The Tasmaniacs
August 24, 2005Coles Bay, Tasmania, Australia
8:34pm
Our second last day in Australia was spent lost in wonder. My words will be brief as the pictures we took today speak way more than 1000 words.
Steph, Hud and I climbed up and over a mountain and spent a couple hours in Wineglass Bay, one of Tasmania’s, and the world’s most renowned beaches. It took us ninety minutes one way to get there. The journey split literally between a steep ascent to get up to the look out,
and a steep descent to actually place our little piggies in the white sand and fell the icy aqua water wash over our feet.
Sure others made the journey, but it still felt like we were the only people on the planet as we sat mesmerized by the simple raw beauty of this hidden beach gem. Sure there was the lingering feeling of knowing eventually we would have to leave and endure the occasionally torturously steep climb back to the look out, but for the 90 minutes we spent on the beach, it was magic.
Hud was mostly into it as well. The visitor’s centre gave us a toddler backpack so he had the best seat in the house on the inclines.
On the descents, I held his little paw, and he basically repelled down the rocks, knowing there was no way in hell I would ever let him go. Oh to be that trusting.
Once we returned to the car, Steph and I high fived. We did not bail at the halfway point., where we gripped rocks and gasped for breath. But looking at the bay from the lookout was a total tease. If we committed to the downhill, to the actual beach, the only way we could leave was to come back up. And sometimes just looking at a beautiful beach from afar is not enough, especially if all it takes is a couple of sore muscles for the white sand to wedge between your toes and to feel almost claustrophobic by the intense colour blue, both from the cloudless sky and the endless ocean.
We were pretty stoked and could not think of a better way to end our trip to Tasmania, as well as Australia.
Australia has truly been great. Going through the almost 1200 pictures we snapped was like this big travel commercial. We both know New Zealand will more be about immersing ourselves in the small town of Onemana. Two months will feel like forever for a trio who thought three weeks was long.
Steph and I ran through our most memorable moments, and all of mine were either about being free or being so deeply in love with my wife and son. The freedom came from being halfway across the world. The love came from the time I was allowed to spend with my family.
Time is so valuable.
Love to all,
J.
August 23, 2005
Coles Bay, Tasmania, Australia
8:52pm
Dismal Swamp. Detention Falls. Convict Trail. This island has great names. And great rainbows. For the first time in my life I saw a full rainbow this morning.
The complete arc. With one end literally landing within fifty feet of our little veranda. There was no pot ‘o’ gold. Or a leprechaun. But it still was a magnificent sight. We scored some good photos. I will analyze them later for little green Irish eyes hidden in the bush.
I am clumsy. Or I’m getting clumsier. I pick up a spatula and the handle will hit the end of the counter and flip behind the stove. I will pour a handful of peanuts into my hand and somehow miss, causing little legume nuggets to splay across wooden floors, only to end up kicked behind the stove so I don’t have to bend down to pick them up. I stir a pasta sauce and globs will fly into the air and smack against the tiled wall. I honestly try to roll the toothpaste from the bottom, and in doing so, a blue gobby tube erupts and lands on my big toe, of course to be scraped off and used for the nightly brushing. It is my toe after all. Why do these things happen? I always thought I was pretty deft for a large man. My basketball skills and my chunky funky dance moves told me so. But lately I feel like the oaf I was always meant to be. I think I have gained weight and it is adding to my general clumsiness. New Zealand is the dawn of the new lighter day. Tonight we feast. Tomorrow we diet.
Yesterday was a bit of a wash. I woke up with Hud just after five in the morning, basically killing my day. We still went out and did things; saw The Nut up close, Steph and I kissed at the top of a scaffold lookout, overlooking Stanley and sheep and the ocean,
went to Dismal Swamp and skipped the forest walk due to rain and had lunch instead. Later on Steph and Hud saw the pony and played games while I tried to nap. I was grouchy all day, picking fights and poking Steph’s arm for attention. She knew I was just tired and did not let me pick a fight with her.
The highlight of the day was after Hud fell asleep, Steph and I filled two wine glasses full of a nice Hunter Valley Shiraz and sat in the big spa tub. We talked about how well we are getting along, and the reasons why we don’t get along sometimes. We praised our boy for being so flexible, especially during the Tasmanian two-nighters. We drank the wine and touched each other’s naked feet. It was nice, and much too brief.
