Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Tasmania: your natural state
I fell in love with Tasmania even before I set foot on its soil. From my window seat in the airplane, I got my first glimpse of the island’s striking hills and beautiful bays. I had signed up for the trip through the Melbourne University Outdoors Program and I flew into Hobart to meet my group: 27 exchange students, 4 guides and 3 minibuses.
In case you’re not familiar with Tassie, it is an island off the south coast of Australia – a one-hour flight (or twelve-hour ferry ride) from Melbourne. Tasmania’s breathtaking beauty and peaceful surroundings belie a dark past. As a colony, it was once Van Diemen’s Land where thousands of convicts from England and the rest of Australia were shipped. The history of the aboriginal population of Tasmania is pretty bleak too. There were about 5000 Aborigines on the island in 1800 but only 300 left by 1830. European weapons or diseases killed most, often in gruesome ways.
On the first day, we visited the historic convict settlement at Port Arthur. A person could spend days exploring this massive site. The prisons really affected me, especially the Separate Prison at the back of Port Arthur. This is where new convicts would be temporarily placed when they arrived on the boats. It was a place of psychological torture, designed to break the spirits of criminals. Upon arrival, the convicts were stripped of all their possessions and their identities, including their names. A number was assigned to each instead. No speaking was allowed in the Separate Prison and both convicts and guards had to wear hooded masks whenever the convicts were out of their cells – never a friendly face to be seen. The exercise yards were like hallways with white walls open to the sky; each day a convict was allowed a few minutes exercise walking up and down the corridor alone. In the chapel, there were tiered rows of stalls – like upright coffins – a convict was shuffled into a stall and the door was closed between him and the next stall. I enclosed myself into one stall and found that I couldn’t see anything to either side or behind me. All I could see was the pulpit and could only imagine the kind of fire and brimstone sermons that the clergy of the day would have delivered from that spot. Unbelievably, most convicts had to stay in the Separate Prison for four to twelve months before being released into the “regular” part of the convict settlement. As a law student, I was already doubtful of the utility of prisons for rehabilitation and my Port Arthur experience reinforced the idea that prisons can sometimes do more damage than good.
Despite these dark spirits that haunt Tasmania’s history, I felt very much at home there. The weather was fall-like with crisp sunny days, sweet and sun-soaked like a freshly-picked Granny Smith apple. The landscape was dramatic with green hills dotted with countless grazing sheep next to calm blue bays – as we drove past a bay near White Beach, I saw several black swans gliding along. Tasmania is much more lush than the dry mainland of Australia. We passed groves of walnut trees and stands of eucalypts, those Australian icons. At the Tasmanian Devil Conservation Park, we got to watch the ferocious little devils completely devour their wallaby meat: fur, bones, veins and all. They are surprisingly cute little animals; a delicate English bloke from our trip remarked in his posh accent, “Oh, look how they gamble about!” But in the devils’ sweet little faces are jaws so powerful they could crush human bone.
Tasmania is an outdoorsy place and we hiked every day: into Wineglass Bay, around the Launceston Gorge and up to the base of Cradle Mountain. I huffed and puffed a little at first – too many days in the law library – but felt fit, strong and healthy by the end of the week. In the national parks, wildlife abounds. I met a very nice little wallaby in the parking lot at Freycinet National Park. He came right up to me, probably wanting something to eat, but human food is deadly for the native animals whose digestive systems are designed for eating native plant life. Later, in Cradle Mountain National Park, a wombat waddled out of the forest, looked at our group, and decided to go back where it came from.
Our big tour group was sub-divided into more manageable sections because of the three vans. I really enjoyed the crew in our van: Channie (my Korean girlfriend), Corey (a handsome lacrosse player from Oregon), Conor (a polite redhead from Minneapolis), Sam (a feisty little blond from Michigan), Tim (groovy Texan from Austin who provided great road music), Joshua (one of the Three Stooges from Long Island) and a few others. The trip leaders were all outdoor educators by profession: four handsome and capable men, the archetypes of the Australian bush. One in particular, whom I shall simply refer to as The Woodsman, had blue eyes to lose yourself in and broad shoulders strong enough to carry any burden.
Out of mobile phone range for most of the trip, we pulled into Campbelltown for a sunny afternoon pit-stop to find out that Obama had just won the election. Everyone rejoiced: Americans, Aussies, Brits, Danes, and a Canadian. It just seemed so fitting to hear the news in such a beautiful place; back in the van, I sang Neil Young to myself, “Keep on rocking in the free world!”
We stayed at Launceston Backpackers on our final night and I have to declare it as the nicest hostel I’ve ever stayed in (although I guess that may not mean much considering that my first-ever hostel stay was in September). The place was spacious, extremely clean and very cozy: we lounged in the dining area, made amazing meals in the spotless, restaurant-grade kitchen and got cozy by the fire in the TV room to watch Harry Potter before bedtime.
