Boris gets a new box

Oh yeah, and we got a new camera...

But it goes without saying the most important bit was the box. Boris decided he'd beat everyone else to take posession.



The inside wasnt at all comfy, but being the trooper that he is (and not wanting to put in the effort required to escape said box) Boris persevered...



Ah there we go. It was worth the effort after all.

January in Taupo Bay

Ok, so it was 2 months ago... I've been busy!
In January the whanau went way way north to the fabulous Taupo Bay for a week of surfing and fishing.


Colette had her friend 'MC' to stay, and so they spent the first day modelling lifejackets for a rather strange new zealand fashion shoot. Girls! Sheesh.


Colette decided to wreak havoc on the aiwaves. There's no better way to get to know your local coastguard than by having a bit of a chat on the emergency channel.


Taupo Bay is beautiful!


Time to go and see if there's any surf!


Taupo Bay is just north of Whangaroa and has the same stunning landscape.


Colette got all arty and took this photo.


This was our humble abode. It was very noice!! Not a bad boat too ;-)


Time to check the beach again.


While we were there Eug had a birthday. I think it was just some trick so he'd be showered with presents.


But I didn't care coz' I caught a 5lb snapper :-D


"It looks bigger when I hold it like this" :-)


We had crayfish, fillet steak and snapper for dinner. Eug should turn 40 more often!


During the week Callum had been interested in this little cave thing at the end of the beach. He was convinced the rocks were left by pirates as a way of communicating with each other (cunning!), we of course moved the rocks each day to play along with his theory.


On the last day Callum found a treasure map outside the house (wonder how that got there?)


It was all pretty exciting!


OMG! Where did those scary pirates come from!?!!


He was a wriggly little blighter!
It goes without saying that Callum managed to escape, stole the pirate's scabbards and then chased them around the beach :-S

What a great holiday :-)

Daniel's Reef takes a dusting

Before I blog the family holiday we had several months ago I thought I'd take a moment to blog this wee briney boast.

Todd and I put in the big effort this morning and ventured out at 7am. I wasn't aware that 7am existed, so I took this photo to prove that it does...

On bad days Daniel's reef is a surf spot (our oldest sibling would argue that surf days are good, not bad). Today the weather was about as good as it gets. There wasn't a breath of wind and the sea was as flat as a pancake.

The water was so clear we could see the bottom, some 9 metres down.
We chose a posse near the north end of the reef, on a shoulder that dropped from 4m to 9m. We deployed the berley and watched the mahimahi and jack mackerals feeding around the boat.
Being the opportunist that I am, I filled the livebait tank and caught a wee jack mackeral. A few minutes later we saw a John Dory milling around the boat, which is pretty bizzare as they normall stick to the bottom. I invited my jack makeral to play with a livebait hook and he happily obliged (well... he obliged. Not sure how happy he was about it).
Within a few minutes I'd caught my first JD :-D

I am such a Hunter-Gatherer!


Shortly after that Todd hooked up on a few respectable pannies.

He's such a professional!


All up we brought home 3 snaps and a JD. Not a bad morning on the wet stuff :-)
Anyone planning on visiting soon can expect to be fed fish :-)

And now that we're home it's raining and yukky. Our boat is being cleaned by nature and the Aucklanders that were hogging the boatramp as we were leaving are now getting really wet :-D

Cannonball Run

It was our last day in Tasmaina and we had a flight to catch. We had to be in Hobart by 5pm and we had several hundred kilometres to cover.
But first here are some photos of Liffey Falls. I'm pretty sure we visited them on the way to Launceston but I forgot to put the photos in yesterdays posting...
So here they are. This place was so like NZ it wasn't funny. I'm pretty sure those pesky Tasmanians had popped over to NZ and stolen a bit. I'm not sure how they got it past customs, maybe they snuck home on a Sunday (when NZ is closed)?


The track to the falls had this rather amazing piece of sculpture. It was a combined effort, with 3 artists contributing glass, steel and wood work. See what happens when people work together! Isn't that nice!



Here are the Falls... According to one of the locals there used to be two logs in the falls and they looked more impressive but someone at the local council decided to have the logs removed (after 30 odd years). Maybe they were looking a bit messy?
But then, this same local also thought NZ was like a carton of eggs... maybe we'll just smile and keep walking... :-)





So where were we? Oh yes, racing to Hobart to catch our flight...
We left Deloraine and headed south, through the Lake District. We had a little over 250km to cover.
We climbed altitude (the lake district is kinda alpine). If we had been here in winter everything would have been covered in snow, but we weren't, so it wasn't.



When we got to the lake district the road promptly changed to gravel....


Gee, what a shame. I hate driving on gravel.... honest :-D
A bit further along the road there was a sign saying 27km of gravel road. MadHatter didn't photograph it, she was too busy trying to photograph the lakes.





