Untethered

 Hello everyone!  We've managed to find our way back to civilization after touring Tasmania for the past 3 weeks. It was a great trip that took us to the west coast of Tasmania through beautiful rolling country side and mountains.  Along the way, we stopped at Cradle Mountain National Park, a famous and very busy Tramping (backpacking) area.  Tramping is a very popular sport here and we've found backpackers of every age on our many hikes. Cradle Mountain Streams trickled everywhere in the area. We spent a few nights in Strahan which is a small western coastal city situated on a massive harbor which is so protected, it appears to be more of a lake than an ocean harbor.  We had fun on the Wilderness Rail Journey which took us up and across some incredible country and enjoyed the history lesson shared by the train tour guide. Macquarie Harbour West Coast Wilderness Railway Views from the train were fabulous! Our next road trip to...

Per our last blog, we've been touring through Tasmania for the past few weeks.  It is an island state of Australia about the same size as West Virginia.  Filled with rolling hills, forests and to our surprise, lots of mountains, it is surrounded by the Tasman Sea and the Southern Ocean with Antarctica sitting a mere 1,600 miles to the south.  Originally known as Van Diemen's land (anyone remember U2?), Tasmania has a dark history.  I'll share more about that in a later post. We began our Tasmania adventure in Lanceston, a beautiful small city which sits on a river with mountains in the background. The houses are built up into the hill sides in a way that reminded us of Sicily, but the architecture is distinctly Aussie.  Most of the homes and store fronts in Lanceston are listed as heritage structures so the face of the community has remained essentially unchanged since the 1800's. Living on the Tamar River One of the old mansions overlooking the riv...

Hosting 5M+ people, Melbourne is the largest city we've visited in Australia.  It is an eclectic mishmash of old and new filled with ample amounts of refurbishment as well as new construction.  We counted no fewer than a dozen high rise cranes on the sky line of the central business district and found more outside of downtown proper. New buildings on the horizon At it's core, Melbourne is old, founded in 1835 and serves as the capital for the state of Victoria.  Flinder's Station is a magnificent example of Melbourne's architecture.  You will note that there are cables crisscrossing the junction.  Trams and trains navigate the streets alongside cars, bicycles and pedestrians.  Melbourne boasts to have the oldest tram system in all of Australia. Flinder's Station is Australia's oldest rail station Driving in this town is not for the faint of heart. Add big city traffic, the array of vehicle types plus driving on the left hand sid...

The Otway National Park hugs the coastline of the Tasman sea along the Great Ocean Drive.  It contains a rain forest which surprised and delighted us.  It is different than the type of forest we found in Queensland, but still filled with biodiversity and lots of water falls.  Koala bears nosh on the eucalyptus trees found in this forest and were quite numerous.  You could always tell when a Koala bear had been spotted along the road with cars parked every which way and people taking photos.  Koala bears don't seem to mind people gawking at them as they are usually high up in the tree snoozing.  In fact Koala bears sleep between 18-22 hours of each day so we have rarely seen them awake.  The reason they sleep so much is that their diet of eucalyptus leaves requires hours and hours to digest while providing very little energy in exchange. Fern Trees reach 15 feet or more Great to see waterfalls that had water running over them again! Thes...

We drove the Great Ocean Drive of Victoria, Australia and found it to be one of the most beautiful ocean drives we've seen anywhere in the world.  This blog is going to be mostly pictures because there were so many gorgeous views along the way.  The rock statues are created by water/ocean erosion of the limestone over millions of years.  In the first two pictures, you see the limestone stacks that are known as the 12 Apostles.  The ocean here is called the Tasman Sea.  It creates some amazing waves making it a surfer's mecca.  It is definitely a full body wetsuit sport with 60 F water temperatures!  Definitely too chilly for us to be splashing in for sure. If you ever plan to visit Australia, the Great Ocean Drive is a definite for your bucket list.  You can reach the area by flying into Melbourne and then driving about 1 hour out of the city.  The drive pretty much hugs the coastline the entire way so give yourse...