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Monthly Archive: April 2018

4/30 Figtree Adventures

No … that’s not Figtree as in a plant but “Figtree” as in the town in New South Wales near Wollongong.  Susan met Gale and Trevor 2 years ago on a trip with Mom to Eastern Europe and they committed the ultimate folly … they said, “Come visit”. Mark and I did!  We spent 5 days with them and had a marvelous time seeing some sights and watching the Commonwealth Games on TV while sipping wine.

Mark, Susan, Trevor and Gale after a walk on the beach

Mark, Susan, Trevor and Gale after a walk on the beach

One day we took a drive up in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales where we checked out Fitzroy Falls on a short walk and paid homage to Sir Donald Bradman of cricket fame in Bowral.  His house has a plaque on the fence; it’s easy to see where people tread on the grass to take pictures!

Sir Donald Bradman statue

Sir Donald Bradman at the International Cricket Hall of Fame in Bowral, New South Wales, Australia

Fitzroy Falls

Fitzroy Falls in New South Wales

Two local cricket teams were playing a Sunday afternoon match. I don’t know much about cricket, but it was evident, even to me, that one of the bowlers was really bad and was going to be buying the beer after the match.

Cricket field

We watched a bit of cricket – think baseball but with only 2 bases to run back and forth between with a 360 degree playing field.

The coast around Wollongong is beautiful and it’s easy to see why so many people want to live there and will even deal with the terrible commute to Sydney every day either by car or train AND why the house prices have shot up!

Sea Cliff Bridge and coastline near Wollongong

beach view

This beach is near Wollongong. The water was a bit chilly for us when we got to a beach where we put our feet in.

This escarpment runs from Sydney down the coast.

Australia seems to be enamored with “big” things.  In a previous trip we saw the Big Merino, and a Big Avocado.  Gale and Trevor made sure we had our picture taken in front of the Big Potato in Robertson.  The meat pies for lunch in Robertson were way better tasting than the Big Potato. We’ll leave it to your imagination as to what other names that spud gets!

Big Potato

There’s no choice but to pose in front of the Big Potato!

magpie on porch

This magpie visits Gale and Trevor every day.

King parrot in tree

One of the king parrots we spotted in a tree

Pink and Grey Gallas

Australia has some beautiful birds. These are Pink and Grey Gallas just hanging out in a park.

cockatoo

Sulfur-crested cockatoos are everywhere. They are incredibly loud and destructive, ripping leaves off of trees at will. We still think they’re beautiful.

Three weeks in Victoria, Australia

We lived for 9 months in Melbourne back in 1994-95, visited again about 8 years ago, and wanted to come back to visit friends and see all the changes.

First stop was in Woodend north of Melbourne to visit Justin and Rob who we met in Split, Croatia, while checking out a menu and then sharing some wine.  Justin rescued us from the busy Melbourne Airport on Friday evening and we spent a fun 4 days with them seeing some of the area around Mount Macedon.

Rob and Justin at Mooroba Winery

Rob and Justin took us to the Mount Towrong winery up the road from their new house and helped us spend a superb Sunday afternoon.

How better to spend a Sunday afternoon than drinking wine and eating food with friends at the Mount Towrong Winery?

We babysat with the girls – Ruby and Molly, the cocker spaniels – while the guys were at a party.

Terry and Ian were our second set of friends to visit. We met them 24 years ago before they even had any children (now in college and high school).  It was like we saw them just last week.

Ian and Terry – it seemed like just yesterday we saw them.

Essenden Bomber mascot

Mark had front row seats for the Essenden – Adelaide Footy match thanks to Ian. It was even the first match of the season. Ian was thrilled when Essenden came form behind to win!

Ian and Terry took us for an afternoon road trip to the Mornington Peninsula for a brewery visit, 2 wineries, and Arthur’s Seat.  This is a view of the Mornington Peninsula from Arthur’s Seat – a drive, not a hike.

