I decided to write a post, but I'm not really sure what to say.

I'm getting very fed up with not having 'real' internet.  I would really like to Skype with some people!  It should FINALLY be installed tomorrow - or maybe Monday at the latest?  What am I saying...really, the way this company works we'll be lucky to have it by March!

Social life in Adelaide seems good.  Everything is much easier than when we moved to Brisbane.  I'm not sure why that is?  I'm not complaining though!  This weekend Jeremy has a cover shift Friday (so he does his normal 9-5 and then the cover shift is from 5 to 9 pm).  We thought this might be a good opportunity to have a relaxing Friday night and then get up early and check out some of the hiking in the Adelaide area.  I WILL WEAR PROPER SHOES THIS TIME!!! :)  We have a breakfast date on Sunday with a girl from the hospital at a place called "The Loose Caboose".  Hehe.  This week has been busy as well...Tuesday I crashed an RMO (Resident Medical Officer) event at the Woodville Hotel (pub down the road from our house).  Free drinks and free food!  I wonder how much longer I can sneak myself into these things...Wednesday we went to trivia and didn't come in last, and tonight we're going to a "bring a plate" (ie potluck) dinner at an intern's house.

I also just found out EXCITING NEWS - My friend Nicole is coming to Adelaide in March for a professional development course!!  Super cool.  Hopefully it is on a Friday or Monday so she can come for the whoooooole weekend, and maybe even bring her hubby! 

Well, I guess that's it.  Not much else happening around here. A bientot!

Australia Day, Natural Disasters, Job Hunting

I'm not sure how much it has been on the news in North America, but my TV here has definitely been tuned to the news channels over the last few days.  Why?  Queensland and NSW have been hit by a 'super-storm' caused by ex-tropical cyclone Oswald two years after the floods we went through.  It isn't as bad as the 2011 floods, but some people are definitely being flooded AGAIN.  I can't even imagine.  Bundaberg sounds like it has been the worst hit in Queensland - people are being rescued off roofs and they have evacuated their hospital.  Jeremy could have easily ended up there and was actually offered an interview for a spot there.  Despite the fact that if we had gone there, I could easily have transferred to another job within Education Queensland, I have to say that I would absolutely not want to be there now.  Here are a couple of pictures from the floods:

From yahoo: Townships along Australia's east coast were buried under up to four feet of sea foam today as the waves were whipped up into a frothy messy by powerful winds from Tropical Cyclone Oswald.

Similar to what happened in Scotland back in September, this ocean 'spume' is caused when strong winds mix air into the waves, and mucus from tiny plants floating in the surface layer of the ocean, called phytoplankton, is whipped up into a meringue-like foam.

An aerial view of Bundaberg.

In more pleasant news, Lisa came for a visit over the Australia Day long weekend.  She discovered an Australia Day event called the "Havaianas Thong Challenge" being held at various beaches across the country and encouraged me to attend the one at Glenelg Beach.  (Note: PLEASE replace "thong" with flip-flop when you are reading this paragraph!)  Jeremy was actually working a 10 hour shift on Australia Day, so I half jokingly suggested that she just fly down and accompany me.  Lo and behold, the next day she had bought a plane ticket!  She arrived Friday morning and over the next few days we proceeded to: drive into the Adelaide Hills, have a chocolate and wine pairing tasting at Hahndorf Hills Winery, eat lunch at a cheese factory in Hahndorf, go see the biggest rocking horse in the world, have a delicious dumpling dinner at Dumpling King, go to the Adelaide central markets, be part of the Havaianas Thong Challenge and each take home a giant inflatable thong, go to two Australia Day BBQ/parties, have a 3 hour brunch with some of Jeremy's coworkers, have an antipasto dinner with the same coworkers, AND go to the factory outlet mall before dropping her off at the airport. 