This morning we packed the car and said goodbye to Gateforth Cottages and The Nut. This was after the rainbow watch, which I first noticed when I slipped outside to drink my instant coffee (not as bad as I remember) and eat a fried egg sandwich.
The drive to Coles Bay took five hours, including a stop at Anvers Chocolate Factory to watch chocolates being made and have an espresso and lox on a baguette. Steph drove while Hud and I watched Shrek 2 on the computer. Well he watched, and I thought about all the friends I have back home. I miss them. Even the silly ones.
Coles Bay is on the Eastern side of Tasmania, right outside the entrance to Freycinet National Park. The Park houses Wineglass Bay, one of the most photographed beaches in the world. Our cottage is the bottom floor of a large house, two bedroom, with Ikea furnishings and very new kitchen appliances. It is not the quaint country charm we were just getting used to. The blinds are a combination of blood red, pink, orange and Kelly green. It’s giving me a headache just looking at them. But it is roomy, and offers us the basic conveniences of a home.
After unpacking we walked to the local store to plug in the items we were missing. Coles Bay is a plastic bag free town so we had to slug our water; fruit, matches, Tasmanian Pinot Noir and six-pack of Boag’s Draught home in our pockets. We dropped the stuff off and immediately drove to the National Park to talk to the rangers about the various walks and get a few shots of the park at sunset. A caravan of Asians joined us at Honeymoon Bay. You just got to laugh.
It would be difficult for my words to do this location justice. There are medium sized mountains surrounding little coves of the clearest seawater you could ever imagine. We are doing the 2-½ hour walk to Wineglass Bay tomorrow and we can’t wait, even if we have to rent a backpack for Hud. The walk is described as medium difficulty, so I hope my added bulk will not cause me to seize my upper left arm in complete heart trauma. If there are no posts after this, then you know why.
Thursday we fly back to Sydney for our last night in Australia.
At a posh airport hotel at that.
Woo hoo.
Love to all,
J.
UPDATE: 10:05pm.
Went outside to look at the stars and knocked my beer in a wineglass over into the garden.
August 21, 2005
Stanley, Tasmania, Australia
9:49pm
The day after a birthday is always a letdown. Sure the balloons are still full and lying on the ground. Sure there is a huge chocolate cake in the fridge with only three pieces gon…er, four pieces gone. Sure the toys are still new, but they are not as fresh out of the package. The dragon doesn’t feel as stiff and the blue car doesn’t growl the way it first did when it vrroomed across the cottage kitchen floor. Ah well. Lessons of life for a three year and one day old young boy.
At least he slept in a little. My original plan was to leave the house at six, as the drive was a suggested four to five hours. I did not want to waste an entire day driving. The next two stops are two days each so to arrive earlier on the first day allows us some time to poke around. This whole plan was marred by the fact that Hud decided to sleep in a little, meaning later than 6:30. I knew at exactly that moment we would not leave the house before eight, meaning we would arrive no earlier than two, with most of the day shot.
Here, in bed typing at five to ten, I can only wonder what arriving at two felt like, as we arrived at 5:17pm, making the nine hours behind the wheel a new individual record I hope I never break.
On the first decision, at the first crossroads, we went in the wrong direction, thereby eliminating this travel day as error free. This was an indication of things to come. Although some of the sights on this multi-hour extravaganza were exactly the reasons why we came to Tasmania in the first place.
The first portion of the drive was through rolling green hills and sheep peppered farmland. The grass here is so green it looks fake, like the Skydome on Sunday. Some of the sheep are wooly, like rastas, and some are stone cold bald, like the top of my own bulbous noggin. It was lightly raining as I drove and within the first hour we witnessed the brightest and most colourful rainbow I had ever seen. It looked like a water colour painting. It was thick, chewy even, not transparent like other rainbows I have seen. And as quickly as it appeared, hovering over the horizon like an indication of luck, it disappeared and we continued zipping through the farmland.
