jeremy.id.au

On Monday, despite having things to do, the weather was so great so I took the train to Straubing. It involved taking a train one stop from Ergoldsbach to Neufahrn then changing to a two-carriage diesel rail motor vehicle. The connection was fairly smooth, though there was a bit of a delay at Niederlindhart. However, leaving in a hurry for the train, I forgot my backpack which I had packed only moments before that. So unfortunately I didn’t have a pen, nor camera (though only a loaner as my existing one decided to go kaput at the last minute just as I was leaving Melboure), etc. Though I did have my GPSr and some money. Though not a real tourist destination, Straubing turned out to be another charming little European town.

When I found the first geocache I didn’t have a pen so I had to go buy one. I spent ages on a multi though didn’t find it, again due to language difficulties. Though it did take me down some more medieval laneways.

Later I did a geocache at a Kleingärten., which is a community garden, though unlike the ones in Australia which often only consist of multiple veggie patches, ornamental gardens were a major focus here. The owner of the cache was so pleased to have an Australian stop by that he has invited me back for Bayerischer Brotzeit (a Bavaria meal consisting of bread and cold cuts/cheese, etc). So that’s something to look forward to when I return to Bavaria in November.

Saturday (Samstag), myself, Daniel and Iris did some geocaching in Regensburg, another great city in Lower Bavaria (Niederbayern). On the way we stopped at a former castle, which is now a Musikakadamie. The grounds were very beautifully forested with trees and there was a nice rather contemporary/minimalist garden closer to the building. It was certainly one of those great locations that we may never have visited if it wasn’t for geocaching. Unfortunately we didn’t find the cache as we needed some pictures, which I was able to load onto my phone with the free wifi at McDonald’s. Though it was certainly no disappointment having to return there later!. We also visited some great parks in Regensburg and some beautiful buildings, as well as the typical medieval style city streets and laneways.

Sunday was a rather quiet day, though my host family treated me to some very nice roast duck for lunch. As it is traditional to eat duck in the autumn time in Bavaria. In Germany it is more traditional to eat the main meal for the day in the middle of the day then have a lighter meal of cold cuts and cheese for dinner. Though after that roast duck, it’s not as though I needed to eat muchor the rest of the day. I also tried some knödel, which is some potato cooked up with some additional starch. I wasn’t sure about it at first, though served up the next day with some sauce had me convinced it is quite a good dish.

On Friday (okay, Freitag) I went back to the school to talk to an English class (of ~16 year olds) about Australia and myself. They asked me questions, such as “do you go surfing?” which seems to be the stereotypical image in Germany of what young people do in Australia. Of course the answer was no, which surprised them all a little. Someone also asked if a snake had ever bitten me.

On the way home from school with Daniel’s sister Lisa, we visited a Bäckerei (bakery) at a monastery. That was also quite interesting.

In the afternoon we left for Munich to do some geocaching. We ran into some other geocahers at one of the first caches we did. Then of course we went off to Oktoberfest. I had heard that Australians weren’t too welcome there due to roudy drunken behaviour, though even if the police man checking my bag (there had been heightened security alerts this year) was pleased to be talking to an Australian. We had a large mug of beer and had a bit of conversation with other people at our table, mostly germans. We were even given a free chicken (from a voucher) from some other people at our table). Later on I tried out some rides, though not cheap, they were probably than any ride I’ve done in Australia. By that time we were running short on time and I had just about blown my budget for the night!

Later on I decided to buy a tshirt. Though first of all we stopped at a dodgy unofficial merchandise stand. The woman told me that the tshirt on display was the last one they had of that style. When I offered her half the price tag amount. She just about had a fit and told us she’d go find some others. We walked away because she had obviously been lying to us. I was able to get an official tshirt anyway.

Thursday morning (Donnerstag morgen), I got to sleep in a bit, though was surprised to wake up to cake for breakfast (frühstuck). It turns it was out Scharzwälder Kirschtorte known as Black Forest cake in English, named of course after the region in Germany. The occasion was Hans’ (the father of Daniel) birthday. It certainly went down well with some coffee. I also had the chance to speak some German with the cleaning lady, who is from Russia and speaks German but no English. Daniel finished school early that day and we did some geocaching in Landshut, where we discovered some more greayt places in this cit. Later in that evening there were also some birthday celebrations for Hans.

On Wednesday (Mittwoch auf Deutsch), I arose early to attend school with Daniel. He wanted me to attend his physics class, though I had some free time before that so I went off on a long walk to find a geocache, which was unsuccessful due to language reasons (I didn’t fully understand the hint) and eventually running out of time.

