out of the greenhouse last week. Will i ever be able to see one again without thinking of dead wallaby?

to Evandale, a small historic village where there were to be races of twopenny farthings, the old bikes with the scarily high front wheels.........  that turned out to be yesterday, but it was a sweet place to ride to and lounge in.

had a fine laksa in the beer garden of the local while listening to some local musicians......

unique juxtapositions that could only be found in the colonies

Of course i schmoozed with lots of locals, from a guy with a profoundly obscene corn dog

John, a sweet old man who was intrigued by the BMW because he used to race bikes,

to an intriguing character I met at the Muse Cafe (owned and run by Gunther a German immigrant*), who had been working behind the lines with the CIA when he was with the Aussie Army in Vietnam; he called it "the worse mistake i ever made."   some horror stories there...................and is now engaged to a university professor in China and preparing to move there to live:

 found some bizarre church art on the way home:

and now for motorcycle info:

* while waiting for a fine cappucino at Cafe Muse, i spent some time speaking with the owner and  barista.. when he told me he was German, i mentioned that i was riding a fine German motorrad parked right outside. He said, "a BMW?" and my (usual) reply was "are there any other motorcycles?"

when i jokingly added,

"ive heard of one called  Ha....Ha... Har.....  Har.........Harl........"

as if i couldn't quite remember the name, he said,

"hey -- we're not talking plumbing parts here!"

I'm going to work that in...

once again, I refer to Tim, my local guide to all things Tassie, who had told me how here -- as compared to everywhere else in the motorcycling world -- very few motorcyclists acknowledge each other as they pass on the road.......and he was right.   Of the 12-15 motorcycles i encountered on the 200 + km ride, only two acknowledged my motorcyclists' wave.

Very strange; I'm completely used to most Harley riders ignoring my greeting on the road -- which i've always thought sad and childish -- so I wasn't too surprised when the local hardass wanna-be's in their grimy leather, black t's , vests and gloveless hands ignored me.  On these narrow two lane roads, designed for another, smaller-car time, it's even stranger to be ignored by non Harley riders since we zoom past each other only about five to six feet apart.

However, i WAS surprised at the reactions of many non-Harley riders; some seemed surprised, others seemed even more surprised when i waved with my right hand (Throttlemeisters very expensive and not common here). and others just roared by and completely ignored me.  Could it have been the RT?  Are they seen as yuppie motorcycles here?  more on that later.

and speaking of Harleys;  helmet use is compulsory here, and i asked the fierce looking guy in black, behind John in the photo above, how he felt about that.  His response: 

"I hate 'em!  But it sure was a good thing when i came off my bike.."

hmmmmm.

he's not a one trial learner, but he was wearing a beautiful pair of black leather racing pants, and a handsome well-made black vest (can i stop using the word black when referring to Harley riders' gear?) and a helmet.  I'll let you guess the color.

If only we'd stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time - Edith Wharton

Motorcycle at last...

finally took Tim's BMW 1150RY out.

what a treat to be back on a motorcycle again:  the smooth hum of the engine, the solid braking and the temperate air across my face at last got me excited about this trip in a way i had not yet experienced...

I admit all the plastic on the RT made me a bit nervous: unlike my bare, unfaired GS,  if i dropped this, the damage would be horrific.   all that beautifully shaped plastic roughed and scraped and scratched.  since i had not been on a bike since I put my GS away for the winter last fall, there was a bit of concern about an unfamilar motorcycle.  But it was beautiful: I've always prefered the 1150 engine to my current 1200 -- it just feels and sounds more like a motorcycle -- and this was a great reminder of that difference.

Rode over to Hawley Beach, a growing community on Bass Strait (the strait between Tasmania and Australia):

BEFORE............

  
AFTER:

a great and refreshing dip in the salt.  ahhhh.  here at last, and at last i feel rightside up -- which is to say,
upside down. or are the rest of you upside down ?

If only we'd stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time - Edith Wharton