S 42.52.58 E 147.19.49 Final days in Tasmania and some thoughts about our travels in Australia

We spent a few days exploring Hobart before heading "across the ditch" to New Zealand. Our hostel was just out of the CBD so we could walk to the Harbour and surrounding area.  Here's a few photos of our time.

In and around Launceston

Legal opium poppies
Tasmania grows the majority of legal opium for the manufacture
of morphine and codeine.

The owner of this little store also was a world class sand sculpturor.
This fantastic dragon was in the front window.

Cornerstone for our hostel - which had always been a hostel.
First for the Presbyterian Church to house new Scottish immigrants and then
for the local school of nursing.

Hobart: Checking out the Harbour area

Everything seems to center around the harbour.  Museums, markets, restaurants, tours... You name it, you can find it here.  Hobart prides itself on the fact that it was the second (only to Sydney) settlement in Australia, and not founded on convict labour.

Traditional Aboriginal Canoe.
Made of grass.

Yet one more of the odd animals you find downunder.
This little fellow could walk up onto land.

Franklin River rafting connection.  The first boats were
hand made and based on "Canadian Canoe" designs.

Tiger snake in the museum.  Poisonous, of course.  On the mainland,
they do have orange stripes but on Tasmania they are
black.

One of the temporary displays were photographs of MSF projects.

Tea was quite the production.

There were very few Christmas decorations around, but
this reindeer was pretty cool.  Made of local wood.

As was this huge fish hanging from the ceiling of a restaurant 

We were seated just behind this fellow.  Sadly, the food
did not live up to the decor.

Salamanca Market.  I fell in love with these cool
emu prints.  The artist actually had spent time in Alberta.
Small worlds.

And here's the cards I bought.

Bruny Island Cruise

Last time we were here, we had a fantastic time on a cruise around Tasman Island (just a bit to the east, near Port Arthur) with this company, so we were looking forward to checking out this bit of ocean with the same company.  Bruny Island is sort of south of Hobart.  As a girl from the prairies, I'm easy to impress when it comes to oceans and sealife.  This did not disappoint.  Mind you, the crowds of people were a bit trying.

Yes, we saw a humpback whale.
 They were about two weeks late leaving the area to head to the antarctic.
The setup of the boat made photos difficult as we couldn't move around.

Australian fur seals.  This is a colony of bachelors.
In mating season, they travel up to the north of Tasmania where
the ladies and babies live.

This is actually where Captain Cook first landed in Australia.
Bligh came back three more times. It was a good place
to collect fresh water.

Climbing (down) Mt. Wellington

Our last day in Hobart, we took a bus up to the top of Mt. Wellington and then hiked down.  It was a great sunny day and after the first bit (steep, loose rocks...) the path was pretty easy.  Only got lost once when I didn't notice a sign.  Interesting piece of trivia - when Charles Darwin visited Hobart, he climbed to the top - it only took him two days.

One of the major events that everybody in Tasmania has memories of is a major fire in 1967 that came to within a few hundred meters of burning Hobart (homes in the suburbs did burn).  The hillside of Mt. Wellington is gloriously green, except for white ghostlike tree trunks.  The story is that the fire was so hot and moving so quickly that it killed the tall mature trees but they didn't burn.

One of the trees that was killed in the 1967 fires
but wasn't burned

We watched this little fellow for about 10 minutes.
He practically walked up to me and took his own picture.
This is what an echidna looks like.

Tasmania has wallabys but no kangaroos

The quilter in me thought this moss/lichen deserved a photo

Thoughts on revisiting Australia

Last time we visited Australia, it was our first big adventure.  Everything was new and different and that experience certainly encouraged me to plan more adventures.  This time, we are five years more experienced as travelers, including just spending six months overlanding through Asia.  Looking back on the 11 weeks we spent in Australia, it was an interesting contradiction for me.  In some ways, I expected Australia to be like Canada and in some ways I expected it to be more exotic.  Neither was the case, of course.  

It was frustrating to deal with internet that was expensive and inconsistent, or just not available, but that is what is available in Western Australia. Food and services were much more expensive than Canada (and horridly more expensive than Asia).  It took some time to get perspective and just accept where we were.  The other thing was, Australia isn't as new and exciting and exotic as I remember - instead, we kept talking with Australians about the similarities and shared experiences between our two countries.

I'm glad we came back to Australia to visit the places we missed last time and to revisit some of our favourites.  Yes,there are things we have yet to experience, but I don't feel the need to come back as a tourist.  Could I, perhaps, live in Australia?  Certainly, it is a lovely place that feels almost, but not quite, like home. 

Next stop, New Zealand.

Journal Quilting through Australia

We arrived in Darwin on October 8 and flew out of Hobart almost 11 weeks later.  Along the way, I’ve created seven quilt squares.  Some of the pieces of the journey were over a week but could best be represented with only one square.  And, to be honest, the days were long with interesting things to do.  Some of these squares are made of “returning fabrics” – things I bought when we were here in 2009 that have patiently waited in my stash for an opportunity.  Then there are the found items (shells mostly), random purchases and even a couple of fabric shop finds.  Plus one special gift.

Here's an earlier photo of the whole quilt.
Add Malaysia, and my seven squares from Australia and
my quilt is getting closer to the end of its journey.