We were driving from Hobart to Stanley. We chose a route that seemed more direct, but on a lesser road, with more turns and curves, through a mountain range, and through Queenstown, a small copper mining town on the western half of Tasmania. So I was topping out around 90km/hr on the straightaways, and almost that on the curves. The rain picked up, falling in sheets, and we started ascending one of the mountains. What came next was just a matter of science. We ascended, the air got colder, the rain turned into a full on snowstorm.
A snowstorm in the middle of August for us Canadians. It went from rainbow to blizzard in about an hour. Hud thought this was pretty cool. Crud I thought it was pretty cool as well. We even stopped and peed in the snow. Not me and Hud. Me and squatting Steph. Got to love a woman that will pee on the side of the road in a full snowstorm in the middle of a mountain range in western Tasmania.
The fun in the snow soon ended as the Pulsar hatchback mostly likely never felt snow beneath its wheels before and responded by sliding out a couple of times. I reduced my speed to a level where Steph could catch her breath. Meanwhile, in the backseat, Hud ate a piece of cold pizza, his stomach gurgling, bubbling, swishing from side to side with each treacherous turn.
Once we started our descent back down the mountain, the snow turned back to rain, and I turned back into Mario Andretti to try and gain some of time we lost in the snowstorm. This is when we started to notice all the waterfalls. Due to the heavy rain, the mountain all around us, was streaming down water in all different locations. Some trickles, some straight out gushes teamed down sides of rocks, through trees and dirt, and into the ditches beside the road. It was like the mountain was bawling. Around every new corner, there was another cascade of Tasmanian mountain rainwater. It was like we were all trapped inside a Wella Balsam commercial. It was truly magnificent.
We finally reached what seemed like a bit of civilization. Or was it. Queenstown is an old copper mining town and to get to it, you literally have to go up and over a mountain. This is when it started to look like we were on a different planet. Huge rocks and red stones with barely any fauna. We kept waiting to see the astronaut leap 30 feet across the surface and land on the hood of our car. Hud sat in the back eating chips from the floor, his stomach shouting out for him to stop. He ignored it and kept on picking up the crumbs with his wee little sausage fingers.
We stopped at the public toilets in Queenstown and I knew we were in for a treat because in the ceiling, burned in with a handheld lighter read: Q-town sux. Elequent no, accurate yes, as the copper mining business has seemed to have dried up. It was an almost ghost town, with only an occasional store without boards covering the windows. We quickly found the only touristy place to stop for a quick bite to eat.
Hud only had a bite of the meat pie, and a small spoon of the soup. He did however eat all the Smarties off a cookie. You may wonder why I am so accurately describing what my son had to eat that day. Well lucky for us, about twenty minutes after leaving Queenstown, we got to see it again. Yes. Hud was sick. And why wouldn’t he be really. All the crap we let him eat and driving winding roads for five hours. He should have puked directly on us and yelled: “Where is my damn broccoli you fat bastards!”
Action Stephanie stripped our weeping boy as I tried to scrape the pink gunk from the car seat. This parenting is all glamour all the time. We succeeded in cleaning him up and re-clothing him all in a record 8 minutes. Back on the road he seemed fine until the moaning and groaning started. Steph caught the next upheaval in the plastic Lego container Hud received for his birthday. We pulled over again and I was able to rinse the container with rainwater. We were off again, Steph now lamenting that we had no water to offer our boy. Wait one second I said, pulling the car to the side of the road. I took our water bottle and held it under one of the waterfalls screaming off the side of the mountain.
I’ll give you water!!! I screamed, rainwater covering my face. I give you the freshest water on the earth!!
I was the only one who took a sip. Steph was afraid of parasites. I am still convinced that rainwater from the top of a mountain in Western Tasmania is the cleanest water you will ever find.
The next portion of the trip was all about getting to Stanley. We rolled into the Gateforth Cottages at 5:17pm, nine hours and four minutes after we left Otago Bay. The cottage is again beautiful. Out the front you can see rolling green farmland, the ocean and then The Nut. The Nut is a large rock formation very similar to Ayer’s Rock in the red centre. We will be venturing there at some point.
The Nut. I’ll show you the nut.
Love to all,
J.
August 20, 2005
Otago Bay, Tasmania, Australia
8:01pm
Hudson’s 3rd Birthday.
