Goodbye Oz - Hello NZ

Another week another country as they say. Our last few days in Tasmania were taken up with good deeds - clearing out the elder Smiths' garage mainly. Here are the Smith family gathered together and smiling for the camera, all except Vic. Well someone had to take the picture.




We are still down under but a little bit further right - about 1500 miles in fact. Auckland is busy and hot and we've met some old friends from Burra. Not one of those "small world" co-incidences, we knew Bobby and Mabel would be here and we had a phone number for them. We spent a pleasant evening in the Queensferry Hotel (!) catching up on news of home, and comparing notes on forthcoming grandchildren and winter holidays in hot countries.

Yesterday we went up the Sky Tower, the tallest building in the Southern Hemisphere, and watched some slightly crazed kiwis (or tourists maybe?) jumping off. The longest bungy jump in the world it's claimed.

Today we took the ferry to the volcanic island of Rangitoto in Auckland Harbour where we shared our lunch with some very friendly small birds. Finches we think but if anyone knows better we'd be interested to know.

Tonight we had the most amazing Thai meal here in Auckland, but tomorrow it's back to pasta when we pick up the camper and head south.

Adventure Before Dementia

We are back in Scamander now after almost a week in Tasmania's Wild West and a short visit to Hobart - still one of the most relaxed cities we've ever visited. But the west of Tasmania is world class and we saw it in perfect weather. First we stopped at Crayfish Creek, staying overnight in a rather creaky treehouse with Jane and Vic. We all went on to Footrot Flats and Dismal Swamp - those early explorers really knew how to make a place sound attractive! We drove over a road called the Western Explorer, nearly a hundred miles of gravel with almost no other traffic, through a mixture of temperate rainforest and button grass plains, to an old mining village called Corinna on the Pieman River, deep in the Tarkine Wilderness. There we took a boat trip to the mouth of the river, and paddled up one of its tributaries in an open canoe.

We also did a couple of walks in the rainforest and fed the wallabies and possums in the evenings. Here's William making a new friend at feeding time.

But perhaps our most memorable encounter was in the canoe on the Pieman River when we met a tiger snake swimming along, and, yes, they are poisonous.

After Corinna we crossed the river on the famous Fatman barge and drove through the old mining town of Zeehan to Queenstown. From there we travelled the West Coast Wilderness Railway to Strahan, panning for "gold" on the way.

In Strahan we came across a camper van from Queensland with a slogan that really appealed to us. It said "Adventure before Dementia". That'll do us!

While we're talking strange encounters, we drove back from Hobart on the Midland Highway, which goes through places with names like Brighton, Campbell Town, and Jericho (on the Jordan River of course!) As we were driving through Bagdad (local spelling) we met a convoy of Australian Army trucks heading south. Hmm...

On the Water Again

This is Coles Bay, about 50 miles south of Scamander on the Sunshine Coast. It's on the Freycinet Peninsula, just on the edge of the National Park that includes the famous Wineglass Bay, said to be one of the most beautiful beaches in the world. We walked there the last time we were in Tasmania two years ago, but this time we wanted to paddle. We hired a double kayak for the day from Freycinet Adventures and explored a bit. There are plenty of other beautiful beaches in the area, most of them deserted like this one. We were staying just down the coast at Swansea Backpackers - a very modern and fairly luxurious hostel with a pub and restaurant attached. There are also several wineries in the area plus a large walnut plantation.

The next day, Wednesday, we went over to Campbell Town and up the Midland Highway to Launceston. On the way we detoured into the forest to look for the Lost Falls viewpoint. They were certainly lost - there was no water at all! This whole area has been suffering badly from drought for years, and in the farming areas the fields are brown and dusty. We're off to the west coast this weekend and the Tarkine Wilderness.