We monitored the news about the weather/flooding in QLD quite carefully as Lisa was flying back into that area.  Her flight was delayed by a few hours, but she did make it to Brisbane safely.  Getting back to Hervey Bay, however, was a different story.  The Bruce Highway, which is basically the only way back (Hervey Bay is about 4 hours north of Brisbane) is known for flooding and was closed in a few areas.  Instead of driving back, she got to stay over at Jules' house and hang out with Jules and little Billy T - I miss them!!!  Lisa texted me this morning to tell me that Billy looked at her toes (painted a similar shade to mine) and said "Ana's toes!!"  He remembered the colour of my toes!!  Ah, so cute!!!  Hopefully Lisa does make it home today.  I was super happy to have her and it was a fabulous weekend.

Jon hunting = nothing yet.  apply, apply, apply.

SCORCHER

That's right - it is 42 degrees!  I am enjoying this crazy hot day from the comfort of my air conditioned living room.  I did venture out a little while ago, to the equally air conditioned gym, and outside feels like a heater on full blast just blowing right at you.  When I was done in the gym, I got back in the car and since there were no covered parking spaces, it was an inferno!  I was burning my hands on the steering wheel as I tried to manoeuvre my way out of the 'car park'.  My plan for today was to go into the city and explore, but I think I can safely put that off until tomorrow when it will be a much more reasonable 26 degrees. 

Jeremy is in full swing of being an intern and seems to be enjoying his psych rotation.  I met some of his fellow interns Friday night and also last night at different events.  They were really friendly and fun, so I'm happy about that.  Also, the other intern starting on psych (Lara) invited us over last Sunday for lunch with her and her boyfriend.  They made a delicious roast and everything was really fancy...they have a beautiful place.  Her boyfriend Sam's dad is in a famous Australian band called "The Angels":

The Angels are an innovative Australian rock band that formed in Adelaide, Australia in 1974. The band later relocated from Adelaide to Sydney and enjoyed huge local success, clocking up hit singles across four decades, including No Secrets, Marseilles, Long Line, Mr Damage, Let The Night Roll On and Waiting For The Sun.  The Angels have been cited by bands like Guns N' Roses, and a number of Seattle grunge bands, including Pearl Jam and Nirvana, as having influenced their music.

They are touring this year, but their bassist is ill so Sam will be taking his place!  

The job hunt continues and I am trying not to feel too discouraged. 

Hm...what else?  Oh yeah, we drove halfway across Australia to get here, so that was pretty wild.  Jeremy planned out a route to try to avoid traffic and did a pretty decent job.  I was a bit edgy in the car the third day, but otherwise the trip went really well.  It was unreal to be driving across the desert in 44 degree heat - luckily the a/c in the car works quite well!

About ready to leave Fairfield, after Jeremy's excellent packing job.  (There was slightly reduced rear visibility)  Our car was a CHAMPION on this trip.

Jeremy was obsessed with taking pictures of the barren desert, as far as the eye could see...forever!

Launceston again

My first impression of Launceston was not amazing.  We flew in the evening of Friday December 21st - basically when most people have just finished work for Christmas holidays and the streets were filled with people doing a LOT of celebrating.  Having just finished my EQ contract, it would have been nice to join them, but we were exhausted from flights and the crazy week we had beforehand trying to figure things out for the move.  We took a walk around and it just seemed to be filled with a lot of crazy people and 'hoons'.

Hoon as defined by urbandictionary.com

1. To travel at speed in a confined area, or do burnouts on a public road in traffic ..
2. To show off in a dagerous manner, mostly with a vehicle or engine powered item ..

"Look at that bloody dangerous hoon!!"

Anyhow, second time around I definitely enjoyed Launceston more.

We checked into our hotel and decided that we should have a nice dinner on the last night of our holiday.  We had heard positive things about The Black Cow on our wine tour, so we made a booking.  We weren't disappointed!