We rented an AirBnB for 10 days right in the middle of the city, conveniently located by the Coles Market and Liquorland.  Melbourne has a free tram zone now to attempt to reduce traffic in the CBD.  Our place was in the free zone making it convenient when we wanted to go around town.

Tall building with Airnb.

The tall building with the red arrow is where our AirBnb was.

View of Etihad Stadium in Melbourne from our AirBnB

Electrical Outlets

See the extra button in the middle? For the cook top to work, this has to be turned on!

We visited the Shrine of Remembrance that now has an informative museum about the role of Australia in various wars and military actions.

Shrine of Remembrance

Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, dedicated to WWI

MCG

The Melbourne Cricket Ground, the mecca of cricket in Australia and site of the Grand Finals in Aussie Rules football.

Flinders Station

Flinders Station in Melbourne

What else did we do in Melbourne?  Haircuts, a little clothes shopping and toothpaste shopping – all the important tasks!

No devils spotted in Tasmania

Tasmanian Devil warning sign

A slightly marked up warning sign for Tasmanian Devils. The creatures are nocturnal. These go along with the koala, kangaroo, and wombat warning signs.

After the travel day from hell, we started 7 days of exploring part of Tasmania – Hobart, Port Arthur, and Launceston.  Hobart is a lovely little town right on the water with a big port. Every Saturday, the Salamanca Market with local products and arts is held on the waterfront and it was packed!  We figured the entire population of Hobart (about 220,000) was there but then we found out that the Royal Caribbean Cruise ship, Innovation of the Seas, with 5000 passengers was in port.

At the Hobart marina, we found a police boat named for Mark. Wickham, Australia is way up in the northwest near Broome.

sculpture of women prisoners in Hobart

This sculpture was on the waterfront where the convicts from England arrived. Some were women and children.

After our shopping excursion, we went on a search for a few microbreweries. Mind you … this was a beautiful Saturday afternoon about noon when our walk started.  We found T-Bone Microbrewery about 1:15 it doesn’t open until 2 PM.  Why would you waste a perfectly good beer day by not opening?

Lots of stores close in Hobart about 2 PM on Saturday and are not open at all on Sunday.  It was a holiday weekend and pretty quiet except for the cruise people!  This didn’t give us much hope of finding an open micro-brewery but we ambled down the street to Shambles (They were open!) and had some pretty good beer.

The taps in Shambles Brewery

Shambles Brewery taproom in Hobart, Tasmania

Taproom in Hobart Brewery

The bar in Hobart Brewery

The next day, Sunday, off we walked to Hobart Brewery, another brewery with a great location by the cruise port in a big red barn on a large lot.  They don’t take advantage of any of this – only open on Sunday afternoon for a few hours, no music, not even any snacks.  The co-founder and head brewer is from Colorado and you would think he’d have a few business ideas for the brewery – as in having more than beer there!

Then there’s the whole issue of brewery paraphernalia – as in not much if any at all!  Mark loves t-shirts but try as he might, craft brewery t-shirts were hard to find.  Most of the breweries we visited in Australia could take a few marketing lessons from U.S. craft brewers – t-shirts, glasses, bottle openers.

Many restaurants in Hobart had a line on their menu “10% Surcharge on Saturday and 15% surcharge on Sunday and holidays”.  We learned that restaurant servers get paid more if they work on Saturday, Sunday, or holidays and the restaurants want to cover their costs.

MONA ferry with champagne

MONA is the Museum of Old and New Art in Hobart. We took the ferry to get there. You can pay more for the Posh Pit seating and enjoy champagne and coffee on the 25 minute trip each way. The coffee was in the morning. On the way back, we only drank champagne. The museum has lots of interesting art to accompany the architecture.

Our Tuesday excursion was to MONA – Museum of Old and New Art – in Hobart.  We took the 25-minute ride and then tackled the 99 steps UP from the dock to the museum.

MONA is an interesting art museum to say the least! One piece of art was a guy with tattoos as a piece of art.

