Blogs from Tasmania, Australia, Oceania - page 132

Cradle Mountain, located near the north end of the Cradle Mountain - Lake St Clair National Park in central Tasmania is one of my favourite places on Planet Earth. Though not high, about 1545 meters, it has a quiet serenity which allows the consciousness to image itself drifting back more than 5 thousand years and observing the same scene. The shingled hut in the foreground is called the Boat Hut, though when it last had a boat, I have no idea. Coupled witha small sandy beach in front of it, it is used as a resting place for overland and day walkers. Like so many lakes in Tasmania, the lake, Lake Dove is a glacier lake scoured out during the last ice age which ended about 10,000 years ago. The orange colouring on the mountain side ... read more

Apres une troisieme nuit en backpacker, le 27 decembre, Loic et moi sommes alles au musee de Hobart, ou il y a un joyeux melange entre animaux empailles, coquillages, art colonial, histoire des bagnards tasmaniens, et peintures contemporaines. On a pu avoir un apercu des animaux que nous pourrions croiser dans la nature, comme le tiger snake (gros serpent noir), les possums (famille des marsupiaux) les echidnes et les platypus/ornitorynque? (les monotremes, les deux seuls mammiferes a pondre des oeufs), et bien sur le diable de Tasmanie, et le tigre de Tasmanie aujourd'hui disparu (marsupiaux carnivores). L'apres-midi, Gius est venu nous chercher et nous a emmenes avec la voiture de Tamara, une amie, voir le radio telescope d'Hobart avec lequel il travaille souvent (il est astronome, specialise dans les trous noirs "supermassifs") et nous a patiemment ... read more

For those of you who have been keeping up with our blog entries, you know that in the last entry from Melbourne we said we were off to Tasmania and didn't know what to expect. Well, this is another one of those places where we were soooooo glad that we did because we both loved it! We rented a car for a week and decided just to drive around and stop at places that looked good to us. We made it a whopping 15 minutes outside of Hobart before we stopped for the night in a town called Sorrell. We got the spa room in a place called The Barracks, which you can guess by the name what it used to be, but is now a quaint B&B. I think it was built in 1829. A ... read more

SOME PICS OF TASMANIA... read more

As long as the good people of Japan keep up pressure on their leaders to buy woodchip from sustainable plantation forest rather than the beautiful and ecologically unique old-growth forests, unlike Europe, Tasmania may be saved from itself. Finally export revenues from exploitative forestry are under threat and are starting to be replaced by tourism. Apple museums and jam factories are springing up everywhere, along with boutique wineries and gourmet restaurants. The forestry industry that effectively controls Tasmania (at least according to Mark Latham, the opposition leader recently defeated in the national elections, and now doing a damn good job at kiss and tell) is busy desperately planting new trees, after years of getting rich by harvesting short-term and environmentally catastrophic policies. Sadly though, the felling of old growth forest still continues. If this interests you ... read more