However, later that day I ordered a coffee and a slice of cake in German. I attended the physics class though unfortunately I didn’t understand much of the language nor had I studied that particular topic in physics so didn’t really follow what they were doing. I later attended his English class which was a wasted effort because the teacher didn’t utilise the fact that she had a native speaker in the room for even five minutes (though she didn’t have any warning that I would be attending).

Later that day I went off to find a geocache, which turned out interesting as well because it was a massive long walk without a map. I had to rely on the waypoint and compass feature of the GPSr. There was a farmer out ploughing his field and once I had found the cache, he stopped by to have a chat, probably wondering why the heck someone would walk so far to such a location. This was an interesting experience for me as it was my first conversation of some length in another language to someone who didn’t speak any English at all. I was able to explain to him what my travel plans were, that I was saying with a friend in Ergoldsbach, that I was from Australia, etc. It’s can amazing how much you so few can communicate with so few words sometimes. So another great day in Germany it was

My first few days in Germany proved an interesting time. The seven year old brother Johannes of my friend Daniel speaks little English if at all (he has learnt some phrases off a CD I think). So this was my first chance to utilise some basic German with a non-English speaker.

On the first day I went into Landshut with Daniel’s mother. It struck me as a rather impressive little city for something that is hardly on the tourism map with the exception of Landshuter Hochzeit ceremony (a reenactment of the marriage of Hedwig, the Polish King’s daughter, and George, the son of the Duke of Landshut, in 1475) every four years. The buildings are all painted very nice colours that are all fairly pale, something which I would have expected more in Italy (though perhaps a false expectation as Daniel assures me it’s a Bavarian thing). Landshut also features the tallest church in Europe constructed entirely of clay bricks. We also visited (insert name of German name for TAFE… Hochschule?) which is like a TAFE, to enquire about German language classes. That was also a chance to speak some more German with the program co-ordinator.

The rest of that afternoon was a rather easy one spent at home with Johannes. I will never forgot the word ‘fliegen’ now after he explained to me what to do with the fly squat. So watch out fliegen!
However, later in the afternoon when Daniel returned home from school, we did some bike riding and geocaching (a GPS based ‘treasure hunt’) around his neighbourhood. We finished up at Iris’ house and she was going to drive us home. Though her father invited us in for an Austrian meal. It was some kind of meatball served in broth. This was possibly my first experience of quite ‘different’ food in Germany.

On Sunday 27th of September I set off for my very first true international journey. I may have been to New Zealand a few times though that is merely across the ditch (the Tasman) with a flight time of about four hours.

The flight time to get across the Australian continent alone was probably longer than the time it takes to fly to New Zealand. Not least to mention that they speak English in New Zealand and the people (along with their towns and cities) are more or less the same as in Australia. I was reminded of the sheer size of Australia from this very experience. It was probably about half the distance to Bangkok.

Due to strong winds in Sydney, the plane arrived very late in Bangkok. Bangkok was an extremely busy airport and we were forced to get off the plane to pass through security, only to get on the same plane again. I don’t mind getting off the plane, though passing through security multiple times is really a pain.

The next leg of the flight was through the night and it truly had the sense of being motionless. Though I think this was the case for the entire flight anyway as I was in a centre isle seat with no view out the window. I did get some sleep but not a great amount. The seat was really uncomfortable for my legs as well. Though I did have reasonable rest. On the whole it felt like a long wait while going nowhere.

London Heathrow was a massive airport and it was really unfortunate to be stuck there for half the day without even time th other o travel into London. Though other than the pounds and slightly different accent, it didn’t feel too different from Australia.
Finally I arrived in Munich, Germany later that afternoon. It didn’t feel like I had travelled that far and going through border control was such a non-event, compared with Australia. My instinct was to speak English, though I was reminded of the fact I was in a foreign country when an airport staffer responded to my ‘thanks’ with ‘bitte’.

I had a bit of a wait for my friend Daniel to arrive. Though when he greeted me in English it once again felt less like I was in a foreign land. My only concern was that he was driving on the wrong side of the road! Sarcasm aside, it took some getting use to with sitting in the passenger seat on the right hand side of the car. It may have been fatigue and the effects of such a long journey, though the country side didn’t seem out of the ordinary at the time, despite being quite different from Australia and very beautiful. Though I was glad to finally be in Germany.

It occurred to me that this blog has for a long time now been neglected. Over 18 months without a single post. While I constantly procrastinated over making that reviving post, I possibly felt content in knowing that most people are being kept up to date via tidbits posted through other means such as Facebook, Flickr, etc. Much has happened in this time. I am undecided to whether I’ll write some back posts to fill in the gap or simply write a summary.