Tuesday morning we left Hoabrt, after we picked up a car at the Avis office. We headed out of town after a few times around the block and around the round-about (The Google map lady is less than useful with 3 lanes of traffic heading into a roundabout.) on the way to Port Arthur Historic Site.  This is the site of a British prison for convicts in the 1800’s. It’s a large site and it’s easy to spend an entire day there with various talks and tours.

Port Arthur prison

Port Arthur Historical Site – one of the main prison buildings. The scenery looks a lot like West Virginia/Western Maryland minus the water. The roads are equally winding and hilly in places.

Until we arrived at the Historic Site, we thought the Port Arthur Shootings happened in the town of Port Arthur. The shootings that led to complete revamp of Australia’s gun laws happened at the little café on the Historic Site   Harry who’d we met at the Twilight Sail in Perth was at the Port Arthur Historic Site on the day of the shooting. He wanted wine with lunch and didn’t stay at the Café when they didn’t sell wine. This was the only reason he missed being at the shooting.  To celebrate and remember, he drinks a glass of wine very day for lunch.

After Port Arthur we retraced some of our path and then headed north to Launceston with a stop at Ross – 42 degree latitude marker, Wool Centre, Bridge built by convicts.  This part of Tasmania has very little traffic – more sheep than cars or people.

The bridge was built by convicts in Ross, a small country village. Ross sits on the 42nd parallel SOUTH of the equator.

Chocolate Factory sign

How could we not stop at the Chocolate Factory? Yes, we bought some.

Day 1 in Launceston had us driving to Low Head along the east side of the Tamar River to visit the Low Head lighthouse and Pilot Station.

Low Sound Lighthouse

Low Sound Lighthouse overlooking the Bass Strait. Penguins live near here but we didn’t see any during the day.

Mark and Susan

Another one of spectacular selfies – proof we made it to the Bass Strait.

We crossed the Tamar River and drove down to Green’s Beach to say we’ve been to the Bass Strait. The tide was out; the beach is deep and wide.

Wines for Joanie

On the way back to Launceston, we drove through some of the Tasmanian wine region and made a stop at Wines for Joanie since Susan’s Mom is Joan.

After 3 days in Launceston, I directed Mark on a different route to get back to Hobart to fly on to Melbourne.

Tasmanian Devil scuplture with suitcases

This sculpture is in the Hobart airport near luggage claim.

At the Hobart airport, Susan’s bags were swabbed for gun powder along with 2 other peoples’ bags – all using the same swab. What was the security lady going to do when it came back positive?  She’d used the swab on at least 8 different bags!

Fooling your Garmin Exercise tracker – method #2

We took a cruise ship from Sydney to Honolulu for 16 days, including doing April 21 twice.  We had plenty of time to make a few observations.  One of these life altering observations is you can fool your Garmin Fitness tracker on a ship just as well as you can on a rough road in India. Doing laps around the Promenade Deck of a cruise ship that’s moving will also make your Fitness tracker think you’ve walked up 10 flights of steps!

The scenery was a bit monotonous but the ship was much smoother than the safari vehicle.

Holland America MS Noordam

This is the MS Noordam, a Holland America cruise ship, sitting off shore in the South Pacific.

 

For the love of maps!

Parents … teach your children how to read a map, would you??  I love maps and am always the map reader on our trips. I’ve used AAA maps to navigate around the U.S.  We used a map in Japan to find our ryokan by counting the streets we passed since we couldn’t read Japanese.

I’ve used Michelin maps all over Europe to get us to small villages in France for the Tour de France.  We even have a shorthand of explaining how big a road is based on the colors used on Michelin maps – white road (really narrow, maybe one lane), yellow roads (has some minor route designation) and red roads (major route designation).  Paper maps have served us well.

Along came Google maps and my students all said “Why do I need to know how to read a map?  Google will tell me where to go.”   I use Google maps.  They saved our lives in Austin one evening when we could see the hotel but couldn’t figure out how to navigate the silly side roads all over the Texas interstates.

