Tassie Part 2 - The East Coast

My bus left Hobart around 8:30 am, but I had been in the habit of waking up early. It was the raining, for the first time since I arrived, and Tasmania is known for getting more rain than the mainland. It was quite nice, riding in on the bus in the rain watching the scenery, some of the horses had blankets on. There was thunder and lightening as well, and overall the bus was a good vantage point to sit and watch the rain and the atmospheric conditions that go along with it. I would even say the bus rides were a highlight of the trip. The rain stopped right before reaching my destination of Bicheno, an small port town, and it was dry and sunny when I got off the bus. Bicheno used to be a whaling town, but there aren't many whales left anymore, so now it seems like tourism is one of the big industries here, although according to Lonely Planet, the guidebook, it still is an active port and retains more local character than some of the other east coast towns. There were many visitors, but townsfolk as well, and didn't have too much of a touristy feel, so it was cool.


One of the tourist destinations I went to was the aquarium, which was pretty lame, but I got to see Henry the Octopus (above). They had a variety of different sea creatures, but overall it was a small room with a bunch of small tanks, some of which I'm pretty sure were mislabeled. Although it did have a sort of small town charm to it. There was a sign on the wall thanking the local fisherman for helping with the acquisition of the animals, and the walls were wood grain. I also had the whole aquarium to myself, although it was also connected to a restaurant and gift shop.

This natural tourist attraction above, the blowhole, I had been told about but practically stumbled upon while exploring the rocky shores of the town. The waves hitting the rock weren't all that big but I guess for some reason the force pushes a bunch of water through a crevice or hole so a bunch of water shoots out in once place. Since it was a whaling town, and the rock looks kind of like a whale, I guess it has special significance. I didn't closely inspect it because I didn't want to soaked. Overall I had more fun walking/climbing on the boulders, working my way along the shoreline, than watching the blowhole, although it was a still neat. Its just funny that its one of the things that is listed as an attraction in Lonely Planet and on signs around the town.

This is the public dock, it looks like there is another dock in the background, I don't quite remember. Like I said, this is a small town, so its port obviously doesn't rival Oakland's, or Melbourne's. I just imagined being an old man driving my boat down to launch at five in the morning to go fishing, after just having eaten a bacon and egg sandwich on toast, some crumbs still in my long gray beard, with a cooler with some Cascade Lager (a tasmanian beer) and snacks, meeting up with the boys for a day of chilling on the boat.

The second joke is in the detail, I didn't even realize it until I got home.
Wide, grass sidewalks. There were quite a few bogan-mobiles as well. Bogans are like rednecks, sometimes kind of bro-ish. I don't think I've met any proper bogans yet though. The most bogan of the bogans like to drive suped up trucks.
On top of that hill is Whalers Lookout (might have got the name slightly wrong). From there I got some good views of the area; I'll be adding some more panorama shots soon, from various parts of my trip. In the whaling days, people would stay posted up there to look for whales, but now its more just for people like me.

These were the rocks I was climbing around on. I'm not sure what all the orange is from. After wandering around the town, and checking out various tourist stuff, I went back to check into the hostel (I had already left my stuff there, but hadn't paid and stuff). It was the best hostel I've stayed at yet. The guy who ran it was some nice, mellow dreaded guy who had a dog who also had dreads. The hostel building reminded me of cabins. I didn't have much on the agenda for the night. I had tried to book a spot on the penguin tour, but it was full so I was going to go the next night. I met some German study abroad students who were debating an Aussie girl about vegemite. They couldn't stand the stuff. I enjoy it a bit, it tastes kind of like the powder that comes with ramen, but its in a paste form. Its not my top choice, but its nice to put on some toast or crackers as a snack sometimes. The Aussies grow up with it though, so they've developed a taste for it that seems to be part of their national identity.