Though what better way than to reawaken the blog than with a post about skiing. Skiing was a sport that I was introduced to at a particularly young age. Before I had even started school, dad had me snow plowing down Easy Street on the Big D at Mount Hotham. However, until last year I hadn’t skied for nine years. We skied every year when I was a kid until I was eight, when our skiing holidays began getting shorter and less frequent. We skipped a year, then at age ten we had our last family skiing trip, only it wasn’t even the whole family and we only had about four days. Finally in Year 9, I managed to convince dad to send me on the ski camp to Mount Buller, though again, the four days were barely enough to regain my previous level of skiing, let alone make progress.

As the years went by, the opportunity to ski never arose. Until finally last year I was able to do eight days of skiing at three different resorts; a weekend at Falls Creek, five days at Hotham and a day at Mount Buller. Not a bad effort considering I hadn’t skied for the previous nine years.

This year i’ve already done a weeks worth of skiing Hotham and a weekend at Falls Creek. In this time I’ve skied some new terrain, such as the Orchard, an area of Mount Hotham that just wasn’t lifted when I was a kid. Of course there are some runs that I haven’t skied before that have been there all along, such as Imagine, although it now has snow making and is groomed. While at Falls Creek I did some of the runs around International (named because of the incredibly long Poma?). I must say how much things have changed at Hotham as well. I certainly remember a time when the resort generator used to pack itself in every so often though now connected to the grid instead, resort transport consisted of an open trailer towed by a tractor known as a ‘zoo cart’ since replaced by buses, the road was unsealed and there was certainly no snow making, etc.

Finally, I am back up at Mount Hotham one more time as I finish off writing this post on a rather impromptu trip. Having purchased a season pass already (it was already cheaper), I did have in mind the idea of making one more trip. So when I heard that someone was going up and that the lodge was empty, the first thing I did was to put on some washing and make some preparations for packing my bag. Furthermore, I have plans for a bit more skiing in New Zealand and some more in Europe as well. Definitely making up for the lack of skiing over the last nine years. Now to hope that I don’t run out of money!

For quite some time now I’ve wanted to visit Tasmania. It’s probably one of the few remaining places in Australia that I’ve been wanting to see. Perth, Darwin, maybe a bit of Central Australia and far north Queensland are still on the list. Though I suppose I’ve done considerably well, having visited Sydney, Brisbane, Canberra, a large chunk of New Zealand and now of course Tasmania. Having had the desire to visit Tasmania for quite some time, I’d have to say I wasn’t the least bit disappointed and my expectations were met quite well.

Day 1

Well the trip started on a mid-afternoon flight on the 15th of January. I was really surprised at how short the crossing of Bass Strait really is. It seems that one minute you’re flying over Port Phillip heads, with King Island visible very soon after. Yet before King Island even fades away you see a large mass of land, known as Tasmania. Launceston Airport had quite some charm to it, greeting us with a nice bit of garden then all it’s quietness being probably the smallest airport I’ve used, not to mention the tin shed baggage pickup area. First impression of Tasmania, not bad.

Having picked up the rental car, we drove into Launceston itself. Again, quite a charming little city with all it’s historic buildings. We had just enough time to have a good walk around Cataract Gorge, before leaving for Deloraine. The surprise here, was seeing a seal that had found its way up into the mouth of the South Esk River. The main highways in this part of Tasmania are certainly very well formed, although the 110km/h speed limit is possibly somewhat questionable. It was certainly surprising as to how few vehicles there were on the road. We arrived at the house of Mum’s friend, which would be our accommodation for the next three nights. Again, ‘charm’ is probably the word to describe the view out the lounge room window. A church, a few old houses on the town’s edge, dry country side and jagged hills in the distance. The roast that Mum’s friend cooked was certainly appreciated. While later in the evening we were surprised to see a freight train almost appear from nowhere in this patch of country side, before veering off along the edge of the town.

Day 2

This day was always going to be a long one. We set off from Deloraine out to Chudleigh where there is a business known as “The Honey Farm”, though it was actually more of a shop no doubt set up to capitalise on hoards tourists passing by. Next step was Mole Creek, where we had initially planned to visit King Solomon Cave, however, we had just missed the tour so we then set off to Sheffield. Though not without taking a dirt road shortcut and stopping at a few lookouts in the hills. Finally from Sheffield we left for Devonport, making it to Boat Harbour Beach in time for lunch. Boart Harbour Beach is an incredible white quartz sand beach, with a very light coloured blue water, that you first look down on from the hill above. It’s surrounded by a small village and certainly looks like a comfortable place to spend the day perhaps basking in the sun, though we only had time to spend lunch there. Though no drama as the next wonder of Tasmania awaited us, the Stanley Nut.

