Our 12 month holiday....: February 2013

So after the excitement of the tennis and spending a day wandering around Melbourne, we got a flight across to Hobart to see what Tasmania is all about and to see if it's really any different from the mainland. In short, it is (a bit). It turns out Tasmania does have a slightly English feel to it, with some slightly greener rolling hills and roads that are quite narrow in the rural areas. The people here also seem a tad friendlier that some of the places we've experienced in Australia.

We spent the first few days on the outskirts of Hobart and went for a few drives in the local area. We popped to Mount Field National Park and looked at a couple of nice waterfalls, took a drive around the Tasman Peninsula which was OK, but probably the most interesting thing was seeing the towns that had been hit hard by bush fires a few weeks earlier. Sounds a bit weird calling it interesting, but it really was. The devastation was quite incredible - charred remains of hundreds of acres of forest and peoples houses just gone with only a pile of ash, twisted tin and the odd brick chimney breast left of many homes. Some people are now living in tents or caravans on their land - it was really sad to see. It was quite odd though that only certain houses were affected - you could get 3 houses in a row and one was completely burnt down but the neighbours untouched.

Mount Field National Park

Part of a fence destroyed in the bush fire

Remains of a home

On a lighter note, we spent an evening on a private nocturnal tour of the Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary where they have some permanent residents and some which are being
rehabilitated for release back into the wild. We got to hand feed a number of different Australian animals including Kangaroos, Fidget the albino possum, tawny frog-mouthed owls (Rob was most impressed with their camouflage) and one we'll never forget was the Tasmanian devil. These little critters have a seriously strong jaw and really won't give up on food once they've got hold - it was a right tug of war! Lisa got to hold a young wombat in his blanket and she really didn't want to give Trooper back! We absolutely loved the whole experience.

Us with Bert!

Just fed the kangaroos

Fidget, the albino possum

Trooper

Feeding the tassie devils!

Tawny frog-mouthed owls

Next was onto the east coast stopping at Freycinet National Park where we went on a steep hike to get an elevated view of Wineglass Bay which is one of the bigger tourist attractions in Tasmania. It was a good view when we got to the top but Rob was disappointed that the view was not what 90% of what the publicity photos portray. The photos don't mention that they are taken from a completely different viewpoint in order to see the "wineglass" shape and frankly we didn't have time or energy to climb a mountain just to get that view!

Wineglass bay

Bay of fires

Pyengana falls was a good little trip out and the main attraction was OK, but there was actually a nicer forest cascade earlier in the walk. We did get to see our first snake though curled up on the rocks near the falls - have no idea what kind of snake it was, but we didn't go all Steve Irwin (you know how he finished up!) and left it well alone.

Cascades leading to Pyengana falls

We think maybe a tiger snake?

We then basically followed the main loop road round Tassie popping in to a few places along the way like Launceston, Strahan and Cradle Mountain National Park. Sadly for much of the last few days on the west coast, the weather really wasn't playing ball and turned out to be a bit bleak really, meaning that many of the things to see were a bit of an anti-climax (like Cradle Mountain that you couldn't actually see on the day).

Dip falls

Our last few days in Australia were spent near Hobart again. There wasn't too much to rave about in Hobart really - seemed OK, but nothing special. There was a good lookout up Mount Wellington that gave a good view over the general area, but that was about it. On the penultimate day we visited a nice little village called Richmond which was pretty much as English as a village could be. The weather was good, it was very picturesque with its nice brick bridge and river and it also gave Lisa a chance to buy some souvenirs to help add to our already burgeoning luggage!

Richmond - could be in England

So that was Australia. We were here a few weeks longer than we expected - to be honest, it was probably too long. For us it didn't have the cliched "wow factor" that we got when we first visited in 2009 and this time we actually found a lot of the Australians a bit rude and somewhat arrogant - not sure why, but we found that happening more often than not. That said, there have been quite a few highlights and wonderful memories that we'll take with us like our time in the camper van in the outback, the slower pace of life on Kangaroo Island, New Years Eve in Sydney and the tennis to name a few.

I guess the main issue for us is that Australia is just too big. We have covered thousands and thousands of miles (10,476 to be precise) over about 10 weeks and the reality is, if the main sights and places to visit were in a much smaller area, you could probably do it all in under half the time. Maybe we're just being a bit picky, but we feel we've now "done" Australia and its not a place we'll be rushing back to in the near future.

Moving on, we're excited to be heading to Hawaii (I know we've been so slack that by the time this is published we'll already be there). Not exactly sure what to expect, but we're hoping for good things. Until the next time...

As you know, the main reason for going to Melbourne was the tennis and we were really looking forward to our two full days watching the quarter finals (daytime and evening sessions) at the Rod Laver arena.

Our schedule was:

Day One
Agnieszka Radwanska vs Li Na
David Ferrer vs Nicholas Almagro
Maria Sharapova vs Ekaterina Makarova
Novak Djokovic vs Tomas Berdych

Day Two
Victoria Azarenka vs Svetlana Kuznetsova
Sloane Stephens vs Serena Williams
Andy Murray vs Jeremy Chardy
Roger Federer vs Jo-Wilfried Tsonga

As neither of us had been to any live tennis matches before, this was a completely new experience and we both thoroughly enjoyed it. It's fair to say that some of the matches were better than others - and a couple of them were a bit dull (and guess what, one of the those involved Andy Murray!). That said, the dullest was Sharapova vs Makarova, where Lisa became more obsessed with clocking Sharapova's OCDs - there are so many it's ridiculous and it seems to take her forever to serve.

The best match by far was Federer verses Tsonga. Not only because the great man was playing, but it was a real 5 set rollercoaster as the match swung one way, then the other.

The atmosphere in the stadium was also brilliant and it was doubly entertaining as we had a family of Indians sitting behind us giving us their take on almost every point about what was going to happen next! The match went on for quite a while and Rob was so pleased he got to see Roger for such a long time!

All in all we we had a couple of really good days and apart from frying nicely in the sun a bit too much, we'd definitely do it again.