The next day I caught a bus early to go to Freycinet National Park, home of Wineglass bay, one of the nicest beaches in the world according to various travel literature. There was only one bus a day going there, and only one coming back, but I had about a six hour time slot to fit my hike into. I hiked up to a lookout point (photo coming soon), which was between two mountain peaks, then headed down to the beach, then cut across the peninsula on a path that went alongside a dried up lagoon, down another beach, and then back around the mountains to the beginning. The mountains were once active volcanoes, so there were lots of rocks around which reminded me of Jurassic Park (see photo a bit below). The beach was fairly nice, really white sand, clear water, friendly wallabys hopping around, they're like mini kangaroos. Your not supposed to feed them, but it seems like some people do, because they come up to you looking for a handout. (I just met with my adviser today and she told me she was sitting on the same beach eating an apple and a wallaby came up and grabbed her arm, wanting some of the apple, and she pulled her arm back and got cut from the animals claws, and it still managed to snatch the apple and run off. They didn't try to pull anything like that with me though, and generally seemed friendly). I encountered them on the beach, at various points along the path, and then again in the parking lot area of the park (parking lots are always referred to as car parks here though).



These are some of the cool, Jurassic park-esque rock formations.

I found a cool fish exo-skeleton on the beach. Below is some of the mountains, as seen across the dried lagoon.


That night, after returning from the hike, I went on the penguin tour. Fairy penguins are the species that live in Australia. It was dark out and you can't use flash photography because it will hurt there eyes, and I'd imagine if you have large groups of tourists freaking out the penguins with bright flashing lights every night, the penguins will avoid returning to the rookery at night. But plenty of photos came up on google, so I attached one below. That night, back at the hostel I hung out with a green haired guy from Denmark who was going to be camping for a few days in Freycinet, and a girl from Melbourne who was cycling up the east coast of Tasmania. I'd imagine biking around Tassie would be pretty cool, its very rural, not too many cars, nice scenery, a fair amount of roadkill in case you run out of money and want some wombat steaks.

The next day I caught the bus to Launceston, the second biggest city in Tassie, where I was changing buses, but had a two hour gap before heading on to Devonport where I was catching the ferry the following day back to Melbourne. I checked around the downtown area of Launceston, got some bangers and mash, then headed to check out the skatepark which wasn't great, but was worth skating. There were lots of bikers there, who seemed to dominate the park a bit. BMXers and skaters get along alright in Oz, I guess they have to since the bikers get to use the skateparks legally. At this park there was some anti-skater graffiti, although it was probably just one kid, and there was even more graffiti that said 'no mountain bikes'. There was a steep, skinny, and sketchy cement ten foot high vert ramp which was kind of cool, but hard to skate.

Afterwards, I caught the bus to Devonport and got in with still a bit of time before I could check into my hostel, so I lugged all my stuff (A full to the brim backpack with jackets tied to the outside, a sleeping bag under my arm) and skated to the skatpark, stopping by the bottleshop on the way. As I was riding through the town I got some funny looks, carrying all my stuff, a bag with some clinking bottles, while skating down the sidewalk, probably looking all dirty too. According to my skatepark guidebook, the park was pretty lame, but upon arriving, I found a lot of unexpected obstacles. Apparently they had just rebuilt the park and opened it two weeks earlier. However, a new park in town meant that it was full of scooter kids. BMXers are more respectable in a way, although scooters aren't as bad because it doesn't hurt as much if you crash with them, and they don't ruin ledges, like pegs do. There were some skaters too though. Also, the big downside was that the bowl was being painted by some "graffiti artists" so it wasn't skateable (if you'll recall, I wasn't able to skate the Bondi Bowl in sydney, a super gnarly pool replica, because of painting as well, although that was just a straight coat of blue). It was still better than I expected, and the bowl looked sort of like a smaller (and less good) version of Fitzi, so I wasn't as heartbroken as I was in Sydney (by the way, in case any of my skater bros want to see what this Bondi pool being shredded, theres a five minute clip of Tony Trujillo killing it on Youtube. I'm sure the locals can skate it well too...). Also, while discussing Americans skating Oz, I was watching the Cardiel documentary the other day and there is a short clip of him skating the Hobart snake run. It where hes talking about going on trips and asking the locals to take them to the old parks no one has seen or something like that, basically the cool old parks that are super gnarly and different is what I gathered.