Yes, we used Google maps on this trip to help get around Tasmania and Western Australia.  I even let “The Voice” give directions.  However, being able to read a map helped me make a decision to NOT accept Google’s directions to drive through the middle of Perth at rush hour.  Google directions don’t do any good when you lose cell reception!  And the lady’s voice is less than useful when she says, “Head northeast from the parking lot” and you have no clue where north is.  Reading the map and making the left, right, or straight decision is a good skill to have!

Another reason to know how to read a map … in the middle of cities with lots of high rise buildings, GPS doesn’t work really well.  You need to be able to figure out which direction you’re walking.  You can turn around before you walk too far as soon as you find a cross street.

Reason #2 – You need to figure out which tram/bus goes where and which stop to get off.  All you have is the tram map to solve the problem because you have no cell reception.

Reason #3 – You’re on the “Amazing Race” and need to find the challenge.  If you watch the show, you’ll know how many teams have lost because neither of them could read a map!

Even if GPS is working, a few map problem-solving skills can be useful.  Ever come out of a subway stop that had 6 exits in the middle of the city and try to figure out even which side of the street you’re on?  Do I turn left, or do I turn right?  Being able to follow the Google blue dot as it moves comes in handy!

Mark and I must look like we know where we’re going on this trip.  Two ladies from Hong Kong asked for directions back to their hotel in Launceston, Tasmania.  Thanks heavens they knew the name of their hotel.  Google showed us the location of the hotel and we gave them simple directions.

Some college-age guy was standing at the cross walk in Melbourne looking confused and staring at his phone. He asked if we could tell him where Swanston Street is.  We told him to walk straight for 7 blocks and he’d be there.  His reply – “Best directions I’ve had all day!”

A week in Tasmania

We hadn’t made it to Tasmania on previous visits and we weren’t sure we’d make it this time!  Our flight was scheduled for Port Macquarie to Sydney to Hobart.  We got to the Port Macquarie Airport – very tiny airport – at 8:30 AM, dropped off our car, and discovered that the 10:10 flight was delayed to 11:00, to 12:00, to 12:25.  We finally boarded at 12:57. Needless to say, we missed our connection in Sydney.  I will say Virgin Atlantic was waiting at the gate to hand out new tickets to all the “missed flight” people. Now, we had a 3 hour wait for our new flight and that one was delayed by an hour.  We finally landed in Hobart about 10:15 PM. By the time we got the shuttle and were dropped off at the hotel, it was 11:05 PM.  No food open except the Domino’s Pizza down the street!  The pizza was pretty good .. or were we just really hungry?

Our Australian friends said we could have driven faster to Hobart if the Bass Strait wasn’t in the way.  This flight day was the worst of the whole trip so far. I guess we can’t complain!

sculpture of women prisoners in Hobart

This sculpture was on the waterfront where the convicts from England arrived. Some were women and children.

We found a police boat named for Mark. Wickham, Australia is way up in the northwest near Broome.

MONA ferry with champagne

MONA is the Museum of Old and New Art in Hobart. We took the ferry to get there. You can pay more for the Posh Pit seating and enjoy champagne and coffee on the 25 minute trip each way. The coffee was in the morning. On the way back, we only drank champagne. The museum has lots of interesting art to accompany the architecture.

After Hobart, we picked up a rental car and drove to Port Arthur Historical Site where many of the British convicts were imprisoned. The site is large and very interesting. There’s also a memorial for the people killed in the Port Arthur Shootings in 1996 that started the Australian gun reform laws.  We always thought the shootings were in the town but they happened in a cafe at the Historical Site.

One of the guys we met in Fremantle on the sailing evening always has a glass of wine with lunch.  It turns out he was at the Historical Site the day of the massacre. He stopped at the cafe but they didn’t serve wine and he wanted a glass of wine with lunch.  They went somewhere else that day, just missing the shootings.  A glass of wine saved his life so now he has one every day in thanks.

Port Arthur prison

Port Arthur Historical Site – one of the main prison buildings. The scenery looks a lot like West Virginia/Western Maryland minus the water. The roads are equally winding and hilly in places.

