(I think the heat back here in Melbourne is getting to him… – Pat)

Hello! Here be a summary of the week Pat, Jersey and myself spent in lovely Tasmania.

It’s been a week that’s been good and bad. Starting with the bad (hey, it means we end on a high note!):

The big thing for Pat that sucked in Tasmania was that he didn’t get to see LOADS of things he’d’ve liked to. This was due to a number of reasons:

That said, the week was far from crap – or eventless:

Firstly, Pat still managed to see lots of cool stuff:

Inbetween checking out the sights, Pat managed to get a good deal of chilling out in, which was well recieved following the hectic road trip the week before. A lot of this was helped by having a good book (well, books – he’s ploughing through Asimov’s Foundation series) but mainly because he realised there really wasn’t much to be stressed out about. At long bloody last. Maybe he’ll stop being a stress cadet now! I doubt it, mind :-)

Evenings were mainly quiet affairs, with Pat and Jersey occasionally sinking a few glasses of cheap ($10 for 4.4L!), crap (…crap) wine, chomping on the odd bit of cheap chocolate whilst reading books / planning activities / watching whatever rubbish was on telly. (Yep, it’s here too. I wonder which country it started in…?)

He and Jersey also met some cool people whilst in Tasmania, from various parts of the world. Pat’s now got a contact in Perth, too, which is pretty handy!

So yeah, not a bad week. In fact, a really good week. Pat’s used it to motivate him to plan further in advance for the rest of his trip. He’s also looking on the lack of “Things He Wanted To Do” done as a good reason to come back out to Tassie in a few months’ time. As the security guard at Launceston Airport said: A week’s just not long enough.

Righty, that’s your lot for now. Keep checking out The Usual Place for photos, as Pat tends to upload them much quicker and more frequently than I get round to typing these out!

Yep, that’s correct, I’ve finally made it down to the land (ok, so it’s technically an Australian territory) of Tasmania!

Last week was a ROAD TRIP (featuring a whole load of driving about and viewing of some lovely coastal sights between Sydney and Melbourne – via a detour into the amazing Blue Mountains), which was great fun but blooming tiring for both of us (Jersey and I sharing the driving all the way down), so getting here in the laid back Tasmanian city of Hobart has been just the ticket.

It’s a really pretty city, with lots of colourful 19th century buildings, hilly streets, lovely cafes, lovely green parks and an excellent Saturday market. Perfect for winding down in, frankly.

Excitingly, one of the local radio stations (“Triple J”) not only plays quite a good selection of music, but it played a song with the words “F**k”, “S**t” and “M***er F***er” uncensored at 10:25am yesterday. Don’t worry though, they played a jingle saying “This song contains strong language” beforehand. If only I’d known! I would’ve played Kevin Bloody Wilson every hour on my previous radio shows…

Anyway, I’ve not done much in Taz yet – however we’re going to be scaling the rather (1270m) high Mount Wellington tomorrow, then over to such places as Port Arthur, Freycinet National Park and Launceston later in the week. So that should be good.

We’re still umming and ahhing regarding whether to hire a car or take coach journeys to our destinations, but I suspect we’ll opt for the latter as – with insurance and fuel considered – coaches are cheaper. We just need to compromise a bit around the timetables.

Anyways, the blog mentioned a while ago is still on its way, which will cover everything from Australia Day until the day it’s written. For ease I’m-I mean, er, Squage’s- going to split it into three blogs: Before The Road Trip, ROAD TRIP and Tasmania. It’s going to be rather bullet-pointy due to the detailed blog attempts – once viewed on screen – starting to look like aimless rambles.

A little like this. So I’ll stop.

Speak to you soon, take care and keep checking for photos in the usual place!

Starting to get a cold for the first time in Oz. Probably cos southern Tasmania’s about as hot as southern England on a summer’s day. Quite a temperature drop from Mel-38C-bourne…
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