We had a long way to go so I couldn't afford to drive slow (honest!). At one stage our trusty 121 managed 90kph - don't tell MadHatter! My subaru would like Tasmania!
The lake district has a population of about 12. During the fishing season this swells to about 48,000,000. I think it wasn't the fishing season when we were there. It was kinda empty. We stopped at a service station in the middle of nowhere (literally) to get a bit of fuel. This wasn't the kind of place you'd want to run out of gas... they make movies about things like that! MadHatter eyed up the selection of pies in the service station pie warmer (she's been in Australia too long!). Curious as to the variety of pies on offer she asked the helpful attendant: "What are they?", to which she got the reply: "They're pies..." (with an 'are you from space?!!' look).
"Oh.... what flavour are they?"
"Meat"

Nice.
They do things simple round these parts.
Anyway, enough mingling with the locals, it was time to hit the road again. Unfortunately the gravel finished just around the corner and we were back onto the black stuff.

After a few hours we passed through this wee town. I couldn't resist.



Yes, I know it's spelled wrong, but I thought it was funny anyway.
Small things...

Before we knew it we were back in Hobart. We made a b-line for the airport and boarded our flight back to Melbourne. As we took off one of the engines made a really loud "I'm going to break" squealing noise, but it didn't.

And so concludes the travel blog for Tasmania, long may it rest in peace. It has only taken me several months to complete it, and now I have a few other travels which have happened in the mean time which need to be blogged. Is there any rest?!!

Low Resolution Beauty

After our night in St Helens we had breakfast at the local hippie 'GE free', 'taste free', but not 'extortion free' cafe. Mmmm, bad coffee and toast with scrambled eggs for the deposit on a small house. Damned hippies! They should go back to living in the trees and leave us in peace.
Mumble mutter (and that's just from remembering the bad coffee!).

On our way out of St Helens we decided to stop at a bric-a-brac shop recommended to us by the helpful staff at the Triabunna op-shop. "The owners used to live in the shop but now they don't, but they have a really good alarm now". Fascinating. It had to be experienced really.



The place had some really nice stuff, including a fab art deco drinks set, but they knew how much it was all worth... hate that!
So alas we left sans-art deco and kept driving west.



Someone had been busy with their faber castell paints set :-)

It was amazing how similar the flora was to New Zealand. It was just like being at home :-)



After a short drive we were in Launceston. A beautiful town with an international reputation for amazing furniture design.





Yes I know, they are buildings and not furniture but I didn't have the forethought to photograph any of the furniture we looked at. You'll just have to take my word that it was all very impressive.

Then we decided to look for the cataract gorge. A "Natural wonder only 5 minutes from the CBD". It took us longer than 5 minutes, but that was because I got lost a few times... damned confusing maps :-)

The park next to the gorge had some rather nice gardens, complete with peacocks...



What fancy garden is complete without peacocks?!

A quick walk down the hill took us to the cataract gorge.



Hmmm, or we could have taken those...

The gorge was quite special.



So I took lots and lots of photos. Here are some more...





So here's the low resolution bit (just in case you were wondering)...

When you produce artwork for the back of busses the files have to be less than 40MB. This is quite low when you take into account that a typical A4 advert would be at least 40MB.
Luckily not many people look at buses from the distance you'd normally look at a magazine so the low resolution isn't really a problem.
I kinda guess Launceston is a bit like the advert on the back of a bus. For a day or two it all looks very pretty and sweet, but I'm sure if you lived there for more than - oh, say 3 days - and had time to see the place 'close up' the lack of detail (or stuff to do) would drive you bonkers. Totally bonkers. I have pity for all teenagers in Launceston. Equally I have pity for all teenagers in Leigh, but at least Leigh has Auckland down the road.
I only really though of that once I got home as an IT job was advertised in Launceston and the thought of living there was appealing (until I realised how small and isolated the place is). Nice place to visit though ;-)

That evening we had dinner at a small japanese restaurant in the middle of town. The walls were adorned with compliments about how 'different' the food was, that it was 'better than mc donalds' and a few that said 'the food was yuck', and they'd 'rather have had a steak'... you can't please everyone :-)

So that was Launceston. We had decided not to stay the night here because we wanted a head-start for the trip back to Hobart the next day.

We drove to Deloraine and stayed the night in the Deloraine Pub, all very ocker :-)
The next day we did a bit of an explore around the town before heading south.





Deloraine is a train town, and is also halfway between Launceston and Devonport. It seemed to be a small 1950's town that was being dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st Century. A few of the yocals were at the deli having their latte's and discussing the disciplining of their wayward offspring. If only we'd had a tape-recorder. But we didn't so I just bought some quince jelly for Dad instead and we had breakfast.

Then it was time to hit the road. We had to make Hobart by 5pm to make our flight...