I flew from Melbourne to Hobart, Tasmania on 2/22. The tour left Hobart bright and early the next morning and headed for the West Coast, where apparently it rains 300 days out of the year. Our first stop along the way was the Tall Trees Walk to Russell Falls.

After the walk, we headed to Lake St. Clair for lunch. Lake St. Clair is Australia’s deepest freshwater lake and also the ending point for the Overland Track. There were signs everywhere warning that the snakes were very active right now, but it was all a pack of lies.

On the road to the lake, we saw an echidna eating on the side of the road. It’s basically a cross between an anteater and a porcupine. Fun fact: Male echidnas have 4 penises.

After lunch we drove to the Franklin-Gordon Wild Rivers National Park and took a short walk to Donaghys Lookout, which provided 360° views of the park.

We made a couple more quick stops on our way to Strahan where we’d spend the next 2 nights.

On day 2 we set out for Montezuma Falls, Tasmania’s highest waterfall. The walk took about 3 hours roundtrip. Before reaching the falls we came across an old mine. You could only go about 20 feet into the mine before the shaft was blocked off. When I got to the barrier, I finally shone my flashlight at something other than the ground. When I looked at the walls and ceilings, I saw 15-20 spiders all around me.

Just before the falls was a steel suspension bridge running high above the river below. It was very narrow, wobbly and bouncy, so obviously I loved it.

There was no swimming pool at the bottom of Montezuma Falls, just a bunch of rocks, so I climbed on the rocks to see if I could get to the base and take a picture looking straight up at the falls. Mission accomplished!

After lunch we headed to the Henty Dunes, a shifting sand dune that moves slowly and “swallows” anything in it’s path. At the top of the dune, you can see the tips of the trees it has suffocated and killed and the trees that are in the process of dying.

We headed back to Strahan and later that night, I went out for dinner and drinks with a group of people from the tour (Marcel, Didi, Katja, Anna, and Mia). When we went back to the hostel, Marcel and I ended up hanging out with some people from another tour group until about 2 am. Big mistake!!

My alarm was set for 5:30 and I got up a little while later, still in a drunken haze. I showered and got dressed and when I looked at my phone to see how much time I had until breakfast, I saw that it was only 4:30 in the morning. Ughhh. I was awake and ready and hr earlier than I needed to be.

Thankfully we had a 2 1/2 hour bus ride to Cradle Mountain and I slept the whole way. Cradle Mountain is where the Overland Track begins. This ended up being the hardest hike of my whole trip so far and the hangover didn’t do anything to help. After a steep, uphill, hour long hike, we reached Marion’s Lookout where we would rest and eat lunch.

The walk down was a gradual descent that took about an hr and a half and at the end we saw a wombat!!!!

After the walk, we stopped in Sheffield on our way to Launceston. Sheffield is the “town of murals” and they have an annual mural competition. Artists are invited to paint murals that are displayed in the park and over the course of about a year, visitors vote on their favorite. These were my favorites (in order).

When we got to Launceston, a group of us went to the Pizza Pub for dinner. I ordered a wallaby pizza, but they were out of wallaby. Biggest disappointment of the trip. The best part of Launceston though……a double room with single beds!! First time in 5 weeks not sleeping in bunk beds!!! This would come back to bite me in the ass the next night. Stay tuned.

Here’s a wallaby I saw on one of the walks:

People here look at you like you have 2 heads when you tell them you’re going to walk somewhere that takes longer than 10 minutes.

Me: “If I walk back from St. Kilda alone at night am I gonna get jumped?”

Guy at reception: “Maybe. It’s quite a long walk though. It takes about an hr.”

Me: “Yea, it’s only like 3 miles.”

I prefer to walk places. I’m not going to see much from a tram. So I walked to St. Kilda. There was almost nothing to see. I broke down and spent the $12 to take a tram back. It’s cheaper than getting mugged, I guess.

St. Kilda is a suburb of Melbourne that somewhat resembles Coney Island. I described it that way the other day to someone because it has a boardwalk, a pier, and an amusement park. What I didn’t know at the time is that the amusement park is Luna Park, which is the same amusement park as Coney Island. The Coney Island park was built in 1902 and in 1912 St. Kilda got their Luna Park. Visitors to Luna Park are greeted by Mr. Moon, who is pretty creepy.

