Category: Travels
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Sydney
Athough Dutch and Spanish navigators discovered western Australia in the late 1600’s, it was not until 1770 that Captain Cook explored and charted parts of the east coast of Australia and claimed the territory for England. And even though its land mass was bigger than all of Europe (even bigger…
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Cradle Mountain Part Two
Cradle Mountain is almost 5,100 feet above sea level and was declared a scenic reserve in 1922. The campaign to create a park was led by a couple who visited on their honeymoon and decided it should be protected. The area became a National Park in 1947 but the surrounding…
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Cradle Mountain – Part One
Our second Tasmanian National Park destination was Cradle Mountain, which required a further journey down the A1. Since this is the main highway in Tasmania, it did have one section (of approximately 4 miles) that was a true four lane divided highway in the US sense. However, instead of a…
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Our Night in Launceston
Our next National Park is Cradle Mountain in the northwest of the square that is Tasmania. But to get there in one day would require a five hour drive, so we elected to stay in Launceston (the second largest city in Tasmania) which is about halfway to Cradle Mountain. The…
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Freycinet National Park – Tasmania
The All Blacks of New Zealand finally met a better team in England, as England won in the Rugby World Cup semi-final Saturday night. So we were up late watching the game before we started packing for our tour of the national parks of Tasmania. First up is Freycient National…
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Australian Potties
I mentioned a couple of blogs ago that the Melbourne Botanical Gardens had tons of public restrooms. Australia has a ton of public restrooms, apparently maintained by the local municipal authorities (at least that is what the signs say at most of the facilities I have used). In our first…
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Hobart and Tasmania
The weater shifted to the south Thursday night in Melbourne, so we woke up to light rain and heavy winds. We checked to make sure the wind would not have any effect on our flight to Hobart. Qantas said the plane was on schedule, so we pulled our coats from…
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Melbourne Day Two
In Australian, if the wind comes from the north, it brings the dry heart of the Australian desert. But if it comes from the south, that is the cold winds of the Antartic. Today was one of the hottest October days on record in Melbourne and got to 93 degrees…
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Back in the Big City – Melbourne Royal Botanic Gardens
Now that we have checked into the St. Regis Hotel (one of several historic hotels in Melbourne), I have a short reprieve from the mental drain of driving on the left side of the road. And the weather has blessed us with blue skies and 80+ degree temperatures. Melbourne has…
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Phillip Island
The Little Penquin is the smallest species of penquin. They are also called fairy penguins or little blue penguins (because they are the only penguins with slate blue plumage). They are very common on the southern coastline of Australia and New Zealand, and over 32,000 of them live on Phillip…
Ginger Without Borders 