Darwin

The background fabric is one I purchased at the Saturday market on The Rocks in Sidney on our almost last day before flying to Tasmania.  This fellow had a booth with fabric he had designed and had produced in China.  I loved the colours and the feel of the fabric so bought some bits.  Later I wished I had bought more because I didn’t really have enough to make a quilt, although there are some bits in my Down Under Advent Calendar.  The logo is the Qantas kangaroo, copied from a coffee cup I saved from our flight over in 2009 with intentions to use it much sooner.  The background quilting is with “Kimberley Dreaming” silk thread, as that is certainly what was on my mind while visiting Darwin.
(The fellow who was selling the fabric is Reece Scannell, an internationally known textile designer.)

Darwin to Perth

Almost four weeks travelling down the west side of Australia through areas that few people get to see was fascinating (Read about the trip here).  One the west side of the square is the ocean where we snorkelled, fished, watched the ever changing waves... as I’ve been saying to people who ask, “I’m a land locked prairie girl and am easily impressed by the ocean”.  It was knitted on chopsticks from hand dyed (by me in Laos) silk thread.  The plan had been to crochet this, but my hook found its way under the floor at the hostel in Coral Bay.  The land side is fabric dyed with the red dirt of the Kimberleys.  The Aboriginal rock paintings were done with dirt mixed with water, grease, or animal blood, so I guessed it might work – and it certainly did.  Seashells harvested from our visits to the many beaches along the Ningaloo reef will adorn the edge of the water, but they are too fragile to travel for the next four months attached to the quilt.

Perth

We were in Perth for ten days during which I completed/planned two more squares. One day, I visited The Thread Studio to pick up dyes, fabric and some extra bits.  This square has as a background some of that “painted for the back of the quilt” fabric.  Flowers on the front are a mixture of our Remembrance Day Poppies (quite different than the Canadian poppies) and some hand painted flowers to represent the ever present frangipani (white with a wee touch of bright yellow at the center) as well as the desert roses that we saw.

The second square I completed is another of those “returning fabrics”.  The day we were leaving Alice Springs in 2009, I found the fabric store – looking for a safety pin to fix something, I believe.  I didn’t really buy any fabric (thinking that there would be lots of other places to buy aboriginal fabric) but I did buy a scarf that I placed around the brim of my hat.  It’s been there and traveled with me over the last five years gaining a patina of experiences (Meaning it’s gotten dirty, faded some and been washed dozens of times).  This is my outback square, quilted with some Kimberley Dreaming thread (this time hand dyed for the Thread Studio).  On its way home is an emu feather from the Thread Studio as well as a perfect shell from Rottnest Island to embellish it.

Perth to Melbourne

Across the Nullarbor we travelled with Scotty and his partner Jaz to Adelaide then a quick three days with Steve to Melbourne.  I knew what I wanted to do but didn’t have a minute of time to even begin this square until our time in Melbourne.  The blue ocean fabric, curved to suggest the Great Australian Bight, was a find in Esperance.  To my delight, there was a quilt shop (actually called a craft shop) between where we had coffee and where we were being picked up to continue our journey.  I also found fabric for another square as well as some embellishments for my Christmas square AND a replacement crochet hook.  The land background is another bit of Reece Scannell fabric.  The little islands of plant life on the desert sands were created with a backing of hemp (left over from a shirt I bought in Kolkata and adjusted before wearing), stuffed with some New Zealand foot fleece and then intensely embroidered with assorted wool and silk threads.  There will be shells added to the waterline when we get home.
This square also contains a gift from Jaz who seemed very touched that I had asked her to sign my quilt (more on that), seeing as she was an unofficial member of the trip.  A wee special rock that she had made into a necklace which was too small to slip over her head winds its way along the water and up the right hand edge of the square.

Franklin River Rafting

In 2006, just after my first impulsive whitewater rafting on the Kicking Horse River in Canada,  I purchased a “Life is Good”  tshirt in my favourite colour with a happy rafter on the front.  It’s been worn and worn and worn (including on every rafting trip since) and for the last year had started to develop holes as well as worn bits and fading spots.  It was worn one last time (for the first four days), then spread out on a rock for everybody to sign when we had our rest day at Newland’s Cascades. The embellishment is a skipping rock from one of the beaches we stayed at where the guys all demonstrated their rock skipping skills.  Apparently, cricket improves your ability to skip rocks...at least that is what Jack said.

Hobart

This fabric was found in Esperance and is about the only fabric I’ve seen in Australia with an Aussie theme (all the flowers are native to Australia) and I’m thinking of this as my planning for Christmas square.  The quilting thread is from a little store in Launceston (where I also found a number of lovely Aussie quilting/embroidery patterns) and the outline is of three blue gum leaves that I picked up heading out to the Bruny Island cruise.  The location was near where Captain Cook first landed in Tasmania (and so did Captain Bligh not once but four times). I went looking for beads at the Salamanca market, but instead found some intriguing wooden buttons “Made in Tasmania”.

And, the lovely Christmas Tree bead that I found in Launceston for the
Advent Calendar, then lost when it fell down off the window, then found again on
Boxing Day in the very bottom of a backpack.

“Please will you sign my quilt”

Since the beginning I’ve been asking people that I have traveled with to sign my quilt.  I had thought that what I would get was a signature but instead most people have taken the time to think about what they want to contribute to this fabric journal of mine.  I have been truly honoured by the time taken and the respect given. Here’s some examples (including a quote in Irish Gaelic about travel).  Perhaps the most precious note is from Jaz, who initially thought she didn’t deserve to sign it because she wasn’t exactly an official part of the Perth to Adelaide trip.  She carefully passed on news that she and Scotty had just learned and my only regret is that I did not read it carefully before we parted ways.  It was an honour and a pleasure to travel with you, Jaz.