I was the last one to leave Launny and spent my last few hours wandering the around the waterfront and arts precinct. I found the City Park and giggled over the Macaque monkeys who live and play there. The city reminded a bit me of Charlottetown: small with beautiful historic buildings, bustling on a Saturday but empty on a Wednesday night in early spring. Before leaving, I wrote a few postcards to the people whose addresses I know by heart (maybe you’ll get one in your mailbox soon?).
For me, Tasmania was a place of solace, reflection and health. Perhaps I should have spent the study week between classes and exams holed up in the library? Never! Tassie made my heart sing like in the Sound of Music: “I go to the hills when my heart is lonely…” If you ever get a chance, don’t hesitate to discover Tasmania and your own natural state.
In case you’re not familiar with Tassie, it is an island off the south coast of Australia – a one-hour flight (or twelve-hour ferry ride) from Melbourne. Tasmania’s breathtaking beauty and peaceful surroundings belie a dark past. As a colony, it was once Van Diemen’s Land where thousands of convicts from England and the rest of Australia were shipped. The history of the aboriginal population of Tasmania is pretty bleak too. There were about 5000 Aborigines on the island in 1800 but only 300 left by 1830. European weapons or diseases killed most, often in gruesome ways.
On the first day, we visited the historic convict settlement at Port Arthur. A person could spend days exploring this massive site. The prisons really affected me, especially the Separate Prison at the back of Port Arthur. This is where new convicts would be temporarily placed when they arrived on the boats. It was a place of psychological torture, designed to break the spirits of criminals. Upon arrival, the convicts were stripped of all their possessions and their identities, including their names. A number was assigned to each instead. No speaking was allowed in the Separate Prison and both convicts and guards had to wear hooded masks whenever the convicts were out of their cells – never a friendly face to be seen. The exercise yards were like hallways with white walls open to the sky; each day a convict was allowed a few minutes exercise walking up and down the corridor alone. In the chapel, there were tiered rows of stalls – like upright coffins – a convict was shuffled into a stall and the door was closed between him and the next stall. I enclosed myself into one stall and found that I couldn’t see anything to either side or behind me. All I could see was the pulpit and could only imagine the kind of fire and brimstone sermons that the clergy of the day would have delivered from that spot. Unbelievably, most convicts had to stay in the Separate Prison for four to twelve months before being released into the “regular” part of the convict settlement. As a law student, I was already doubtful of the utility of prisons for rehabilitation and my Port Arthur experience reinforced the idea that prisons can sometimes do more damage than good.
Despite these dark spirits that haunt Tasmania’s history, I felt very much at home there. The weather was fall-like with crisp sunny days, sweet and sun-soaked like a freshly-picked Granny Smith apple. The landscape was dramatic with green hills dotted with countless grazing sheep next to calm blue bays – as we drove past a bay near White Beach, I saw several black swans gliding along. Tasmania is much more lush than the dry mainland of Australia. We passed groves of walnut trees and stands of eucalypts, those Australian icons. At the Tasmanian Devil Conservation Park, we got to watch the ferocious little devils completely devour their wallaby meat: fur, bones, veins and all. They are surprisingly cute little animals; a delicate English bloke from our trip remarked in his posh accent, “Oh, look how they gamble about!” But in the devils’ sweet little faces are jaws so powerful they could crush human bone.
Tasmania is an outdoorsy place and we hiked every day: into Wineglass Bay, around the Launceston Gorge and up to the base of Cradle Mountain. I huffed and puffed a little at first – too many days in the law library – but felt fit, strong and healthy by the end of the week. In the national parks, wildlife abounds. I met a very nice little wallaby in the parking lot at Freycinet National Park. He came right up to me, probably wanting something to eat, but human food is deadly for the native animals whose digestive systems are designed for eating native plant life. Later, in Cradle Mountain National Park, a wombat waddled out of the forest, looked at our group, and decided to go back where it came from.
Our big tour group was sub-divided into more manageable sections because of the three vans. I really enjoyed the crew in our van: Channie (my Korean girlfriend), Corey (a handsome lacrosse player from Oregon), Conor (a polite redhead from Minneapolis), Sam (a feisty little blond from Michigan), Tim (groovy Texan from Austin who provided great road music), Joshua (one of the Three Stooges from Long Island) and a few others. The trip leaders were all outdoor educators by profession: four handsome and capable men, the archetypes of the Australian bush. One in particular, whom I shall simply refer to as The Woodsman, had blue eyes to lose yourself in and broad shoulders strong enough to carry any burden.
Out of mobile phone range for most of the trip, we pulled into Campbelltown for a sunny afternoon pit-stop to find out that Obama had just won the election. Everyone rejoiced: Americans, Aussies, Brits, Danes, and a Canadian. It just seemed so fitting to hear the news in such a beautiful place; back in the van, I sang Neil Young to myself, “Keep on rocking in the free world!”