Other than the park, St. Kilda is pretty much just a board walk, pier and beach. Not a whole lot to see.

That is, not a whole lot to see except for the stars of the show.

St. Kilda Breakwater, at the end of the pier, is home to a colony of Little Penguins. Little penguins are the smallest species of penguin in the world. Every night after sunset, especially summer nights, they come out of the rocks of the breakwater to nest and feed. The breakwater is also home to Rakali, which are native water rats, but kinda look just small otters. At the very least, they sound more adorable when described that way. Flash photography is not allowed, so the pictures aren’t the greatest, but…….real life, not in the zoo, flippin penguins!!!!

 

I’m off to Tasmania!!

I arrived in Melbourne 5 days ago, after a 9 hr bus ride from Canberra. On my 2nd day here, I took a 2 hr walking city tour provided by the hostel and learned the most important thing you can ever know about Melbourne. The land was “discovered” by Batman……John Batman is the European who stole the land from the Wurundjeri tribe. Being the modest man that John was, he wanted to name the place Batmania, but was overruled and it was named Melbourne instead. Given what we now know about Batman, I think they missed a real opportunity here.

Melbourne is big on culture and art. They are famed for their graffiti’d alleys and streets like Hosier Lane where artists are given permits to paint murals.

There’s also AC/DC Lane. The Australian Band has their own muraled alley dedicated to them.

That’s enough art for now, back to our questionable heroes. Ned Kelly, Australian bushranger!! Aussie’s are divided on whether or not he was a good guy or a bad guy. Some see him as an Australian version of Robin Hood, while others see him as a murderous villian. Either way he is probably the most legendary person in Australian history and wait til you see this man’s beard.

Eventually, Kelly was caught, tried, convicted and hung for murder at the Old Melbourne Gaol (don’t ask me how or why, but that is pronounced “jail”)….It’s “the old spelling” is what they tell me. When I found out the jail offered nighttime ghost tours, Ned Kelly himself wasn’t going to stop me from getting a ticket. Unfortunately, when I went on the tour nothing weird happened, so basically I just walked around a dark jail listening to stories about some of the weird things that can go on there. Not a great story to tell those of you that are skeptics.

The other thing Melbourne is known for is it’s night life. The party never stops here if you don’t want it to. It just so happens that I was here for “White Night,” which is held once a year in Melbourne. It goes from 7 pm on Saturday night until 7 am Sunday morning. From my small sample, I have no idea what the point is other than to party. They told me the city would be lit up, but it was pretty much just a fuckton of people gathered in certain areas and they had some live music.

I had a day trip booked for the next morning and had to wake up at 6 am, so I just got a glimpse of White Night. I either missed the party of a lifetime or another opportunity to realize I’m too old for this shit.

That’s all for now. I’ll have at least one more Melbourne post about my day trip and the aftermath of White Night.

Literally, everyone looked at me and asked why I was going to Canberra. I was like, “I don’t know. I feel like it’d be like driving past Washington D.C. and not stopping.” So I went to Canberra for 2 1/2 days. That was plenty. I arrived on Sunday afternoon around 3:30 and it was basically a ghost town. Imagine going to Quincy Market on a Sunday afternoon and there being like 10 people there, because that’s what this was like.

My first full day, I visited the Australian War Memorial. It’s a memorial, but it’s also a bit of a museum. I took an hour long free tour of the World War I section of the memorial. The tour consisted of the guide, a Canadian woman and I. Before we started she asked where I was from and I told her “Massachusetts, in the States.” She says, “Oh, that’s funny. I was just saying how I haven’t seen alot of Americans in Canberra recently. Maybe they’re all just saying they’re Canadian?” I will take Donald Trump over Canada anyday, lady. She then asked me what I was doing in Australia and where I’d been and proceeded to correct my pronunciation of every place I said besides Sydney. I kindly told her she should feel free to come to Massachusetts and try to pronounce the names of our towns.

Anyway, I went on the tour and learned some shit you probably don’t care about so I won’t regurgitate any of it. Here’s some pictures….

