Things to do in Melbourne when you're dead tired.

Back from Tasmania. The ferry departed at about 4.30pm on Saturday. We once again took advantage of the 'Teen Lounge/Galactica' video game and pinball machines, noticing that (a) Teenagers of Today have no concept how to play pinball and (b) pinball machines on ships don't have their tilt sensors activated at all!

So we had dinner at 6.30, read a bit, and went to bed... for the ferry was scheduled to dock in Melbourne about 5:00am. yawn You couldn't sleep much past 3am anyway, since they kept on announcing 'Breakfast is now served in the Promenade …

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We don't care... we don't have to!

Grrr. My ISP, Telstra BigPond, has a very interesting ISP dialin number. There's only one number for all of Australia, and it's charged at the price of a local call (80 cents typically). Makes it handy.

Telstra, being the national telco company and holding a pretty good monopoly on local phone service, pulled this off by creating their very own special area code: 01.

Irritatingly enough, though, some PBX's can't handle this funky new-and-Telstra BigPond ISP number at all. Like the PBX that's in this rather dingy apartment we've rented for the week in Melbourne.

So... hee hee, I dusted …

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Strahan, Tasmania

Wet and cool. Chris and I took a cruise up the Gordon River into the rainforest. It was misty and mountainous; reminded me of pictures of China's Three Gorges. Cruise was OK, but at 5 1/2 hours it was about 1 1/2 hours too long.

The best part of the cruise was right at the beginning: when we went out of Macquarie Harbour into the ocean through the 60m gap called Devil's Gate. The tide was going out, and we glided out. into the Southern Ocean. Out in the Southern Ocean a couple of miles, a pod of …

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Oatlands to Strahan, Tasmania

Breakfast at the Oatlands Lodge was quick, we then headed out on the road across the Central Highlands, following a route described in the big "Explore Australia by Four Wheel Drive", a big bible of a book we picked up somewhere in Sydney.

Interlaken was our first stop; it looked like a town between two lakes and I had vague visions of a Swiss like village. Sorry, no. It was in high grazing country, with sparse eucalypts and fields, the village was no more than a few sheds and some battered weatherboard houses. What's more is that one of the …

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Sunny Hobart

Bright sunny day in Hobart. Went to the Saturday Salmanaca Market... a big open air market mercifully not hempen-clad and patchouli-soused. Old book sellers, farmers with end-of-summer produce, woodworkers, a ginger beer homebrewer (yum), small garden stuff, etc.

You can click here and see a generic postcard picture... and play 'where's Chris' in the crowd.

I bought seeds, which are just about the only thing I can bring back to the US, plant wise. Here's what I bought: Christmas Bells (Blandfordia punicea), Kangaroo Paw (red and green, Anigozanthos manglesii), leatherwood (Eucryphia lucida), black coral pea (Kennedia nigricans), Celery Top Pine …

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New Caledonia in a month

Going to New Caledonia for a week in late April.

Gotta leave the country (for visa reasons) every six months... this was the cheapest option, as all the good deals to Bali were all taken up since it's school holidays in New South Wales... and with our road trips to Cape York and the Kimberly, it'd be rough to do it in May or June.

We want to see Bali anyway; figure we'll do that in October from Perth. For some curious reason, it's cheaper to fly to Bali from Perth than it is from Sydney or anywhere else in …

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Very Random Notes

A collection of stuff I've found interesting.

- People here tend not to clean their tables--even at places like McDonald's, only a few people will actually throw away their trash. Most folks just leave it on the table behind them.
- Recycling bins are few and far between--almost everything ends up in one bin.
- Restaurant service can be interesting--often you'll have one person take the order, some one else serve your food, and some one else ask you if you'd like another drink with your meal. Sometimes you pay the server, but most of the time you just walk to the cashier …

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Carnal Pleasure

One surprising thing about Tasmania is the amount of roadkill. Traveling at a nominal 80kph/50mph, you pass one dead mammal about every 20 to 30 seconds on any of the highways here--anything from the size of a cat (possums, quolls, pademelons) up to dog sized (wombats) and big dog sized (wallabies). What makes it all the more interesting is that Tasmanian devils come out at night to scavenge the road kill. They're carnivore scavengers, and often four or six of them fight over the carcass at once, though you never see it since it's usually really late at night …

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She'll be alright, mate

I’m not sure I like it here. Sure, there’s the landscape, and the wonderful animals and plants, but the overall culture is very odd. There are three attributes that just don’t feel right to me. This has been kicking around for a few weeks in my head; here they are.

