Adelaide 5th to 12th Mar

After Tasmania we returned to Castlemaine and continued to enjoy staying with Sarah and James and more local  socialising and other activities as before.

Having always planned to visit Adelaide on this visit, we managed to time our visit for the  Adelaide Festival which now coincides every year with the Womadelaide world-music festival (connected with the WOMAD festival which takes place in UK every summer). We booked a Festival theatre performance which happened to include a live musical support by an Australian band 'The Necks' which I like. We also booked one day at Womadelaide which we thought would be enough rather than the full three and a half days!

As I write we are in our last week with Sarah and James in Castlemaine after being here for most of 5 months! It will be very sad to leave, but by most people's standards we still have a long and exciting holiday ahead of us: Next stop New Zealand, then Salt Spring Island (Vancouver), then Grand Canyon USA.

We went to Adelaide by the 'Overlander' train. Again a good way to see the countryside between the two cities. Yet more vast expanses of land, though some of it a more arable agricultural landscape this time.

View of Murray river at Murray Bridge. Australia's largest river.

Adelaide is reputedly quite quiet but comes alive during the festival period, so there were lots of people around all day and most of the night. 

We had booked a double private room in the Central YHA hostel in Adelaide. We have found the hostel system really useful on our travels, especially in China. Youth hostels can be a bit hit and miss, but they are often fine for us older folk especially if private rooms are available. With internet booking now so easy, you can read reviews of each hostel and decide whether they sound OK. All we usually need is a convenient location, a bed and not too much disturbance. This one was right in the city and turned out to be amazingly well run, with a huge well kept communal kitchen and living area, very helpful staff and quiet rooms. Quite a bonus since we were booked in for 5 days. We were in easy walking distance for visiting the galleries, festival sites and eating places from the hostel. WOMAD attracts quite a lot of people our age, and we met some of them in the hostel, which was useful for getting tips on the events and facilities there.

Huge market in Adelaide. Lots of local food of all sorts to choose from for our hostel meals and WOMAD picnics.

These huge astronauts were all over the city advertising the festival fringe program.

Riverside complex where many of the festival venues were located.

The WOMAD event was located at the Adelaide Botanical Gardens, in an area of grass and trees separated from the real botanical bit, so you could often find shade if need be, while still being in sight of the performers. There was some rain forecast and sure enough it did start to rain in quite hard bursts in the afternoon, but we had a stroke of luck - Liz's cousin Roger works for the WOMAD organisation and we knew he might be there. We had assumed he would be hidden away behind the scenes and far too busy to meet up with, but Liz spotted him at work in the 'Taste The World' tent hosting and interviewing people from some of the bands while they cooked recipes from their country for people to taste. The upshot was that he got us free tickets for the remaining 2 days. Since we had got quite wet and cold and were starting to feel like we were at a festival in England, we were able to leave early and most of the bands we missed could be seen again on one of the other days as well as a whole lot more. 

Japanese drummers in action at WOMAD

Crazy French drummers in action in their 'Mobile Hommes' - still drumming while hanging from a huge crane over the audience.

There were a number of indigenous Australian musicians we really enjoyed as well as the usual mix from all over the world and we were able to stay for the highlight on the last day, which was Ravi Shankar and his daughter Anushka - Although about to become 90 years old and very frail, Ravi Shankar was still playing Sitar with amazing skill for at least an hour.

Famous Adelaide 'Northern Lights' light show where facades are projected onto some of the historic buildings along the main street.

After WOMAD and seeing the city, we took ourselves off to Kangaroo Island for the last 2 days, found a lovely camp site in the far West of the island close to the Flinders Chase National Park, where we had a cabin. 

Kangaroo Island is 12km off the coast a couple of hours south of Adelaide and has managed to exclude all non-indigenous wildlife and plants, so it is quite a haven for seeing local flora and fauna, in particular, sea lions and penguins, though we did not manage to see penguins.

Gull colony competing with the sea lions.

Admiral Arch - Kangaroo Island.

We visited "The Remarkable Rocks" - formed from an eroded volcanic dome creating amazing (remarkable even) natural sculptures.

We saw several Echidnas in the area rooting around in the undergrowth with their long noses.