The Hall of Rememberance was really beautiful. It houses the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, has huge stained glass windows and the depictions on the walls were done by hand using 6.5 million mosaic tiles.

After the memorial, I went around back and took a trail up to the top of Mt. Ainslie. It was only about 2,500 ft high, but it was the first Australian mountain I summited on my own and you could see the whole city from the lookout.

After hiking back down the mountain, it was just about closing time for the memorial. Over 102,000 Australians have died in military service and everyday at close they hold The Last Post Ceremony and tell the story of one of those men or women who was killed serving their country. On this day, they told the story of Private Gerald Campion who was killed, at the age of 27, by German artillery fire on October 10, 1917 sadly just 1 day after his brother, Willie, was killed in an attempted raid at Celtic Woods.

On my 2nd day in Canberra, I went to Parliament House. Due to stupid luck, I guess, the House and Senate are in session this time of year, just back from recess. I had my daypack with me and forgot that my Leatherman tool was in it, so I accidentally tried to get a knife through security. They confiscated it until I left for the day. Oops. There really wasn’t much to see in the building, but shortly after I arrived the House of Representatives sat and began session. Prime Minister Turnbull addressed the House with a statement about their efforts to close the inequality gap between the indigenous people of Australia (Aborigines) and the non-indigenous people. I was literally like 100 feet from the Prime Minister of Australia. When he was finished, the Head of State continued on the topic. After he finished, I headed over to the Senate for what they call Question Time.

That’s the empty Senate floor a couple hours before. Question Time was amazing, ridiculous, childish….I dunno. I had to stop myself from laughing a few times. I don’t know how anything gets done in this country. The President of the Senate would call on someone and they would ask a question to either the Attorney General (representing the PM), another Senator or one of the ministers (cabinet members). If the question came from the Labor Party and was addressed to someone from another party, when the person tried to answer, most of the labor party just yelled “interjections” at them. They were often insulting, questioning the other party’s integrity, and flat out dismissing their policies and asking why they hid stuff from the public during the election. It was madness.

The Minister of Defense was asked about their efforts to liberate Mosul in Iraq and told us about their mission. Shit that I feel like should be classified and not only was it available to the public sitting in, but it was being broadcast on tv in Australia. The level of access that people have to Australian government proceedings is absolutely mind boggling. It would never happen in the States.

Up next Melbourne……

If that’s sounds like a porno title, that’s because that’s exactly what this trip was like. It was hot and steamy. There was a dick, a pizza delivery and in the end I got fucked. The only thing this porn is missing is sex.

I took about an hour and a half train ride South of Sydney to Wollongong. I checked into my hostel and found that all 3 of my roommates were at least in their 50’s. You must get cold pretty easily when you’re older because even though it was 95° out they insisted on keeping the balcony door open 24 hrs a day. The good news is it was a first floor balcony so any critter could just wander in (like the guy below). I didn’t put my shoes on once without banging them out first.

On the first night, I wandered around like I do every new city and found my way to the Wollongong City Beach where swimming is not recommended because of strong rip currents. No silly sign is going to stop surfers though. I ate dinner at the Eat Street Market, which is a food truck festival held every Thursday night. Food trucks are the shit.

The rest of the night I tried to figure out what I was going to do in The Gong and found out that nothing I wanted to do was actually in Wollongong. I either passed it on the train ride or couldn’t get to it by public transportation. Wonderful!!

Day 2, I visited the Nan Tien Temple, which is the largest Buddhist Temple in the Southern Hemisphere. I saw real live monks, but I’m still searching for spiritual enlightenment. I was starving when I got there, so I ate a vegetarian lunch because it was the only option. I wasn’t sure exactly what everything on the plate was and I didn’t know if it was disrespectful to not finish (haha) so I ate it all.

After the temple, I headed back to the hostel and grabbed my beach gear. I took the bus to North Wollongong Beach, which was more swimmer friendly, but still had some good surf.

Day 3 was 103° and humid. Obviously, the only thing to do was go to the beach. I voluntary put on sunscreen for the first time in my life after getting a slight burn the day before. The Australia sun is no joke. When I got to the beach, this time there were signs that said “Warning: Stingers floating” and had a picture of a jellyfish on it. Everyone was in the water anyway, so at least I knew they weren’t box jellyfish, which are extremely deadly. I got in the water and within a few minutes a softball sized jellyfish floated past me. I have no idea what kind it was or what getting stung felt like, but I wasn’t sticking around to find out. I was done swimming for the day.

