who knew that australia was such a large place :-) (in fact, i did as it's the 6th biggest country in size in the world!!)
i can admit to having two tourist adventures this month; one of which was more accidental than planned!! i got told that i needed to go to perth on business for the second week of march so i decided to head out on the friday night before to enjoy the sites for a long weekend before i had to work!! i met up with some friends from melbourne who incidentally were in town and we went up to the pinnacles for two days, had a tour of the fremantle jail and their underground tunnels and had a fantastic picnic at kings park before i had to buckle down and get to work!! it was a great long weekend with loads to discover ;-) unfortunately, i had to work the following week, arriving back in melbourne in time to do laundry, sleep and head off on my next great tourist adventure!!
my second trip this month took me to tasmania where i spent two days in launceston touring around some vineyards and food places, seeing the gorge and just chilling out preparing for the big trip!! from there, a few friends and i headed off to do the overland track which is a 65km hike (we did 75km in 5 days including side trips). why did we do this trek some may ask?! my grandmother clipped an article in the toronto star newspaper and gave it to me; it sounded interesting so i kitted up and arranged to do it!! the trip started off horrendously as it was rainy, cold, hailing and you could see no more than about 10m in front of you. i questionned our decision to head off on this adventure but the next day brought sunny skies and reasonable weather. we had to combine two days so on day 2 we did 25km. it's a long way to walk in a day but it's even longer on undulating ground with loads of roots and puddles/swamps to avoid. by the end of the day, i wasn't sure whether my brain from thinking where to put my feet or my feet from actually stepping were more tired!! the views along the trek were phenomenal!! we saw a number of waterfalls, some wild life and had a great time challenging ourselves physically and mentally!! on our last day, we'd planned on staying at narcisssus hut. we pitched our tents and were having lunch when we saw our first 2m tiger snake (poisonous). in a half hour span, we saw 6 or 7 of them, one that was swimming across the river which i'd contemplated going into. my travel companions decided we should catch the ferry and camp on the other side, safely away from the snakes so we packed up and re-pitched on the other side. we had dinner and discovered that we'd replaced snakes with possums as our pests for the evening (possums are like raccoon, noctural, scavengers and very clever!!) they got into everything and had our chocolate bars and oatmeal scattered everywhere in no time (no trees appropriate for hanging the food and no rope :-( we were lucky that this site of the lake had a restaurant ;-) after the hike, we headed into hobart for a day and a bit. we had a tour of the sea sheppard vessel and then had a sail on a friend's family yatch around the hobart harbour. it was a fantastic trip though i must confess that i was pretty happy to come home and sleep in my own bed on sunday night!!
i must confess to hibernating a bit after the trip as i just seemed to be behind in many things including emails :-( that said, i have been to a few social gatherings including a birthday party, a couple of dinners out with friends and some time preparing for a photo exhibition that i'll be participating in have kept me busy and honest!!
must head as it's time for me to prepare for bed!! i hope that you're all enjoying spring; i know that autumn is treating me well here :-)
hugs,
s
p.s. for those curious, i'll post photos from the trips on sat april 4 so you can have a look then at :http://www.flickr.com/photos/decouvert2001/ ;-)
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