The servers were extremely professional and the food was marvellous!  Of course, when you go to a place called The Black Cow you would be remiss to not order the steak.  As sides we ordered a fennel dish and broccolini.  Too bad the camera lens didn't open all the way.

We stopped in at a CIDER BAR.  We had noticed this place our very first night, but as I mentioned we were quite tired and it was very crowded.  We took note, though, and made sure to come back the second time around.  Here's a story about it, if you care to learn more: http://www.examiner.com.au/story/158785/ciderhouse-gets-nod-of-approval-in-first-days/  The rose cider was probably the best cider I've ever tasted!

 

We were treated to a beautiful sunset on the walk back to our apartment.

 So there you have it - a wonderful gift of a trip to Tasmania with countless amazing memories.  I would highly recommend it to anyone visiting Australia!

Tamar Valley

Before I get started on my account of the rest of our holiday, I just need to say - ARRRRRRRRRRGH, I hate dealing with companies on the phone, especially phone/internet ones!!  Jeremy tried his best to set this up before we moved, but due to the sheer incompetence of these lovely people, who knows when it will actually happen!  I'm on the phone right now and the saying "please bear with me" is actually driving me insane.  We are using prepaid internet on a stick, but we just want the real thing set up!!  Alright, now to think of better, calmer, more peaceful things...

With our holiday coming to an end, we needed to drive back up towards the Launceston area.  For the next portion of our trip, we were booked into the Tamar Valley Resort for two nights and I was looking forward to it.  We also had a wine tour of the Tamar Valley booked in, which is a welcome addition to any trip!

 On the way to the Tamar, we stopped to eat in Sheffield - also known as the 'town of murals'.  Incidentally, most towns seemed to have some sort of theme.  For example, we also drove through the 'town of topiary'.  Our lunch at Yvette's diner was incredible!  We just shared a club sandwich and a salad, but they were amazing!  We were both really happy with the decision to stop there.

 Another stop we made was the Seven Sheds Brewery and Meadery.  Basically, this guy has created a brewery in his backyard.  We did a quick tasting and bought a bottle of mead just for the hell of it.

 Breakfast on the little back porch of our villa.  Yum!

 The inside of the villa.

 The next few shots are of the wine tour we went on.  These hilarious scraggly vines and the little cabin down below belong to an 80-something year old man who was a great story teller.  All the wines he has available are from 2004 and were very reasonably priced.  He planted the scraggly vines so he could have a 'legitimate' cellar door to sell his wines from.  It was definitely worth the experience.

 This was the cash register at Marion's Vineyard.  It was the first time our tour guide stopped in at this winery and I'm really glad we did.  It had a total hippie vibe.  It was the 4th vineyard opened in Tasmania - the owners moved from California and set up on this beautiful piece of land.  They were out that day, but their son who was visiting from LA was manning the cellar door and he had no idea what he was doing. It looked like he had partied with friends all night and he didn't know anything about the wines, but that made it even more memorable!

Beautiful view from Marion's Vineyard

At another vineyard, they had a pig who was trained to sit when you fed him apples.  Note the electric fence - one of the girls in our group had a shocking experience!

 Around 2 pm we finally got to the winery we were going to have lunch at.  Jeremy and I shared this yummy antipasto plate.  We went to a couple of wineries after that - most notably the final one, where the lady was clearly cranky, annoyed that we hadn't come earlier in the day, and told some other customers that was was just 'over it'.  Yikes! 

Group photo of our fellow wine tourers - Johnny and Lorraine (from Sydney) on the left, J and I in the middle, and Dex (lives in Melbourne) on the right.  She was touring with her mum who was visiting from India.

 Back at our resort, I needed to get a picture of the little village.  It's meant to resemble a Swiss village.

This boat brought back childhood memories for Jeremy.

 We climbed up to this lookout where you could see down across the Tamar Valley.  Just something to do!

Hungry!

 On the day we were set to go back to Launceston, we drove to the top of the Tamar Valley and stopped in at Jansz cellars.  They are probably the most recognized name of the Tasmanian wine market.