We took the chairlift up to the top which was incredibly steep and almost a little nerve with the wind forcing the chair to sway from side to side. However, the views certainly made it worthwhile (and hey it was fun anyway). We did a half hour walk at the top, before heading back down. In the way back, just out of Stanley, we passed through Wynward which is another fairly nice seaside town. We actually had a proper stop in Devonport as well, where we were able to see the Sprit of Tasmania II ferry moored. Perhaps my brief description of the day is no indication of how long it actually was. To give an indication, we covered over 400km of ground or 6-7 hours of driving (fortunately and thankfully done by Mum’s friend). We did get back to Deloraine to have dinner at the local pub, which serves Thai cuisine.

Day 3

As we had missed the caves the day before (Day 2), we managed to fit them in on the way up to Cradle Mountain on this day. King Solomon Cave was rather spectacular cave with pinkish stalactites, as result of the red soil leaking through with the limestone. After the caves, we set off for Cradle Mountain, stopping via Lake Cethana on the way. After transferring to a shuttle bus for the national park, we eventually got to Dove Lake by around 2:30pm. I decided to do the walk up to Marion Lookout, taking the steep route on the way up and a less direct though not so steep route via Wombat Pool on the way back. Most people seemed to be doing this walk in the reverse to me, though I had figured it would actually be easier to climb a steep embankment rather than descend it. I certainly have no regrets over this decision. Once at the top of Marion Lookout the views were absolutely spectacular. It seems that the whole area is surrounded by natural glacial lake formations. The walk back was certainly interesting as well, passing a few of the lakes on the way back and a range of alpine vegetation ranging from some kind of pine, snow gums, beech myrtle and grasslands. The only problem is that I had run out of water towards the end, which is less than desirable considering the 30 degree heat (or so it felt). In the end I’d have to say that Cradle Mountain was the highlight of the whole trip. The geological formations combined with such a diverse range of vegetation just cannot be beaten.

Day 4

This was relatively easy day in which we drove from Deloraine to Strahan. Much of the drive was a backtrack on which we had covered going to Cradle Mountain the day before. I must say that some of the high country surrounding Cradle Mountain had a strong resemblance to what we have seen many years ago on the Dinner Plain side of Mount Hotham, Victoria. Further on we saw much more Beech Myrtle forest, while mum was excited to see Leatherwood growing by the side of the road. Upon reaching Roseberry, we met up with Geraldine, a woman I had been in contact with via the Internet for some years. We had afternoon tea in the local bakery which was quite pleasant. Roseberry is a mining town surrounded by mountain, so much that it often gets snowed in during the Winter time. After leaving Roseberry, we headed to Strahran via Zeehan. We passed through vast open fields of button grass. Although one may get the impression this area has been cleared, it is actually the natural landscape. The aborigines would regularly burn this area and as a result no sapling could become established. Unfortunately some of this landscape has been destroyed further down the road to make way for plantation pine. It seemed that we reached Strahan in no time after this. Strahan is certainly a very pleasant town located by the Macquarie Harbour, though they sure know how to charge a lot of money. This may well be explained by the fact that most of the town is actually owned by one family. The price we paid for our accommodation at Strahan Village is certainly the most I’ve paid for such a basic motel room overlooking the carpark. The lack of air conditioning was also a disappointment in such warm weather, perhaps we had chosen to visit Strahan on the hottest day of the year, though I’m sure that the cheap 1960s motel building design with a lack of insulation or awnings would certainly have been a contributing factor. My advice: perhaps try camping by the road side if you want value for money as you won’t find it anywhere else in this town. We did have a reasonable dinner that night at the Fish Café on the wharf.

Day 5

From the onset, this was going to be a long day. First of all, we’d be going on a cruise on the Macquarie Harbour and Gordon River then we’d be driving to Hobart, which would take 5-6 hours. Not to mention that we’d be returning the rental car to Hobart Airport, something that turned out to be quite an unfortunate arrangement.

The cruise was certainly great and well worth it, even if these tourist operations tend to be on the expensive and overpriced side of things these days. Despite being a dark and dull morning, the calm weather did mean we could get out to see the Sorell lighthouse (apparently this is only possible on a small number of trips each year; of course only because they don’t want to upset the passengers with a bumpy ride), just out of Macquarie Harbour and that we’d get good reflections on the Gordon River. On returning to the harbour from Cape Sorell and before the Gordon River, we stopped on Sarah Island, which was used as a prison camp for convicts. The island had originally been set up as one of the most harshest outpost for the worst convicts, however, instead the island actually became a large boat building yard. The tour of the island was interesting and conducted quite well. Later on we had a buffet lunch on board the boat, while heading up the Gordon River. Much of the vegetation (such as the Beech Myrtles) reminded me of that surrounding the fjords in New Zealand, only with the odd eucalypt scattered around along with a few remaining Huon pines.