The next day I sailed from Tassie on a 9 hour boat ride. I did some homework and ate at an overpriced buffet on the boat. There was a small movie theater but it only showed kids movies. I got to stand out on the deck of the boat and watch the Melbourne skyline as we approached. I took the tram back from the port. Walking through downtown to change trams was interesting, because it was saturday night, I had all my stuff, and I was in a busy city environment after having been in away from the city for a week. I had a good trip, and it was relaxing to return to my little room at unilodge.

Tasmania - Part 1 - Hobart

I wanted to get out of Melbourne for the Easter holidays, and I decided Tasmania (or Tassie as its generally referred to), would be a splendid destination. As a kid I always associated it with the tasmanian devil (which I did a report on in elementary school, on the animal, not the cartoon character, although I liked Taz as well), and just thought of it as some sort of strange, isolated, exotic place, and living in Melbourne, I'm now just across the Bass Strait from this mythical wonderland of screaming rodents and poisonous snakes. Tassie gets a fair amount of rainfall, so that they haven't been in a drought for the last 11 years like the rest of Australia, and therefore there is more vegetation. It has a population of about 500,000 humans, and judging from what I saw while riding on buses across various parts of the state, I will venture the guess that sheep population outnumbers that. I am not trying to poke fun; they're cute to look at, wool is a useful fabric, and I enjoy eating their children (although I feel a little bad about it).



Originally, while making my plans, I attempted to get Simon to come along with me, but since he hadn't been saving up money for a foreign excursion, as I had been, he wasn't able to afford it. His girlfriend Tomomi is an exchange student from Tokyo, and was going to be headed for New Zealand for the break, which meant Simon would probably be alone on his birthday, laying in bed, suckling on a goon cask and playing the occasional Fifa soccer on his computer. To make up for my betrayal, I went daytime partying with him the day before I left (not that I didn't want to anyway), which mainly consisted of drinking in various pubs and alleys, and the occasional pool match. We met an old dude in a suit from the former Yugoslavia who randomly sat at our table to smoke a cigarette. After getting back to Unilodge, I threw the essentials in my backpack and headed to catch the bus to the airport around 11pm. The flight to Tassie is only a little over an hour, but I got a cheap flight at 6am in the morning, which was too early to get a shuttle from my house. My choices were to either skate to the train station at 4 in the morning (which looking back I kind of regret not doing), or sleep at the airport. The only benches I found at the airport were hard and wooden, and the janitor kept driving by for awhile in a little cleaning cart that made a lot of noise, and even after that stopped the escalator was squeaky. Also, my hangover started kicking in sometime around 1 am, but I managed to get a few hours of sleep.


As I walked down the stairway off the plane outside the tiny Hobart airport (the old fashioned way), I knew I had chosen a great destination. The sun was still low in the sky, and we were surrounded by beautiful mountains. Everything was peaceful and calm, and I was at that point were after staying up all night you start to feel rejuvenated as the sun comes up, but in a delirious sort of way. Looking back on it, it reminds me of coming out of the studio back in Santa Cruz after a long night of painting, and looking out over the meadow towards the ocean, except now I was looking at mountains, and I felt like it could have been New Hampshire. I picked up my luggage; all I brought was a sleeping bag (that I ended up not using), a backpack stuffed to maximum capacity, and of course, my skateboard. I had almost considered making Tassie a strictly hiking trip, but after seeing a photo and reading a short description of the West Hobart snake run, I knew I had to make it a skating trip as well, if only just for that single spot. And besides, whats the point of traveling if you don't bring your skate? I stood on the curb for a bit, with some other travelers, sort of looking around, figuring out how the hell I was going to get into the city from the airport. I joined up with two Aussies (graduates of Melbourne Uni) and a girl from California who were doing the same thing and shared a taxi. The driver was nice and talkative. He made it clear he wasn't Australian; he was Tasmanian. Sixth generation Hobartian to be exact, which could mean his lineage goes back to the convict days. Hobart is the second oldest European settlement in Oz, behind Sydney, both of which were created as places for the British to send the petty thieves when the jails were too crammed full. I got dropped off at the Old Hobart Hotel, which was now a hostel. It was almost 8 in the morning by this point, and I couldn't check into my room yet, but I was able to drop off my bags and head up the hill in search of the West Hobart snake run that I was so anxious to skate.