Eventually I headed back to the hostel to shower and change, then I got dinner and found a bar and had a few pints. When I went back to the hostel, I decided to grab a 6 pack and sit out on the balcony to drink it, since it was cooler out there than in my room. I wish that was a joke. My room was a sauna for 3 days.

As I was enjoying my beers, the oldest of the roommates (also the only one still there) came into the room and locked the screen slider. I heard the lock click, but didn’t think anything of it at the time, especially since it was the first time the slider had been closed in 3 days let alone locked.

About 5 minutes later, I had my first “Holy Shit!!” Australia moment. Something fell on my shoulder, which didn’t bother me until it scurried up over my shoulder and down my arm. I freaked out and ended up wearing half my beer. It turned out to JUST be a good sized cockroach. I needed another beer now and this is when I found out I was locked out.

After a few minutes of trying to get in my room, the old man came back in the room. I assumed he would see and hear me trying to get in since his bed was next to the slider, but after a minute he turned to leave. I said, “Hey, can you let me in?” He never looked back and just left. I swear it was intentional.

I heard some girls in the room next door, so I tried knocking on the balcony divider and calling to them. No luck. Literally, as I was putting my foot up on the 6 foot, spiked fence to try and hop over, one of the girls came to their slider. I told her what happened, handed her my key and she came in my room and unlocked the door. Jokes on you, old man!! Kimberly from Vancouver and her roommate, Sam, from California were very nice. We talked for alittle while and then went out for a drink before calling it a night. I was off to Canberra in the morning and I couldn’t get out of The Gong fast enough.

I left Sydney 5 days ago and just have a bunch of random stuff I didn’t have time to post about or didn’t want to individually dedicated a whole post too, so this is gonna be a clusterfuck of random thoughts.

Chinese New Year is a pretty big deal in Sydney. It’s a 2 week festival full of celebrations and Chinese traditions. One of these traditions is The Lion Dance, which dates back thousands of years and is meant to bring good luck.

Another is the Chinese Lunar Lamps, which represent each phase of the lunar calendar.

There are 2 more, the Cat and the Dog, not sure what happened to thise pictures though. The Cat lantern was hilarious though. This year is the year of the Rooster.

They also “painted” the city red one night.

 

I got tired of not seeing spiders (crazy, I know), so I went to the Museum of Australia and checked out the special spiders exhibit they were doing.

I watched an Australian tarantula get milked for venom and crickets get fed to a Huntsman spider and Sydney Funnel Web spider. Depending on which source you consult, the Sydney Funnel Web ranks anywhere from the most deadly to the 3rd most deadly spider in the world. They are the most deadly spider in Australia. They are extremely aggressive, but thankfully they are nocturnal. The male is 5 times more deadly (to humans) than the female, but only lives about 5 years. Around 5 years old, they choose a mate and the female either rejects the male and kills it or accepts the male, mates, and then kills it. The females can live up to 25 years and have long serial killer careers. Nobody has died in Australia from a spider bite since 1980 when the Funnel Web anti-venom was created. This exhibit left my Snapchat friends with beautiful images before bed, but actually eased my fear of being attacked in the shower by a giant spider.

Time for something a little more cuddly……koalas!! No, I haven’t seen one yet. We learned about them on one of my hikes though. Koalas are a mess. First off, they aren’t koala bears, just koalas. Like kangaroos, they are marsupials and have pouches. 90% of koalas have chlamydia and male koalas are deadbeat dads. After mating, the male sneaks out while she’s still asleep, never knowing that he knocked the girl up. This means that the males have no idea that they’ve had a kid….You see where this is going? When the joey (same as a kangaroo baby, Australians are lazy when it comes to naming shit), ends up being a female, it is not uncommon for the male to return at some point in the future and unknowingly mate with his daughter. I told you, they’re a mess. Here comes the real downer. Koalas are not high all the time. It turns out that the eucalyptus is hard for them to digest and doesn’t contain many nutrients, so the koala sleeps so much and appears lazy because most of it’s energy is used during digestion. Koalas are pretty rare to see in the wild, but I’m holding out hope.

