DAYS OF BEAUTY

back to Coles Bay for more sun and water after some cold down south (including staying near the infamous Port Arthur prison complex).  with lousy internet, will onlypost a few pix for fun:

riding in, i met a curious fellow along the road; he was most intrigued by my glove and pecked at it.....

click on images to enlarge

he got bored after a bit and wandered off to preen for his mate

but his lack of social graces was made up by the scene overlooking Wineglass Bay:

 hiked up and over with some sweetly crazy French lads..... 

and down to the glorious deep blue-turquoise limpid beauties of the almost empty kilometer-ling beach:

Many of us are irritable most of the time (unless we're in love or just bought a motorcycle)

- Jack Lynch, THE LEXICOGRAPHER'S DILEMMA

HOBART HOSPITALITY

Back in Hobart for the Saturday Salamanca market, being hosted by Anissa, who invited me thru ADVrider -- she rides a V-Strom, a 650cc dual sport motorcycle -- and her husband Karsten, who doesn't ride ("yet," says Anissa).

But he is a man who appreciates that our machines like their comforts:  my (Tim's) RT next to Anissa's V-Strom.

                                                  click photos to enlarge

 

 Karsten and Peaches, with Manu lounging in his bed by windows.

their house, on a hillside, is filled with light;  plywood flooring and painted corrugated metal exterior........

Salamanca Market, apparently the top tourist attraction in Hobart, is a combo produce, souvenirs, food (!) "craft and crap" experience with the unfortunate inclusion of vendors of things like AC-DC t-shirts.  Ironically, it's held in the most trendy area of town, Salamanca Place, along the waterfront, so while the cafes and restaurants benefit, the local (excellent) galleries probably hope for the best.

Organic fruits and vegetables (not easy to find here), some superb baked goods, and more, as well as all my favorite travel foods:

                                                            

Bagpiper intrigued a small blue boy who danced:

and trike rides to the top of Mt Wellington overlooking Hobart:

and I love the signage in town:

law offices:

Newspaper ad (how would this go in America?)

Bank ad:

hmmmmmmmm

i left that car around here  somewhere..........

and a visit to the Tasmanian Museum, where the last Thylacine, the exterminated Tasmanian Tiger, is commemorated with the last fetus in a glass jar, and a sad video of the last one, which died in the zoo in 1936, is seen -- appropriately enough -- thru fencing:

tomorrow: South toward Dover and the end of the road on the SE corner of Tasmania.





Many of us are irritable most of the time (unless we're in love or just bought a motorcycle)  

                             - Jack Lynch, THE LEXICOGRAPHER'S DILEMMA

SYDNEY!

.

why i love Sydney............

a swim, and then espresso on Tamarama beach

and another reason to love Sydney:

mussels, steamed wonton, duck and green beans...............absolutely glorious..............

http://www.kyliekwong.org/Menu.aspx

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

HOBART reconsidered

this capital city is contrast:  it has a  beautiful waterfront filled with ocean-going sailboats, modern cleanly designed restaurants and bars overlooking the harbor and its signature Salamanca Street cafe/restaurant/pub culture, and yet a few blocks away a world of seedy, badly painted, sadly "modernized" 19th and early 20th commercial buildings.  Above the harbor Battery Point is an elegant and graceful collection of colonial and Empire houses and small shops, shaded and restored with obvious love and affection. A small candy store has the largest selection of chocolate and licorice tidbits i've ever seen, all stored in large pragmatically labeled glass jars. Yet a few blocks away the CDB (Central Business District) contains a vastly diverse collection of commercial buildings from late 19th to Art Deco buildings, but  so many of them have been updated with glaring colors, ugly signage, and oversized overhanging awnings as sun protection that seeing the original design requires work to ignore the added visual abuse.

over the past weeks i've noted my own sense of isolation, despite the number of people i've met; here in Hobart, i feel returned to travel; an intriguing variety of people, galleries, an active and modern cafe culture, and the sheer pleasure of seeing some intriguing art and crafts instead of the usual tourist junk of bad postcards, stuffed toy Tassie Devils and and key rings with the vanished Thylacine returned in numbers probably never achieved in its entire history.

wanted to post photos, but the internet speed here is so poor that it feels more like punishment than pleasure, so will have to wait until i am back to Tim and Anna's place next week.

*** for motorcyclists:  I had previously reported my surprise that so few riders here acknowledge my wave as i pass, but the other day my entire perception was turned upside down when SEVEN Harley riders each acknowledged my wave as we passed.  need to import those guys to the US.


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

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