We stayed at Launceston Backpackers on our final night and I have to declare it as the nicest hostel I’ve ever stayed in (although I guess that may not mean much considering that my first-ever hostel stay was in September). The place was spacious, extremely clean and very cozy: we lounged in the dining area, made amazing meals in the spotless, restaurant-grade kitchen and got cozy by the fire in the TV room to watch Harry Potter before bedtime.
I was the last one to leave Launny and spent my last few hours wandering the around the waterfront and arts precinct. I found the City Park and giggled over the Macaque monkeys who live and play there. The city reminded a bit me of Charlottetown: small with beautiful historic buildings, bustling on a Saturday but empty on a Wednesday night in early spring. Before leaving, I wrote a few postcards to the people whose addresses I know by heart (maybe you’ll get one in your mailbox soon?).
For me, Tasmania was a place of solace, reflection and health. Perhaps I should have spent the study week between classes and exams holed up in the library? Never! Tassie made my heart sing like in the Sound of Music: “I go to the hills when my heart is lonely…” If you ever get a chance, don’t hesitate to discover Tasmania and your own natural state.
Monday, November 10, 2008
Mermaid off the port bow
Yarr, salty dawgs! I survived the weekend of sailing off the coast of Hervey Bay and Fraser Island…despite the best efforts of a couple of Australian bogans, some tiger sharks and a vexatious sandbar. Ahoy and amen to that.
Our band of degenerates descended on Hervey Bay on the morning of Halloween. The weather was hardly spooky: sunny and 30 degrees Celsius. We came from all corners: Nathan and Eva from Sydney, Rachel detoured via Brisbane, Matt from the hot underbelly of inner Queensland, Basil from Canberra, and yours truly from marvelous Melbourne. The boys had done most of the shopping for food and drink: the result was an ungodly amount of beer and raw meat. Thankfully, Eva tagged along on the shopping trip to throw in a few fruits and vegetables and some red wine. After all, sailors have to be sure to ward off scurvy.
We motored out of the marina on the Boomerang and it wasn’t long before the first Corona was cracked, amidst jokes that this boomerang might never come back. From that point, it was just six friends on the water with sun, sandy beaches and smiles. Once we dropped anchor on that first night, we all jumped into the clear blue water and you would not believe how warm it was! We watched the sunset from the side of the boat and then fired up the barbie for steaks. Rachel, whose culinary skills may be notorious to my blog-readers by now, made an amazing salad of rockette, cherry tomatoes, toasted pine nuts and shaved parmesan.
I rose with the sun the next morning and jumped in the water first thing. After yet another gourmet meal (Rach and Eva made an amazing omelette with bacon, sausage, toast and fresh fruit on the side), we hauled anchor, hoisted the sails and soon, we were sailing off into paradise. Tacking was my favourite part – Captain Nathan (whom Basil referred to as Captain Fabio, or just Fabs) would call the order to tack and us girls would loosen ropes or haul with all our might. I’m not sure what the other boys were doing while we tacked…but it most likely involved consuming beer. In the great Australian tradition of nicknaming your friends, Nathan called to Colesy (Matt) and Flynny (Basil) to hoist different sails or get another beer.
Around midday, we took the tender onto a deserted strip of beautiful white beach on Fraser Island. The boys immediately started throwing the footy around and I took the opportunity to run down the beach, strip naked and frolic in the sand and water. Rachel and Eva followed, a bit more timidly than me, but eventually we were all nude, our tan lines fading while we chatted on the sand and then jumped into the sea to cool off when it got too hot. Up the beach, we could just make out that the boys had followed suit – except they kept to the water and had their boardies tied around their heads lest one of the others steal their togs. Back on the boat, we spotted a dingo running down the beach where we had just been.
Later that night, I was the last one out on deck after sunset, savoring the last moments of daylight and the dregs of my red wine. I was just about to go down to the galley to help with dinner when I saw something jump out of the water with a splash. “Whales off the port bow!” I called. Or what is dolphins…or tiger sharks? Whatever it was, it slowly circled out boat, jumping out of the water and showing off for us before swimming off toward the fading daylight. It was a magical ending to a beautiful day.
Things got a little more hairy the next day when Nathan decided that the GPS must be wrong and steered us directly onto a sandbar. Rachel jumped off the boat to find herself only chest-deep in water. What ensued was the classic male/female argument about what to do next. The boys had all kinds of crazy “solutions”, including “just gunning the engine” or using the tender as a tug boat. Eva’s suggestion to tack the sails and let the wind take us back into deep water went ignored for several hours until the boys resorted to this option. Within minutes, it was smooth sailing again.