Tasmania water scenes

Views from the water of Tasmania around Port Arthur.

Launceston was the next stop on the road trip. It’s not far up to the north coast with lovely scenery along the way as well as a plethora of road construction.

Chocolate Factory sign

How could we not stop at the Chocolate Factory? Yes, we bought some.

Low Sound Lighthouse

Low Sound Lighthouse overlooking the Bass Strait. Penguins live near here but we didn’t see any during the day.

The bridge was built by convicts in Ross., a small country village. Ross sits on the 42nd parallel SOUTH of the equator.  Fort Collins is on the 40th parallel NORTH of the equator.

Mom’s name is Joan. When we saw a winery “Wines for Joanie”, we knew we had to stop and taste. Pretty good wine and the tasting room lady was an American/Australian lady raised in Tennessee.

These are the only Tasmanian Devils we saw along the way.

Tasmanian Devil warning sign

The creatures are nocturnal; hence, the warning signs along the roads. These go along with the koala, kangaroo, and wombat warning signs.

Tasmanian Devil scuplture with suitcases

This sculpture is in the Hobart airport near luggage claim.

Koalas and friends

Port Macquarie was one stop we made after a few days in Sydney.  Where is Port Macquarie, you ask?  It’s about a 4-hour drive north of Sydney or a one hour flight on a prop plane.  We opted for the prop plane and were met at the airport for the whole reason we added the city to our itinerary – Amy!

Amy was matched up with us through CSU’s International Friends program way back in 2001 when she spent a semester at CSU as an exchange student.  We showed her Rocky Mountain National Park and took her to packed sports bar for the first round of March Madness!  Now it was her turn to show us koalas and the beach and introduce us to her partner, Jacques, and her son, Levi.

Levi and Amy

Amy and Levi took good care of us!

Even though we hadn’t seen her since 2001, it seemed as if it were just yesterday and we caught up with all her adventures and life.  We had a great time!  I should mention that Amy introduced us a bit of Australian trash TV – “Married at First Sight” or MAFS.  They record the show (They can skip the commercials.  and after watching 5 episodes, we were hooked and watched it until the end to see what happened! It was good to learn that Americans aren’t the only people who will do anything to be on TV.

Port Macquarie beach

One of the city beaches in Port Macquarie. Amy took us for coffee along the beach.

A good time to visit is in the afternoon when the volunteers hand feed the patients.

Koala visiting a tree near the hospital.

This koala likes to visit a tree near the hospital. He’s not a patient!

Koala Sleeping leaning on a branch.

This guy was having a nice nap.

Koala sleeping in a tree

This little guy was at the Koala Hospital in Port Macquarie. Injured or sick koalas are treated here until they can be released. Some stay forever due to their injuries – blind, amputated limbs

North Haven Beach

North Haven Beach – a short little drive south of Port Macquarie. The beach was empty the afternoon we checked it out.

Snake warning sign

Snake signs seem to be everywhere we turned in Australia.

After our visit with Amy, we headed across town for a 2 day visit with Sonya and Graham and Hollie, the cocker spaniel.  We met Graham and Sonya in Split, Croatia, and when they found out we actually had Port Mac on the agenda, we got a lovely invite to spend a few days with them.  Sonya and Graham took us to do some wine tasting and beer tasting and introduced us to a delicious Australian sparkling wine.  Hollie, the cocker spaniel, was a good hostess, too.  She was more than willing to let us pet her as long as we wanted!

We wanted to fix everyone Mexican dinner while we visited.  Our first plan was chicken enchilada casserole with green enchilada sauce.  We moved to Plan B when we couldn’t find any green enchilada (or red!) sauce.  The Plan B fajitas were a success!

Burge Sparkling wine

Burge Sparkling wine – yummy! Thanks, Sonya, for introducing us.

hollie Graham Mark Sonya

Hollie, Graham, Hollie and Sonya – friends in Port Macquarie