Tasmania

When we arrived in Tasmania our intention was to do a 80+km (50miles) hike called the Overland Track. We had a good friend from Jackson recommend it, and had met a lot of other travelers who had done it and loved it. We had wanted to spend a lot more time in "Tassie," but because we had to book a ticket to New Zealand before the prices skyrocketed, we only had a week. We figured it would be just enough time to fly in, do the hike in 6 days, and fly out. When we arrived, however, we found out that the trek had changed a great deal in recent years (everyone we talked to about it had done it several years earlier). We found out that you now have to "book" far in advance and pay $290 per person to do the hike!!! We wouldn't have been able to (or wanted to) pay that much money regardless, but the trek was booked anyway so we would have been out of luck even if we could have afforded it. We decided to rent a car for the week and planned to go to a different national park to do some free hiking. I told this story briefly to a lady I had met in the bathroom of the hostel where we were staying, and then we left to rent our car. When we stopped back by the hostel to pick up our packs, the son of the lady from the bathroom ran out to our car and told us that two people in their group had cancelled on them. He told us that they wanted to GIVE US the tickets so that they wouldn't go to waste! We couldn't believe our good luck! Our only problem was that we had just paid for a rental car for a week.

We returned to the rental place and, as luck would have it, the guy at the car rental place was super nice and allowed us to just rent the car for one day instead of seven. He even gave us a discounted rate! Having the car for the day was perfect anyway because we weren't leaving for the trek until the next day and I was excited to check out some of the great vineyards and wineries surrounding Launceston. I wanted to visit one winery in particular because the man who runs it is a friend of one of the wine reps I worked with in Jackson. I didn't think we would have time to visit that winery (called Tamar Ridge) or have a car to get there, but now we did. We went to that winery and a couple of others and had a great time sampling the wine. We also met another group of really cool people (Humphey, Alice, and Rachael) doing the same "circuit" and they ended up inviting us to come with them to the beach for some fish and chips. We were planning on camping that night, but weren't looking forward to it because it was freezing and looked like it was going to rain. We lucked out again, though, because before we knew it, our new friends had invited us to spend the night with them. Humprey had a really nice house in Launceston and an extra bedroom for us :-) He had also done the Overland before so he helped us work out which huts to stay in, how far to hike each day, etc.

The next day, we woke up early and met our lovely new friends back at the hostel, where the bus picked us up to take us to the beginning of the trek. We spent the next 5 days hiking through amazing wilderness, swimming in freezing cold mountain lakes, and climbing to the top of two mountains--Cradle Mountain and Mt. Osso (Tasmania's tallest mountain). We spent some of our nights in mountain huts and some camped out in our tent--our friends left food in their tent one night and an enormous possum tried to get inside! We saw lots of wallabies and even one with a baby in it's pouch :-) After hiking 93km in 5 days, we got back on the bus to return to Launceston via Hobart. We were already going to be cutting it close for making our flight and then the bus got stuck in traffic! We realized that if we took the bus all the way into the town of Launceston and then tried to get a taxi out to the airport, we would definitely miss our flight. We knew that we would be driving almost right by the airport on the way into town, so we explained the situation to the bus driver and asked him if he could just drop us off on the road at the closest point to the airport. He argreed and we got off the bus a little over a mile from the airport. I had made a sign that said AIRPORT and we tried to hitchhike, but no one picked us up. Fortunately, we were extremely used to walking with our packs by this point so we ran practically the whole way to the airport and made it just in time!!! Whew, what a lucky week!

winery circuit

hiking!

campsite

John on the very top of Mt. Osso!

wallaby with baby!

beautiful overlook

the dock outside our hut on the last night

On belay!