Tentativeness: Aussies are always comparing themselves to others; you get the feeling that most of the country would live somewhere else, like Tuscany or California or London. They don’t have any connection to the physical country; most of those whom I’ve met can’t figure …

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How to speak like an Aussie in two easy steps

1. Use a Californian accent. Valley or Los Angeles suburb accent is OK.
2. End your sentences like you would a question. "I took the ferry to Tasmania? And then went on some caving, with a good tour guide--she was all right? We saw some really great caves, and neat stuff? It was really great?!?" Many people from California already speak this way to begin with, and if you don't you can easily adapt.

And you're there. Really. Scary.

No wonder that Russel thinks that Rachel Griffiths in Six Feet Under sounds Australian. She speaks with a California accent--specifically southern …

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In Launceston

In Launceston, Tasmania. Finding that Tasmania is not just home to a Warner Brothers cartoon character.

Drove from Sydney to Melbourne with an overnight stop in Wangaratta, Victoria. It's about a nine hour drive straight through. Wangaratta was a nice, neat, country town, in a wine and ranching region near Milawa. There were very good restaurants there, but we ate at the doner kebab place.

Melbourne, on Friday, was a quick blow through--though we stopped at 'the biggest Kmart in the Southern Hemisphere' in Campbellfield on the north side of Melbourne. It was... well, big. Note to North Americans: Kmart …

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Stain

When I told my Mom I was coming to Australia, she said 'oh, you have to look up when and where your great-great-grandfather was born--it was Melbourne, but I don't know exactly where or on what date' She's a genealogy nut. So after five hours or so in the New South Wales state library, I found out he was born in Singleton in December 1848 to one Samuel Bassett and Mary Malloy, married three years earlier in west Maitland. Not anywhere near Melbourne, which wasn't really a viable settlement in the 1840's anyway!

Hm... so I wondered, what was this …

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Hm.

Yet another cloudy overcast day. In the twelve days we've spent in Sydney so far this month, we've had a day and a half of sun. This is not my idea of summer.

Went to the Bear Essentials Evening Lapse. Strangely enough... I got bored, and told Chris--"this is a great setting; there's free drinks and finger foods... but... I'm bored. This is the third night with this same group of people."

Maybe I should've drunk more (I had a single beer when I arrived). Maybe I should've just made more effort. Blech. Whatever. I just haven't been able …

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Shopping

Went shopping today. After a quick check of mail, the first stop was the Virgin store, for Chris' mobile phone.

Second was Gowing's. Oh, my, this is the store for guys. It's guy stuff, just stuffed with stuff. If guys could do department stores, this would be it. Clothing, and adventure books, and gadgets, and camping gear, and etc etc etc. It's like Men's Health magazine come to life (without the Chivas ads). "All the gear you need to raft down the Amazon in drip-dry style, and still enjoy a cuppa tea in the morn and a semi-fancypants dinner."

Then …

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Today's festivities

I wish Sydney weather would make up its mind about what season it is! Yesterday at 10am it was cloudy and drizzly, yet still 20C/68F. It cleared up in the afternoon for the pool party, though :-). Alan and Bill threw a great party, I enjoyed myself quite a bit just hanging out and chatting.

This morning, though, it was cloudy and grey. After a bit of dithering, we finally decided to get Mardi Gras tickets today, so we called the Mardi Gras folks, then hopped a train to their headquarters in Erskineville where a very woofy redbear named Ross …

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