News from the Sunshine Coast

The northeast coast of Tasmania is called the Sunshine Coast and it's a popular holiday area, mainly for Australians. The weather on average is warmer and sunnier than the rest of Tasmania, and there are miles and miles of clean empty beaches. Scamander is just a small village at the mouth of the Scamander River, about ten miles from St Helens, which is the district centre. Today we were walking in the Winifred Curtis Reserve, then along the beach where there was a surf life saving carnival taking place. Tomorrow we are off to Coles Bay where we hope to hire kayaks.

Meanwhile William has been making new friends. Here he is on top of Table Mountain (you probably can't see it but he now has a South African flag pin alongside the Shetland one) then with a young lady friend called Pollie, here in Scamander (and now with an Australian flag pin). Note the beach in the background.

Down Under At Last

First of all check out the last two posts - there are pictures now.

Can't believe it's almost a week since we posted from Jo'burg. At that time we thought we'd be flying to Perth WA that night. In fact our flight was delayed almost 24 hours thanks to technical problems with Qantas. They put us up in a pretty classy hotel, but we still spent pretty much all day Saturday and all day Sunday at the airport. It was quite a relief to finally get airborne. The result was instead of three days in Perth we only had two, and one of those was taken up by the booked trip to Wave Rock on Tuesday (Norma's birthday). We did our best with a boat trip on the Swan River and a walk in the park on Heirisson Island but really Perth needs more time. Then it was another Qantas jumbo to Melbourne and on to Launceston in a Dash 8. After our earlier experience we didn't much enjoy reading about the Qantas jumbo that lost electrical power 15 minutes out of Bangkok. According to the Australian paper we read in the air as we left Perth the battery backup was only good for an hour, so it would have been bad news if it had happened over the ocean. This had all happened while we were flying over the Indian Ocean in another Qantas jumbo that was almost a day behind schedule because of a technical fault. Lovely!


Wave Rock is over 200 miles east of Perth in Western Autralia, so it was a long day in a 4WD bus, which fortunately was air-conditioned because it was very hot (41 degrees in the shade and there wasn't any shade). We've never been so happy to climb back into a bus! The rock itself is one face of a huge granite mass which has been eroded by the wind over millions of years into the shape of a huge breaking wave about 15m high.

Much more about Tassie to follow.

Leaving South Africa

As promised a couple of pictures from Addo Elephant Park. We have an elephant and also a bunch of dung beetles clearing up what the elephant left behind. Everything has a purpose!

We are now in Johannesburg Airport filling in time - about 8 hours of time - before our flight to Australia. Yesterday we visited the Addo Elephant Park, which is just east of Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape. By lunchtime we were thinking of renaming it Addo Warthog Park, and our guide was scratching his head wondering how you can hide 450 elephants in a wildlife park. We had seen plenty of warthogs and kudu (antelopes with curly horns), vervet monkeys, lots of colourful birds, a large tortoise and a lion's pawprint - mustn't forget the amazing and enormous dung beetles - but no elephants. Then in the afternoon we found them, at least 50 ranging from a large bull to baby around a couple of weeks old. They paid us not a bit of notice, grazing right up to the road and strolling across in front of us. We also saw zebra, a solitary jackal, and several other varieties of antelope, then right at the end a small group of buffalo. What a day! Our guide was great as were our hosts at the V&A Guest House in Port Elizabeth who organised the trip for us.

Happy New Year

Greetings from Mossel Bay, South Africa, and we hope you have all had a great start to 2008. We certainly had a great finish to 2007 in Cape Town. We've been to the top of Table Mountain by cable car then down by the so-called easy route - our legs are only just about recovering. We took the train to Simonstown - that was an experience to be told later under the title "Welcome to the South African experience". Then on the 31st we had a truly memorable day, touring the townships with Cape Rainbow Tours, finishing on Robben Island, from which you get the best view of Cape Town and Table Mountain.

Again much more to tell - William is having quite a time of it. New Year at the V&A Waterfront may not quite match Edinburgh's Hogmanay but it was great fun and the weather was probably better! Then up again at 5.30 to get the bus to Mossel Bay, where the local motto seems to be "Live life slowly!" I guess we'll have to work on that!