Every day as we carried a heavy trad rack around Australia, we thought about how a time would come when we would be happy that we actually brought it with us. That day came when we arrived at Mt. Arapiles. The Arapilies are said to be one of the best climbing areas in the world and after climbing there it is easy to see why. The rock at the Arapiles is a very hard type of sandstone that is easily protected while lead climbing. Most of the climbs are at least 120ft if not mulit-pitched. The one aspect that sets the Arapiles apart from most other climbing areas is how steep and exposed even the easiest climbs are. Because the sandstone has great friction and large holds are abundant, even most of the easy climbs are vertical and in some spots overhanging. Oftentimes we would find ourselves on a 5.5 climb (very easy) one or two hundred feet off the ground and climbing over an eight foot overhang! This is not typical of 5.5 climbs anywhere. All in all the Arapiles was our favorite climbing area in Australia. There were beautiful sunsets, endless climbing and Jenelle's favorite thing; seeing kangaroos boxing far below while she belayed from high atop the crag.

Cairns & the Atherton Tablelands

When we arrived in Cairns from Magnetic Island, it was pouring rain. We were planning to camp, but were starting to realize that we might want to look for a drier option. Luckily, as we were getting off the bus, a girl asked us if we needed accomodation. We asked how much it would be and she said that it was $23 per person for a dorm but that we might be the only ones in the room since they weren't very full. She also had a car to drive us there so we could get out of the rain so that sounded good to us. The average price for a dorm bed in Australia seems to be between $20-$35 (which is why we've been staying in our tent nearly the entire time), so that seemed like a fair price. When we got there, though, the guy gave us a private room (shared bath) for $40 total which was a steal since privates are usually a minimum of $70. We were excited to be inside for a night, especially when it proceeded to downpour for the next 14 hours! We rented a car the next morning and set out to explore the Atherton Tablelands, an area outside of Cairns known for its rainforests, waterfalls, and beautiful countryside/farmland. Thankfully, John drove us out of the city--he was still getting used to being on the other side of the road AND the other side of the car, but I was grateful that I didn't have to drive in the city (my only experience driving on the "wrong" side of the road was on Fraser Island and there wasn't exactly any traffic).

We drove on insanely curvy roads through really amazing, lush rainforests and stopped at an aboriginal market along the way. We saw our first of 12 waterfalls along the "waterfall circuit" and stopped for coffee and chocolate at a coffee plantation along the way. We went to a peanut farm where we sampled and purchased some awesome peanuts and bought fresh fruit and vegetables from a road side farm. I tried really good (if slightly strange) fruit called Lychee for the first time. We hiked to a couple more waterfalls and saw an amazing curtain fig tree (pictures coming soon). We camped in the pouring rain that night, but stayed surprisingly dry in our tent :-)

The next day I drove through more gorgeous scenery and did a good job staying on the left side of the road (John may disagree on that one). We hiked on rainforests trails to more waterfalls--One of the trails we hiked on in the morning was really wet from all the rain and we kept having to pull leaches off our feet--EWWW!! We had a great lunch at a bio-dynamic dairy farm. At the dairy farm, we sampled cheese and yogurt and had the best milkshake we've had on this trip. The milkshakes here in oz are not like those in the states--they are basically just milk a glass of milk with a tiny bit of ice cream mixed in and they are extremely thin. This one was super thick and awesome (though we did have to pay extra to have them make it that way). We drove back to Cairns late that night, dropped off the rental car, and camped out in the Cairns airport that night since we had a 5:45am flight the next morning. We wish we would have been able to more time to spend in Cairns and the surrounding areas, but we had to book our ticket to Melbourne that day or it would have been a lot more expensive. Even though it was relatively short period of time, we had a great time exploring this part of Australia!

Milla Milla Falls

Magnetic Island

Magnetic Island was one of our favorite places on the east coast of Australia. The island was named by Captain Cook in 1770 who noticed that the island had a magnetic effect on his compass while sailing past. Magnetic Island is an aesthetically beautiful area with deserted beaches and granite boulders scattered everywhere around the island. The first night we stayed at a hostel and noticed a hillside of boulders across the street. The next day we climbed, explored the hillside and the beaches in the area around the hostel. The following night we camped on a beach hidden behind a huge fig tree. We observed quite a bit of wild life including Koala Bears and Rock Wallabies. The Rock Wallabies apparently are nocturnal judging by the amount of noise they make at night jumping around in the forest (especially by our campsite). We hiked to a World War 2 outpost which was built on the island to protect Townsville (the closest city) from invading enemy ships. Although the weather was begingin to get hot, humid and rainy, it was sad to leave such a great place and continue our journey up the coast.