The picture is a panorama, you'll have to click on it to see the whole thing. Its also only the lower half of the snake run, and the bowl it spills into.

I have a little guidebook I bought at a skateshop in Melbourne that has every skatepark in Australia, with the address, cross streets, a rating, description, etc. The park was in walking distance to my hostel (walking because it was mainly uphill). I took a detour to bomb a hill. Being in Hobart made me realize how flat Melbourne is. Hobart reminded me of the Bay Area a bit, especially Berkeley, with its hills, laid back medium sized city vibe, and cooler weather. It sort of reminded me of the Northwest as well. All this partially reminded me of my homesickness, but it also made me real stoked. Melbourne is cool, its a way bigger city with lots of stuff going on, but I really enjoyed how chill Hobart was, and its probably my favorite city here so far.

Anyways, along the way I happened to pass by the other skatepark in town, which was a couple of blocks away from the snakerun. This park was more modern, and I decided to come back to it later. The snakerun is probably one of the coolest things I've ever skated. There aren't all that many possibilities, so you can only spend so long there, but its quite the experience. Its from the 80's, or even possibly the 70's, and is one of the gnarliest skateparks I have seen (warning to non-skaters, the next little bit here might be a bit confusing, understandably). Its fairly rough in the flatbottom, although you get going so fast you hardly notice it, and the walls are covered in graffiti so they're slick and smooth. There isn't really all that much flatbottom anyway, its almost a perfect U. Also, the transitions are kinked all over the place, but that just makes it more fun. Theres a big corner you hit before you ride down into the bowl at the end. Overall it is a 180 degree turn and in parts, probably has about three foot transitions with four feet of vert. When I'd ride through it, I'd be going fairly fast since the snake run is going down a hill, and this is towards the end, and I'd do one carve on the first part of the turn, come down then carve up the next wall, and be doing a frontside carve up on the vertical wall and then come down into this small transition while going downhill into the bowl. It was really fun and felt gnar, and I was super stoked. The picture below will give you a better idea of what the first part of that last turn looks like.


After the skatepark I wandered around through the town and by the waterfront, checking stuff out. I took a nap in a park (I still couldn't check into the hostel). I eventually went back to the skateparks. At the snakerun, I met a guy from Berkeley who was living in Hobart for a bit because his friend from Washington, where he had been living previously, had married a Tassie girl on exchange. The Berkeley guy asked me where I was from because I was wearing an Oakland A's shirt. At the other skatepark I chatted with some of the locals and skated for a couple hours. Afterwards I headed back to the hostel, chilled for a bit, and went to sleep really early. I woke up a couple of hours into my sleep because my roomate was coming in for the first time. He seemed apologetic for disturbing me, but it was still pretty early, so I tried to convince him it wasn't a big deal. His name is pronounced like Phone (he even made a hand signal like he was talking on a phone when he told me his name), I'm not sure on the spelling. He was from Hong Kong and had been in Oz for five months and I was the first American he had met, which he seemed excited about. He had been saving up money for a long time, working in a printing shop, and had really wanted to go to America, but couldn't get a visa. He had been to a rock music festival in Melbourne though, so he was pretty satisfied, because that was the thing he wanted to do most during his travels.


In my room, reading my Australia guidebook, trying to decide what to do.

The next day I lurked around town a bit more then went to check out the Tasmanian Museum. It was a mix of history, natural history, and art. I learned about the Tasmanian tiger that used to live there before going extinct (although some believe there are still some out there). The tiger now lives in memory as the state animal and on the label of Cascade Lager. They had a room dedicated to Charles Darwin's time in Tasmania as well. The had some really cool installations with taxidermied animals in an artificial environment. The strangest and coolest exhibit was the contemporary art section that was a series of silicon sculptures of imagined genetically mutated creatures by a Melbourne artist, Patricia Piccinini:







Afterwards I went on a really long walk that wasn't too eventful, but I took some photos of various parts of Hobart which you've seen above. I went back to the skatepark for a final session, and then went back to the hostel where I ran into Phone at the bar which was the ground floor of the hostel. I chatted with him for a bit. When he found out I was an artist he wanted me to draw him, and he ran off and came back with a ballpoint pen and a blank sheet of paper. The pressure was on, having to work in ink, but I came up with something that was visually interesting at the least, although it didn't look to much like him. The face looked fairly generic, but he was really happy I drew it on the spot like that considering I'd just met him, so he grabbed a deck of cards from the barkeep and showed me some magic tricks in return. I was actually quite impressed, and later he played a song on his guitar as well. The next morning I woke up early to catch a bus to the east coast, my next destination, a small port town called Bicheno, which was nearby to a national park I had read good things about, and Phone had told me there were friendly wallabies (mini-kangaroos) on the beach there (at the park). It was raining out, but I was nice being on the bus watching the countryside with the mountains and the rain. I saw some lightening too. It stopped raining right before reaching Bicheno as well, and I'll save that part of the trip for another post, probably this weekend. Expect cool nature shots.

Larrikin Behavior and other photos

Aref, Simon and I at a pub downtown on St. Patricks day. Aref doesn't drink. Its illegal in Iran, although that doesn't stop people. He is just naturally full of youthful exuberance.

From Wikipedia:

"Larrikinism is the name given to the Australian folk tradition of irreverence, mockery of authority and disregard for rigid norms of propriety. Larrikinism can also be associated with self-deprecating humour^[1].

A person may be classified as a larrikin if he or she meets some of these criteria. A larrikin is not concerned with the opinion of other people and so is not socially intimidated into modifying behaviour and structuring it around social norms. Larrikins are also not at all fazed by authorities of all kinds, including whatever power or authority they may possess themselves, and must not take themselves too seriously. Australia's "Pace e Bene" blog has suggested that Jesus be considered a larrikin, for his non-conformity^[6]. For the preceding two reasons, someone like the deceased Australian media magnate Kerry Packer may not have been a larrikin as he took his own power and authority, as well as that of other media companies and the government, seriously. But his personality might have seen him classified as a larrikin were he not wealthy and influential. Below is a list of famous larrikins, not all of whom satisfy every criterion. [note: I edited the list down some to people I know of, like, or think have cool names, or satisfy more than one of those categories]

-Ned Kelley
-Captain Thunderbolt
-Paul Hogan
-Yahoo Serious
-Steve Irwin
-Bon Scott [whose jacket I saw in the Melbourne Museum]"



A BBQ with some UniLodge people, in the courtyard of our building. An Indian guy was in charge of marinating the meat and it tasted delicious.

Simon (Oz), Aref (Iran), Suneil (Malaysia), Me, Andreas (Ecuador). The majority of people living at UniLodge are from the Asian continent (from the Middle East to China, and some surrounding islands, like Indonesia).

A possum smelled cooking meat and came to investigate. Simon offered him a treat and got bit. No rabies. Below is an artists rendering of the possum:

Hitting the goon sack in the Carleton Gardens, outside the Melbourne Museum. Rita from Berkeley has been traveling in Australia and stopped by in Melbourne. We used box of the goon cask to play soccer as we cut through the park on our way to a pub in Fitzroy. Despite Tomomi's size she was able to deliver a powerful kick that also sent her shoe flying.

Tomomi and Simon.


I've been playing a lot of pool here since theres a table in my building and a lot of pubs have them.

One shaka...

A different night: Sundeep, me and Simon at Pug Mahones, the Irish pub near our building.

Two shakas...


Eating cheap pizza in Brunswick, a neighborhood with lots of op shops (opportunity shops, aka thrift stores), as well as foods of various ethnicities.

Some of the city skyline from the banks of the Yarra.

Some of the University of Melbourne buildings as seen from Tomomi's room on the twelfth floor of UniLodge (she took most of the photos in the this post). Unfortunately you can't see any of the cool old 19th centurey buildings, like the one the stonemasons were working on when they dropped their tools and marched to the parliament building and demanded (and received) the first eight hour day in history.

Its currently Good Friday (which is a big deal here. I even got a free hot cross bun yesterday). Come Monday, I leave for Tasmania.