A large flock of these Cape Barren Geese shared our camp site.

From "Snake Lagoon Road" we had a lovely walk through very natural landscape along a river and down to a beach. Being Australia, Snake Lagoon looked like it had not seen any water for several years, the river was a series of unconnected pools, and the beach was deserted with beautiful soft white sand and big breakers. It felt very remote. There were quite a lot of tourists around but spread over such a huge area, we only met two other couples walking.

Grass tree plants on Kangaroo Island (up to 5 metres high)

Back on the train to Melbourne - backyard views of outback South Australia.

Tasmania 11th to 19th Feb

Just to confuse you all I will tell you that it is now 12th March and I am writing this on the train as we return to Castlemaine, Victoria after a week in Adelaide, South Australia, but I am going to describe the week we spent in Tasmania in mid February. Some day I will catch up with what we did in Adelaide!

We took the 'Spirit of Tasmania' 9 hour Melbourne to Devonport sea crossing to Tasmania which lets you see Port Philip Bay and its very narrow exit into Bass Strait called 'The Rip" as you leave Melbourne. We  had booked a camper van for the duration of our stay in Tasmania, not least so that we could defer decisions about where to be on each day, which is so dependant on the weather and how quickly you can get around the many nice places available on the island. We found Tasmania very varied in landscape, especially in comparison to mainland Australia, so this will be described mainly in pictures.

North coast of Tasmania. Much greener and more hilly than most coastlines we had seen on the mainland.

our home for the week

'Edge of the world', with driftwood from the forest carried down the Arthur river by floodwaters

Arthur river. Untouched temperate rainforest. Never settled or exploited by Europeans and hence in a very natural state.

Walk around Crater Lake area in near Cradle mountain. Another change of scenery. Quite a cool and wet walk as it often is but we managed some nice views and the serious rain only came just after we had finished. Saw our first Wombat, walking down the path and quite tolerant of us, though it did 'growl' at me when I tried to get too close.

A very peaceful little spot on the walk - Wombat Pool

Karrawong. A very vocal native Australian carrion eating bird. Nice song, not such nice habits, like eating baby birds.

 En route to Russell Falls. Preserved rain forest with both present and past generations of giant trees. Tallest living one in Mount Field at present is 79 metres.

Russell Falls

Typical street in old Hobart     -     We stayed a night with my schoolfriend, Alan Haig. Last seen in 1970 when we both travelled on the same boat - me for a gap year in Australia, him to join his family who had emigrated to New Zealand. Strange to meet someone after such a gap and then only for one day but it was a very nice reunion and to meet his wife Sally!

View of Hobart locality from the nearby Mount Wellington. Main part of the city was obscured by clouds. Sorry to disappoint you walking enthusiasts - we drove up there!

Curious natural rock formation on the shore near Port Arthur. It makes it look like the Romans got there first.

Early morning walk on the Tasman peninsula

Another change of landscape. Vines and savannah-like grassland.

Beautiful deserted beach, but a bit too chilly for swimming. The sand really was as white as it looks.

Local resident Tasmanian Pademelon at Tasman Peninsula taking a great interest in our slops bucket

We did a 5 hour circular walk to Wine Glass bay on the Freycinet national park. A well trodden route, but well worth it, with amazing beaches, rocks and viewpoints and yet more varied terrain.

Very tame wallabies living at Wine Glass Bay, presumably very used to cleaning up people's picnics, but not [yet] too pushy. Wildlife authorities, discourage feeding native animals, so that they dont become too agressive in their begging habits and then go short of food in the low season.

Our final stop was in the 'Asbestos Range' reserve, now renamed to the more appealing, but harder to pronounce 'Narawntapu national park'. A very quiet location at the end of 10 kilometers of unsealed road, with open water and swamp and plenty of interesting wildlife.

Swamp Wallaby in action - eating water plants in the swamp.

A lot of Wombats were living in the park. Just after we saw this [rather distant] one we found one feeding in a dry ditch which did not seem the least bothered by the attention from us and other people.

A happy camper.

We had good company on the return boat to Melbourne - 'The Outcasts of Australia' seem to have had an outing to Tasmania!