Phew. A big day in the land of the Graham/White clan. Everything went according to plan and our dear boy now sits very content on the couch watching The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. He is full of chocolate cake, pizza and a day full of adventure and gift receiving.
All the immediate family will be happy to know all your gifts were received very well. We did a recap on the computer at the end, making sure he put a face or faces to the Wiggle board game, (Mitch and gang), the Rescue Hero (Grandma), the Matchbox push ‘n’ go Bigfoot Truck (Brie and gang), the talking Emergency Rescue Vehicle (Papa and Oma), the plastic container full of Lego (Nana and Grandad), and dinosaur that turns into a fighter guy (Grampy). He thanks you all very much.
The day began at 5am with the announcement of having to poo by the birthday boy himself. I raced down and placed him on the seat only to hear the familiar windy explosion that sometimes masks itself as a BM. Back upstairs and into bed only to hear the now really familiar announcement of having to poo again! This time we were all not so lucky as he almost made it to the toilet.
Almost.
Needless to say Hud was nice enough to give us a little present on his birthday..
We left his first present from us on the bed and he was pleased with Donkey from Shrek. It even came with a little waffle that smelled like syrup. Not unlike his cousins, or perhaps because of his cousins, Hud says the now famous Donkey line “And tomorrow, I’m making waffles!” very, very often. It’s funny every time.
Steph made French Toast in lieu of waffles with lemon and sugar in lieu of syrup. It was as tasty as I remember. Steph made up stickies with clues to where all the presents were located around our cottage du jour. We did two of them in the morning before heading off to the Salmanca Market in downtown Hobart.
I bought socks, Steph looked for gloves for Hud and we all shared a blackberry muffin. It was a great market. Full of the requisite interesting junk intermingled with organic food and Tasminia “It’s wild!” t-shirts. I have come to love the markets we have seen on this trip.
Next, off to Port Arthur, a Tasmanian historic site where some of the oldest prisons in Australia are still located. This is quite the statistic, realizing that Australia in general, and Tasmania specifically were colonized by the British and their convicted felons. The prisons here are not in operation, but the silhouettes of the buildings remain. We did not pay the $24 to actually peruse through the old cells and whatnot. It would have been interesting for us, but this day was for Hud. So it was back in the car to the Tasmanian Devil Park!
$20 per adult. Ouch. I was skeptical, it looked a little rundown, but we were kind of stuck for activities, so we committed and I am glad we did. The Tasmanian Devil, like a badger with an attitude, was being fed as we arrived. It gnawed upon a possum I believe, and we watched its strong jaws tear at the sinewy muscle like we tear at butter. Not an animal I would like to corner and share a meal with.
Next up were the cockatoos. And this would have been pretty basic if not for the one sassy cockatoo that kept saying hello in a mildy British accent, perhaps a reincarnation of one of the convicts. Well if you ever want to please a three year-old, have a bird say something to him, or around him. Hud giggled and laughed thinking this bird was basically all the cartoons he watches come to life. It was a bird that said hello. I mean how cool is that. We all laughed and mimicked the bird like freaks on a leash.
Good times. Good times.
We saw some more birds and then suddenly we were in front of a cage door leading to the kangaroo area. It was fifteen minutes before feeding time and the park employee was stacking wood on the other side of the pen. We stood at the door, the kangaroo food in a bucket in front of us. A wire fence separated us from about fifty kangaroos and wallabies. We were unsure what to do. Finally Steph called out to the ranger and he waved us into the pen. We did. With apprehension.
As we opened the door the kangaroos came right up to us thinking we were going to feed them. Hud cowered into Steph’s leg and I moved forward further into the pen. Luckily the ranger dude came over and told us they were harmless. Still, one of the males stood taller than me on its back legs and with his snout inches from my jugular, it was intimidating even for such a macho guy like me. The ranger gave us all some food and suddenly all the kangaroos were eating out of the palms of our hands. We had done this before at the Brisbane Zoo, but because of the much higher traffic, the kangaroos there were so fat and bloated, they did not want one pellet from us, or the two thousand Asians shoving their palms in their faces. Here the kangaroos were hungry and loved us. It was great.