On our last day of sailing, we alighted again on Fraser to wander the sand and lounge in the cool fresh water creeks that run into the ocean. On the boat, Rachel performed culinary magic yet again, producing a pitcher of excellent sangria and nachos smothered in beans, meat, salsa and cheese. We were all pretty exhausted on the final eve, given the drama of the day and the dance party we held in the galley the night before. We traded stories and laughed on deck, polishing off the last of the beer.
Before we knew it, our three nights at sea were over and we were motoring back into the marina at Hervey Bay on a scorching November morning. After a final gourmet brekky and hugs all around, I hauled my pack onto my back and staggered my sea legs up the marina to catch a taxi to the airport. After a hop, skip and few connecting flights, more adventure was in store for me in the wilds of Tasmania. More stories from the road to follow soon…lots of love to everybody back home.
Our band of degenerates descended on Hervey Bay on the morning of Halloween. The weather was hardly spooky: sunny and 30 degrees Celsius. We came from all corners: Nathan and Eva from Sydney, Rachel detoured via Brisbane, Matt from the hot underbelly of inner Queensland, Basil from Canberra, and yours truly from marvelous Melbourne. The boys had done most of the shopping for food and drink: the result was an ungodly amount of beer and raw meat. Thankfully, Eva tagged along on the shopping trip to throw in a few fruits and vegetables and some red wine. After all, sailors have to be sure to ward off scurvy.
We motored out of the marina on the Boomerang and it wasn’t long before the first Corona was cracked, amidst jokes that this boomerang might never come back. From that point, it was just six friends on the water with sun, sandy beaches and smiles. Once we dropped anchor on that first night, we all jumped into the clear blue water and you would not believe how warm it was! We watched the sunset from the side of the boat and then fired up the barbie for steaks. Rachel, whose culinary skills may be notorious to my blog-readers by now, made an amazing salad of rockette, cherry tomatoes, toasted pine nuts and shaved parmesan.
I rose with the sun the next morning and jumped in the water first thing. After yet another gourmet meal (Rach and Eva made an amazing omelette with bacon, sausage, toast and fresh fruit on the side), we hauled anchor, hoisted the sails and soon, we were sailing off into paradise. Tacking was my favourite part – Captain Nathan (whom Basil referred to as Captain Fabio, or just Fabs) would call the order to tack and us girls would loosen ropes or haul with all our might. I’m not sure what the other boys were doing while we tacked…but it most likely involved consuming beer. In the great Australian tradition of nicknaming your friends, Nathan called to Colesy (Matt) and Flynny (Basil) to hoist different sails or get another beer.
Around midday, we took the tender onto a deserted strip of beautiful white beach on Fraser Island. The boys immediately started throwing the footy around and I took the opportunity to run down the beach, strip naked and frolic in the sand and water. Rachel and Eva followed, a bit more timidly than me, but eventually we were all nude, our tan lines fading while we chatted on the sand and then jumped into the sea to cool off when it got too hot. Up the beach, we could just make out that the boys had followed suit – except they kept to the water and had their boardies tied around their heads lest one of the others steal their togs. Back on the boat, we spotted a dingo running down the beach where we had just been.
Later that night, I was the last one out on deck after sunset, savoring the last moments of daylight and the dregs of my red wine. I was just about to go down to the galley to help with dinner when I saw something jump out of the water with a splash. “Whales off the port bow!” I called. Or what is dolphins…or tiger sharks? Whatever it was, it slowly circled out boat, jumping out of the water and showing off for us before swimming off toward the fading daylight. It was a magical ending to a beautiful day.
Things got a little more hairy the next day when Nathan decided that the GPS must be wrong and steered us directly onto a sandbar. Rachel jumped off the boat to find herself only chest-deep in water. What ensued was the classic male/female argument about what to do next. The boys had all kinds of crazy “solutions”, including “just gunning the engine” or using the tender as a tug boat. Eva’s suggestion to tack the sails and let the wind take us back into deep water went ignored for several hours until the boys resorted to this option. Within minutes, it was smooth sailing again.
On our last day of sailing, we alighted again on Fraser to wander the sand and lounge in the cool fresh water creeks that run into the ocean. On the boat, Rachel performed culinary magic yet again, producing a pitcher of excellent sangria and nachos smothered in beans, meat, salsa and cheese. We were all pretty exhausted on the final eve, given the drama of the day and the dance party we held in the galley the night before. We traded stories and laughed on deck, polishing off the last of the beer.
Before we knew it, our three nights at sea were over and we were motoring back into the marina at Hervey Bay on a scorching November morning. After a final gourmet brekky and hugs all around, I hauled my pack onto my back and staggered my sea legs up the marina to catch a taxi to the airport. After a hop, skip and few connecting flights, more adventure was in store for me in the wilds of Tasmania. More stories from the road to follow soon…lots of love to everybody back home.
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