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Published: January 8th 2009
Mt Wellington
Brrrrr, it's cold!We left a cold and windy White Beach fairly early on New Year's Day and headed into Hobart to stay with friends who live in Blackmans Bay. Rachel and Damien have two energetic dogs, Isis (a Weimaraner) and Nell (a Boxer), so Annelies and Thomas were in their element. We took the dogs for a walk along Alum Cliffs (yes, another one - there's several Alum Cliffs in Tassie!) near Kingston Beach, but had to make a dash back to the car when it started to rain.
On Friday, we drove up to the top of Mt Wellington as it was below zero up there so we suspected it might be snowing. Sure enough, at the top it was around zero degrees Celsius and a light snow was occasionally falling. There was also enough snow for the kids to throw a few snowballs. Despite it being very cold up there with a wind chill-affected apparent temperature of -11C, it was very exciting as it was their first experience with snow. It was also the first time Alex and I had seen snow since a trip to New Zealand in 1997. Afterwards, we went to see a family friend, Margaret, in
Bellerive, which was right next to Eastlands shopping centre where Annelies and Thomas spent some of their Christmas and birthday money.
On Saturday, we visited Rach and Damo at work and also caught up with a colleague of Mark's from his Perth and Darwin days. Afterwards we went to the Salamanca Markets, where Alex bought a flash, very thick chopping board made from one piece of Myrtle (ie. no joins requiring glue) and also a rolling pin made from Blackwood, followed by lunch at the Taste Festival.
On Sunday, we had a barbecue at Barry and Donna's place in West Hobart, which was where we had stayed when we visited Hobart 5 years ago. Barry showed some of his photos from his last Antarctic summer spent as Casey, which were very interesting.
On Monday, we made a trip with Barry, Donna, Madeleine and her boyfriend Brodie to The Styx Valley of the Giants near
Mt Field National Park . This was where the Global Rescue Station was set up by Greenpeace and The Wilderness Society to stop the logging of Tasmania's Styx Forest (see
https://media.greenpeace.org/archive/Forests-Global-Rescue-Station-in-Tasmania-27MZIFKBYSI.html). The forest contains the mighty
Eucalyptus regnans, the tallest hardwood trees and flowering plants on
Earth. Later, we had a great barbecue and evening at Rach and Damo's place with Greg, a friend of ours from Darwin who was staying with them for a couple of days.
We had a lovely time at Rachel and Damien's place and felt right at home. Thomas was very sad to leave the dogs behind!
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