More birds and more devils and we were off. We stopped at a couple of wicked rock formations for quick pictures and then at the grocery store to pick up a couple pizzas.
We ate and then shut the lights for the big cake and candles extravaganza. Hud loved it all and had a big piece of chocolate cake that he is just now coming down from. We gave him his final gift after dinner. A big dragon with flying wings. He has been talking about it for weeks. Steph found the perfect gift.
So a great day for our boy. A great day for us, minus a huge scratch on our rental car. I don’t want to talk about it.
Last night before bed I thought about what I would write for Hud’s birthday. I wanted to lay tribute to him in words, an ode of some sort. I am still torn a little about what to say. He means so much to me that words won’t do it justice, and I wonder why I would be writing them down anyway.
In the last three years I have watched him transform from a completely helpless red, puffy creature to this golden haired, liquid blue-eyed boy who I honestly feel is a great friend to me. He listens to what I say (most of the time!), he honestly cares about how I feel, he tries so hard to make me laugh and he loves me with such ferocity, such honesty, it scares the hell out of me sometimes.
What more do you want from a friend? What more do you want from a son?
I only can offer him the same amount of friendship, the same amount love of that he has given me every minute of his three years of life.
That is my ultimate birthday gift.
I love you Hudson. Happy Birthday.
Love to all,
J.
August 19, 2005
Otago Bay, 15kms north of Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
7:20am
Sydney is not a dirty city. Cleaner than Toronto, with both cities being of equitable size. But as I sit looking out at the Derwent River, Mount Wellington looming large behind it, and the boxy houses of the inhabitants of Glenorchy and Hobart peppered up the mountain, I feel so much more relaxed than fighting the good fight in Sydney.
Last night I slipped out to post and found a quiet pub down the street from our hotel for a quick quartet of pints. Once again I talked to no one, but I people watched and that was good enough for me. I watched four men down from Queensland, all single for the night it would seem, all around my age. All the requisite dynamics of four guys with a past were in place. There was the big quiet guy, dressed in a cardigan, looking mildly out of place, most likely married and happy to stay at the pub all night. There were the two players, with striped shirts jeans and way too shiny shoes. These were action guys, laughing too loud, chatting up any woman with a pulse, rapidly downing cocktails to increase their brevity level for the club they were too hit after the pub. Lastly was the charmer, quiet, well quieter, better looking and dressed like he didn’t care, probably married, but also probably willing to forget that fact for the night. He was chatting up the German girl the other two had enticed with bad jokes and quick drinks to come over and play pool. They circled her and she looked like the worm that had fallen off a hook; only to realize the hook was the only hope for survival.
The only reason I watched these men with such interest is they kind of looked like my group of cads, on a typical Thursday, Friday or Saturday night. Out at a pub having gallons of drinks before heading out to a more appropriate well lighted venue. Sure they were having fun, but they did look old. Not too old. Just old. Old in their sassy clothes. Old in their too quick Cheshire cat grins. Old in their used too many times lines.
Needless to say, I would like to think their fun was harmless, but I am sure by the end of the night, there would be victims.
Our travel day went well. We found a hotel near the airport to store half of our luggage during our weeklong jaunt to Tasmania. It’s a nice hotel and priced accordingly, but because we fly in from Taz and out to Auckland within 22 hours we decided the cab fare both ways from a hotel downtown would be the same as staying in nice hotel near the airport. Besides, we kind of wanted a little pampering before leaving Australia. We are full of stupid logic.
So. Tasmania. Here we are. The Otago Cottage. A three bedroom, two floor cottage about fifty feet from River Derwent, about fifteen minutes from downtown Hobart.
It’s beautiful, and the owners live in a mansion about twenty feet from us. But we are behind their garage, so seclusion is still ours. The plan today is to find a toy store and let Hud peruse, as will we, noticing what he really likes, and then one of us will purchase it after the other leaves with Hud. We need to buy four more to cover off all the gift givers. We also have to get a cake and wrapping paper and candles. Tomorrow we are going to the market in the morning and then to Port Arthur where they have a small steam train to go on and then off to a Tasmanian Devil Park.
Pretty cool birthday for a three-year old.
Three years old. Holy macaroni.
Love to all,
J.
posted by Jason @ 9:39 PM
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