Another highlight in the cruise was a stop we made along the Gordon River at a rainforest boardwalk. Here we were able to get a closer look at the rainforest vegetation including a few Huon pine trees. Clearly we had arrived during the driest time of the year as the rain forest floor had almost completely dried out. We were also surprised by a sleeping copperhead (I think) snake that was laying on a rock absorbing as much sunlight as it could get. There is also quite a bit of Leatherwood in this rainforest environment. It was a safe distance from the boardwalk. After the boardwalk, the boat returned back down the Gordon River. Of course the boat travels at quite a slow pace along the river and utilises specialised technology so to minimise the wake and avoid damage to the river banks. It’s worth pointing out that this part of the Gordon River was home to many protests over the Gordon-below-Franklin Dam. However, over a thousand protesters were arrested and the (Liberal) Tasmanian government planned to proceed. It was only after the election of a new ALP Federal Government that construction was halted. The Tasmanian government challenged the decision in court, however, they lost as the Federal Government was deemed to be simply meeting its obligations towards an international treaty. The Franklin and Gordon River area had been declared a World Heritage Area as a cold-climate rainforest. Had the forest been destroyed, it could take thousands of years to recover, if at all, as the eucalypts would take over as the dominant species.

Leaving for Hobart

Upon completing the cruise, by which time it was early afternoon, we took one last look at Strahan before hitting the road to Hobart. First stop was at Queenstown, an old mining town, to fill up with petrol. The area surrounding Queenstown is an environmental disaster resembling a pink moonscape, after trees were removed to fuel local smelters and remaining vegetation was killed by smelter fumes, followed by heavy rainfalls washing away the topsoil. The vegetation is only just starting to recover today. Soon after Queensland we once again entered forest and much of it; both beech myrtle and eucalypt. This is perhaps the incredible thing about Tasmania, that you can drive mile upon mile through wilderness and forest. I am not sure that any other part of Australia has such large areas of forested wilderness remaining. The Great Dividing Range may have larger areas of wilderness, though I can’t recall driving through so much forest anywhere.

Given the lack of time we had, one mistake we made was taking a detour to Lake St Clair, near Derwent Bridge. We didn’t really have time to do anything except take a quick look at the lake from a boat ramp. Not to mention that most of the surrounds were obscured by fog. At least I did get a fairly interesting photo of some boulders with the lake and the fog. Finally, after rejoining the Lyell Highway back to Hobart, we passed through many more forests. From here we also passed quite a number of hydro power stations on the Derwent River. Despite these structures being rather awe striking, we barely slowed down at this point to to take a closer look as it was getting late. As we neared Hobart, the forests faded to be replaced by dry country side. As we crossed over the Derwent River at New Norfolk, Hobart felt like a stone throw away.

Finally we had reached Hobart, though we had to travel all the way out to the airport to return our hire car, before taking a bus back to the city. It was roughly 10pm when we checked into our hotel. We concluded our travels around Tasmania with a trip to Port Authur and some sight seeing around Hobart (where we spent two additional nights).

Photos online at: http://gallery.mac.com/jeza_rocks/100024 (note there are two pages)

This time five years ago (17/12/2002), the following letter appeared in The Age newspaper, the author being myself. It is interesting to note that although not a great deal has changed since then (a lot of Melbourne’s public transport is still fairly limited to the hours of 9am to 5pm), they have finally ditched the Summer holiday timetable for the train network. Well hoorah for that, though hopefully they fix the many other problems. Also buses and trams will still run to a limited timetable. The only logical reason for this would be that the operators can’t resist the pressure of drivers seeking to take holiday leave. It’s not like people go out less, just because they’re on holidays. Although public transport workers certainly deserve holidays like the rest of us, their holidays should be staggered so that the system remains functional.

It’s 2002, minister

The comments made by state Transport Minister Peter Batchelor’s spokesman regarding summer holiday timetables (The Age, 14/12) are astounding and lack common sense. The 21st-century lifestyles that people live are not restricted to the hours of 9am to 5pm Monday to Friday and four-week holidays over Christmas-New Year. Furthermore, people no longer go to bed at 8pm and those who do take time off don’t stay home all the time.

The government obviously thinks we are still living in the 1950s. Public transport needs to provide a uniformly high level of service to ensure everyone is catered for.
Jeremy Lunn, Box Hill