Sorry for ruining koalas for you.

P.S. Tom Brady’s patronus is a goat.

It’s hard to believe what we witnessed yesterday. A 25 point comeback with a quarter and a half to play on the biggest stage in sports??? Not possible. Not even Tom Brady could manage that.

Tom Brady makes the impossible look routine. He is not human. He is a demi-god, sent from God himself to bless Patriot Nation and make life insufferable for everyone else. His sperm should be frozen so that in the event of an apocalyptic disaster the world could be repopulated with his greatness.

I watched the game at the 24/7 Sports Bar at the Star Casino in Sydney, which 2 weeks earlier held about 15 people for the AFC Championship Game. Yesterday, it was the biggest Super Bowl party in Sydney and ESPN Australia was broadcasting from there.

They did some interviews throughout the game and I should have walked up to the producers and told them where I was from and ask if they wanted to interview me, but something stopped me. Maybe it was knowing that I probably would have gone full Masshole and started dropping F-bombs and talking about how handsome the greatest man to ever step on a football field is.

The crowd was full of random team jerseys and much like the U.S., you were either a Pats fan or a fan of whoever is playing the Patriots. I made friends with some Aussies that invited me to their table. When the Falcons made it 28-3, one of them looked at me and said, “Well, it’s over now, right?” I looked him dead in the eye and said, “Not as long as Tom Brady is on that field.” I meant it too. My biggest regret it not putting money at halftime on the Patriots to win the game. They were +1600 when it was 28-9. I have to imagine they were at least +1000 at halftime. $100 would have made me at least $10,000. I was that confident, but the thought never crossed my mind.

The argument of who is the greatest of all time is over now. In my mind it was over after his 4th ring, but after #5 you can’t even make a case for anyone else. He is the GOAT. PERIOD.

Frodo Baggins can hike his ass back to the shire, because the real Lord of the Rings forges his own rings out of the fucking Fires of Foxboro and he travels by duck boat.

Knew what day it was this week so I didn’t miss the coastal walk. It’s about a 4 mile walk and is highly regarded as one of the most beautiful coastal walks in the world. Unfortunately, it was cloudy, which led to some pretty much empty beaches, but the views were still beautiful.

 

Turns out I took most of my pictures on my camera during this walk. I can only post pictures from my phone on the blog right now. Most of the people that were at the beach that day were surfers. Riding at least 1 wave is one of my goals. Bondi Beach is one of the most famous beaches in the world and during the summer is normally wall to wall people. It was pretty much empty. The surf wall though is pretty cool. It’s covered in murals done by local artists and they paint over and change the wall every couple weeks.

The next day I headed back to the Blue Mountains. You already saw the kangaroo fight. It was our first stop and an amazing way to start the trip. Those were Eastern Grey Kangaroos, different than the wallabies we saw the other day. I want to see some Red Kangaroos. Those are the big jacked ones, but I think I have to go to the Outback to find them so it may be awhile.

 

 

After the boxing match, we headed to Wentworth Falls. We took about an hour and a half hike down to and around the falls. On the way, we stopped to check out the homes of some funnel web spiders. They’re extremely deadly, but I’ll talk more about them in an upcoming post about spiders and other Australian animals, including koalas.

Again, I think my best pictures are on my camera. Wentworth Falls is actually quite large and a lack of rainfall has diminished the waterflow. No worries though, because other than the kangaroo fight, here comes the highlight of my trip so far……..Minnehaha Falls.

As you can see, at the bottom of the falls is a freshwater swimming hole. We took about a 25 minute hike to get down to the base of the falls.

I wasn’t not going to go for a swim. It was kinda chilly, but no worse than Old Silver in June. Besides, I had to hike back up a mountain after, so I took the chance to cool off.

This was the best day of my trip so far. I really can’t wait to be alone with nature. Away from all the touristy stuff. I’ll be leaving Sydney in less than a week. Headed to Canberra (Australia’s capitol city) and then to Melbourne and Tasmania. I think the real fun is about to start!!!