 We found a goat cheese factory on our travels and stopped for lunch.  This adorable little girl is only 4 weeks old.  Is now the right time to mention that we tried goat salami?

Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair/West Coast

After our awesome Christmas with friends, we were off on a camping adventure...kinda.  Sometimes Tripadvisor can be extremely helpful.  It also helps if you check reviews before rather than after booking your accommodation.  Most of J and my luggage was filled with camping gear - tent, sleeping bags, air mattress, foot pump - for this next stop.  We were going to be staying at the Lake St Clair Lodge as campers.  We checked the weather and were shocked to see that it was going down to 3 degrees overnight - eeek! 

We got the tent up before dark and had dinner in the insanely overpriced and not very impressive lodge restaurant (there wasn't anything else around and we were hungry!)  We sat outside the tent on camping chairs for awhile, but the giant mosquitoes were eating us alive so we retired inside.

Jeremy at the shore of Lake St Clair

The Lake St Clair Lodge

When we woke up, we decided to do one of the walks.  Would have loved to do one of the 6ish hour ones but my destroyed foot wouldn't allow it.  NEXT TIME BRING PROPER FOOTWEAR!!!!  So we did a 1.5 hour one which consisted of three different tracks.

There was a ton of wildlife in Tassie!

An echidna was waddling around on the path and put on a little show for us.

We were supposed to stay for two nights, but we were honestly over it.  We returned from our walk and packed up.  The West Coast wasn't on our original itinerary, but we decided to give it a go so once again we got in the car and went on our way.

I'm actually really glad we did, because we got to see Queenstown, which is one of the most bizarre landscapes I've ever seen.  It has been described as a 'lunar landscape' and I can see why.  Wikipedia says:The mountains surrounding Queenstown have unusual pink and grey hues that come from the conglomerate rocks on the two most adjacent mountains - Mount Lyell and Mount Owen. The mountains surrounding Queenstown are often snowcapped through winter. Snow falls a few days out of the year.

Owing to a combination of tree removal for use in the smelters, the smelter fumes (for about 40 years), and the heavy annual rainfall, the erosion of the shallow horizon topsoil back to the harder rock profile contributed to the stark state of the mountains for many decades.

We stopped in at the West Coast Wilderness Railway.

The view down the main street of Queenstown.

More of that crazy lunar landscape.

We continued to Strahan, which I think is the only town on Tasmania's west coast (?)  Jeremy was really excited to see a sunset here, but it started pouring rain and continued all night.  That made me cranky so I didn't take any pictures.  It is a pretty little town mostly known for tourism now, but there is a lot of amazing history.  I would like to read more about Sarah Island, but here is a brief wikipedia history:

The penal station was established as a place of banishment within the Australian colonies. It took the worst convicts and those who had escaped from other settlements. The isolated land was ideally suited for its purpose. It was separated from the mainland by treacherous seas, surrounded by a mountainous wilderness and was hundreds of miles away from the colony's other settled areas.^[1] The only seaward access was through a treacherous narrow channel known as Hell's Gates.
Strong tidal currents resulted in the deaths of many convicts before they even reached the settlement due to ships foundering in the narrow rocky channel. The surveyor who mapped Sarah Island concluded that the chances of escape were "next to impossible". Neighbouring Grummet Island, a small island to the North west, was used for solitary confinement.
Despite its isolated location, a considerable number of convicts attempted to escape from the island. Bushranger Matthew Brady was among a party that successfully escaped to Hobart in 1824 after tying up their overseer and seizing a boat. James Goodwin was pardoned after his 1828 escape and was subsequently employed to make official surveys of the wilderness he had passed through. Sarah Island's most infamous escapee was Alexander Pearce who managed to get away twice. On both occasions, he cannabalised his fellow escapees.
As Sarah Island could not produce food, malnutrition, dysentery, and scurvy were often rampant among the convict population. The penal colony had to be supplied by sea. Living conditions were particularly bad in the early years of the settlement. Conditions were so crowded, convicts were unable to sleep on their backs in the communal barracks. Punishment involved solitary confinement and regular floggings - 9,100 lashes were given in 1823.
In 1824 a prisoner killed another convict in order to be executed rather than face further imprisonment at Macquarie Harbour Penal Station.
It was finally closed in late 1833. Most of the remaining convicts were then relocated to Port Arthur.^[1]