Sailing in the Whitsundays

Whithaven Beach

Hey everyone-- Sorry we haven't written on here for so long! It's

hard when you have to pay for internet more often than not, but we're going to try to at least get caught up :-) After Fraser Island, we hung out in Rainbow Beach for a couple days and then headed up to Airlie Beach. Airlie Beach is a cool little beach town that is the gateway to the Whitsunday Islands.

The Whitsundays are a gorgeous group of 74 islands in the heart of the Great Barrier Reef. We booked onto a boat called the Apollo because some of our friends had been on it and said it was great, and because it included one free dive. There were 24 travelers (mostly backpackers and all really cool) and 4 awesome crew members on the boat--a female captain :-), skipper, chef, and dive instructor. The chef, Molly, was amazing--we had heard the food was good on the boat so we had high expectations, buy they were quickly exceeded. There were two of us on the boat that requested no red meat and one strict vegetarian (John was not one of them since he decided he wanted the steak we had heard about). I am also allergic to onions, and the chef was great about making separate meals for those of us "veggos" and making sure mine didn't have onions. She was so awesome!

Our trip was 3 days and 2 nights and consisted of sailing through the islands, getting out and enjoying beautiful beaches, and diving! We ended up doing the dive that was included and paying for an additional 2 dives-- one during the day and one night dive! The night dive was crazy-- I was really scared at first because it was so dark, but once we got down to the bottom, it was really amazing and peaceful. We had waterproof flashlights and you could only see where you pointed your light. The part of the reef we were on was a series of coral caves and caverns, and we had a great time swimming through all them. John and I were the only ones on our boat brave enough to dive at night :-), so it was cool to have the dive instructor all to ourselves. During all the dives we saw amazing fish and beautiful coral. We also saw a big sea turtle while we were snorkeling on one of the islands. Overall, we had a really great trip! I highly recommend hitting up the Whitsundays to anyone traveling in oz and definitely the boat Apollo :-)

Sunshine Coast

Hi all--- We're having an amazing time in Australia so far! From Brisbane, we took the bus up to a town called Maroochydore so that we could climb Mt. Coolum, the 2nd highest monolith in oz (after Ayers rock). We hiked to the top, climbed at Coolum Caves, and then camped (illegally) in Mt. Coolum National Park. We then took the bus to Noosa--we saw a wild koala while hiking in Noosa Heads National Park and camped at the most beautiful caravan park, right on the Noosa River--we were literally camped on the bank of the river which looks like a tropical paradise with white sand beaches, tourquoise water, and palm trees. Overall, Australia is way more beautiful and tropical than we expected! From a hostel in Rainbow beach, we did a self-drive, 4X4 camping safari trip to Fraser Island--the world's largest sand island and a world heritage site. We went to Lake Wabby, a sand dune lake and had fun driving on very intense, narrow, off-road tracks with 6 other really cool people from around the world. After 3 days and 2 nights on Fraser Island, we returned to Rainbow Beach and fed wild dolphins (It was Jenelle's first time seeing dolphins in the wild and she thought it was awesome)! We are now in Hervey Bay and our internet time is up so more to come :-)

howdy mates

Our first day in Brisbane was great. We explored the city and went rock climbing at kangaroo point next to the Brisbane river. To get to the climbing area we took a ferry to a small park in the downtown area. The climbs are illuminated by lights so its possible to climb at night. We bought a 45 day (hop on and off) bus ticket to travel up the coast from here to Cairns. The trip up the coast begins soon.