Thursday, October 19, 2006

Tassie Travels

Last weekend, we spent a 4 day long weekend in Tasmania. We had a few chores to for for Greg's mum, but managed to fit in some touring around, visiting the locals, eating well and even playing a spot of (mini) golf.

Our original intention had been to head down the west coast of Tasmania but time wouldn't have allowed us to do justice to that beautiful part of the island so we made a tour around Cradle Mountain (without going up the Mountain!) We stopped for lunch at this quaint place on the shores of Lake Barrington. Everything was a bit kooky!

Then we headed up the hills and down the other side to Mole Creek, to the the wildlife park that is also the research centre into the endangered species, the Tasmanian Devil. The Tassie Devil is a carniverous marsupial more like a cat than anything as scary sounding as a devil. In fact, when I patted one, it even felt like a cat along it's back! The Tassie Devils in the wild are being affected by disease so this park has a breeding program to successfully breed disease-free tassie devils and release them to the wild to try and improve the population. It was fascinating to watch them eat - although it looks like they are fighting each other for the food, this isa ctually how they bite off bit to eat - they rely on each other to put pressure from the other side on the meat so they don't have to hang onto it.














A few miles down the road we spotted a salmon farm, and loving salmon in all forms as we do, we turned in (plus the advertisement for coffee was enticing enough for Tracey!) . Run by a French couple the 41 degrees farm http://www.41south-aquaculture.com/ farms salmon and ginseng and the salmon. We got to feed the salmon (another fasciating experience - they are almost as ferocious with their food as the Tassie devils!) and taste some of their hot-smoked salmon (highly recommended) and we even managed to have our afternoon coffee!

On the way back, I got to enjoy more stunning Tassie scenery such as this:

On Monday, we played a round of mini-golf (Greg won - as usual!) with Greg's mum before we had a lovely lunch together, headed into town for some shopping, and then back to back up the ute before Greg boarded the boat for the overnight trip to Melbourne and I got the plane for the quick 55 minute flight back to Melbourne (yep - we're like royalty, can't travel together!)

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Welcome to our blog! And how it came to be!



Over a beer one night this week, a friend suggested I needed a blog so he (and presumably others!) could keep up with my life! As all good ideas are spawned over a drink or three, here t'is!