 

Hobart

Hobart was a leg of our trip that I was particularly excited about.  One of my best friends from my speech pathology class moved there in early 2012 for a chance to work at the Royal Hobart hospital.  I had been dying to go there and meet up...sadly, the timing was all wrong and as we flew into Tasmania she was flying back to Brisbane to spend the holidays with her family.  Oops.  Fortunately, she was doing a house swap with some lovely Brisbane friends and so we arranged to spend Christmas at Nicole's house with Jules, Bruce and Billy. 

The first thing we did when we got into Hobart was grab Bruce and head to MONA - the museum of old and new art.  Here's the wikipedia description: The Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) is an art museum located within the Moorilla winery on the Berriedale peninsula in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia. It is the largest privately funded museum in Australia.^[1] The museum presents antiquities, modern and contemporary art from the David Walsh collection. Walsh has described the museum as a "subversive adult Disneyland.

 This was a really cool exhibit where you grasp a handle and it translates your heartbeat into the lights seen above.  As other people do it, your heartbeat light gets pushed further along.  Jeremy was having fun diagnosing arrythmias!

 

There were all sorts of fascinating exhibits.  This one is called "Cloaca".  As we approached, we smelled something unappealing.  Any guesses about what this could be?  Well - it's basically a poop machine!  The different components mimic stomach enzymes.  At a certain time of day, employees "feed" the machine, and then at another time - it poops!  Jeremy couldn't stand being in the room with this one, but my sense of smell is pretty dulled, so Bruce and I examined it for awhile.

 

Since the site of the museum is also home to a winery and brewery, Bruce and Jeremy were pretty much required to do a tasting of Moo Brew.  I was the responsible designated driver.

 We returned to Nicole's where Jules and Billy were waiting!  This is the view from Nicole's balcony.  Absolutely beautiful!

 

 Here's my pal Billy checking out the view with me.

Christmas morning while Billy was opening presents, they decided to do a foot size comparison.  Jeremy's was slightly larger than Billy's!

 On Christmas Day, we drove up Mount Wellington - it couldn't have been more than 5 degrees!

 We had a nice warm hug at the Mount Wellington lookout.  Check out the view!

Everyone was definitely all rugged up for the cold weather!

Back at Nicole's, we decided a Christmas mimosa was in order.

The boys settled for beer.

We got this awesome dinosaur tail for Billy, which you can put around your waist and push a button to make it roar.  He liked playing with it, but really didn't want to put it on!  I think the adults might have had more fun with it than him!!  He is standing in his plane, which we flew him around in.

 We decided to talk a walk to the beach and after some convincing, Jeremy finally posed for this photo!

 Our delicious Christmas dinner - minus the main ingredient - a tasty leg of lamb.

 On Boxing Day, we headed to our next destination - Cradle Mountain.  One the way, we stopped at Russell Falls and Jules, Bruce and Billy T accompanied us there for a picnic before saying our goodbyes.

 Apparently the most viewed falls in Tasmania.

 We went up to the top of the falls and Billy hitched a ride on J's shoulders.

We had such a wonderful time with our great friends and tried not to be too sad as we parted ways.  It was hard though, because they were staying in Tasmania till the 6th of January and we were leaving Brisbane on the 3rd.  I usually manage to drop by Jules' house almost every week, and not being able to do that makes me sad - but we already have plans to meet up this year :)