Overland Track...is over

As we feared, we paid for the excellent weather along the west coast of Tasmania with almost constant rain on the Overland Track.  Out of eight days, we had three that were sunny.  On the second morning, we even woke up to snow.  Despite the rain, it was definitely an adventure we're (mostly) glad we had.

The $200 fee per hiker is certainly a bargain.  The trail is boardwalk over the muddiest sections, and huts or tent platforms are available each three to five hour stretch of the hike along with giant rainwater tanks.  Looking at the trail before we started, we thought we might combine a couple of the legs as a few hours didn't seem like much hiking, but with the weight we were carrying, we were relieved every time a hut came into view.

We started with two Kiwi couples in their late 20s who were biazarrely unfriendly and a 19-year-old Dutch guy who just sat and stared at the hut wall each night.  We kind of expect to see him on the news having killed twenty people in a village or something.

We stayed an extra night a the third hut to climb a nearby mountain.  Imagine our disappointment when a group of 20 came through that night, but we didn't get farther with any of them than casual conversation.  As we were climbing into bed that night, though, Eric recognised a friend from Melbourne, who in a hut that slept 60 happened to choose the bunk next to ours.  Without electric lights, it was so dark that Eric never would have seen him if he wasn't two feet away.

We stayed up a bit to talk to Martin and Jen, and Martin mentioned he had a bit of a toothache.  By morning, his face was so swollen that his eye was sealed shut.  Jen made a heroic dash to the next hut and back to find someone with a satellite phone, and the paramedics suggested that they would drive two hours to a side trailhead and then hike four hours in to assess the situation.  We were all a bit frustrated as it was clear that Martin would not be able to hike out, and he was in so much pain that it seemed inhuman to delay his evacuation by an entire day.  He was just laying there mostly comatose all day.  I got goosebumps when I heard a helicopter swoop into the valley just before dusk.  The pilot told us he knew they'd have to come get Martin eventually, so he convinced his boss that doing it before dinner was better than in the dark.  It was so good to see Martin looking happy and healthy again in Hobart for dinner after a short hospital stay.

Jen and Martin insisted on buying us dinner in Hobart for our part in their adventure, which was mostly sitting around the hut happy to have an excuse to avoid putting our packs on for another day, but we really owed them.  The beds in the huts were just plywood platforms, and Eric and I were the only people without sleeping pads.  The first three nights were fitful hours of half-sleep trying to find a comfortable position but just ending up with bruised hips and shoulders.  When Jen and Martin flew out, they left us with their sleeping pads, which made the rest of the hike SO much nicer.

The night they flew out, a lovely group of three couples from Brisbane and Canada came in along with a crazy German guy named Hans, and we had such a nice time with them in the huts each night thereafter.

We did some scenic sidetrips off the Overland but nothing more spectacular than what we've seen elsewhere.  To be honest, the rain and another challenging aspect that I'll describe in more detail in another post dampened our enjoyment a bit.

The only other real experience of note were the LEECHES!  Neither of us had ever seen a leech outside of movies, but they were everywhere.  Tasmanian leeches are tiny, but the just stretch out as long as they can from the end of a leaf and wait for a warm body to walk by.  The little bastards are impossible to kill.  We kept finding them on our clothes and trying to grind them into rocks, only to find them curled into impervious little balls.

On the last day, we were sprinting for the ferry back across the lake, and I knew from about 10 am that there was a leech under my gaiters but didn't want to stop to remove it.  When we arrived, I went into the lodge to change into dry clothes and to sign us out of the walk.  I left one pant leg rolled up, walked up to the bar, sprinkled some salt out of the shaker on to what was a very fat leech, and let him drop off as I walked out.  All class.

Our first night off the trail, we stayed in a little town nestled in the hills along the river called New Norfolk.  The place was considered "budget accommodation", but our room was lovely and the shower was HOT.  It took several minutes before the dirt stopped running in a continuous stream.  Upon check in, the lady told us where we could get discount bread.  At first I was offended that she thought we were charity cases, and then I realised the we are homeless!

One of Eric's dreams on the trail was to go to the cinema, so we did that last night and then just slept in our van in the middle of the city.  It was a bit surreal to wake up this morning to people walking by in suits on their way to work.  Thank goodness I didn't have to pee in the night, which would have necessitated bringing out the She-Wee!

We're just killing a few days here in Hobart waiting for a new alternator, which should arrive on Wednesday.  We visited the Museum of New and Old Art (MONA) yesterday, established by David Walsh with his gambling wins.  The best part of the museum were the little snippets in the iPod touring device where David explained why he had bought each piece.  Today we went to the Maritime Museum, which had a nice little exhibit of antique surfing paraphernalia.   Tomorrow we may climb up Mt Wellington, and the Wednesday before we find a good parking lot to change out the alternator, we're touring the Cascade Brewery.  It's a tough life.

Book report 1

I thought I might keep track of the books I’m reading as it might be interesting to look back and remember the things that were occupying my mind.

On the boat over, I was engrossed in the second half of Nothing to Envy: Love, Life, and Death in North Korea, winner of the 2010 BBC prize for non-fiction by Barbara Demick.  I hadn’t realised that in the decades following the Korean War, North Korea’s economic performance outstripped South Korea’s, leading them to be held up as the shining example of successful Communism.  It wasn’t until the Soviet Union collapsed, eliminating North Korea’s free supply of energy and a primary trading partner, that economic conditions descended into a primitive subsistence (not that social conditions had ever been any better than Orwell’s 1984).  Although the electrical infrastructure remains in place, and you can see fallen or rusting power lines throughout the country, the country is almost entirely without electricity and thus the means of production.  The book follows the stories of six defectors, whose struggles don’t end when they make it to South Korea.  The author admits that the book is by no means a balanced or comprehensive picture simply because there is no access to the information that would be required to make it so.

Then I jumped into Coonardoo, a book written in 1926 by Katharine Susannah Prichard about the coexistence of a white family who runs a cattle station and the Aboriginal community that works for them in exchange for food and other basic necessities.  The titular character is a young Aboriginal girl who grows up alongside the future master of the station, who struggles throughout the book with his own inclinations versus what society tells him is an appropriate relationship with Coonardoo.  The plot itself isn’t surprising, although apparently it was very shocking in 1926 to even hint that an emotional attachment could exist between white and Aboriginal people.  Some of the racism inherent in the times reads through in the language and descriptions used, but the most interesting aspect of reading the book is hearing the author possibly struggle herself as she bravely counters popular thinking.  On a more visceral level, it also made me dread the heat we may encounter in Western Australia.

Now I’m racing to the finish of The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee and winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction.  I’ve covered almost 400 pages in less than 48 hours, because I literally can’t put it down.  I’ve woken up the past two mornings and tried to coax Eric back to sleep so I can read by my headlamp.  The author is a doctor who began specialising in oncology in 2004, but he is also a brilliant writer.  I didn’t realise just how ad hoc the search for a cure for cancer, which really isn’t a singular thing at all anyway, has been.  When I was younger and not eating beef because of the destruction of Amazonian rainforests, one reason was always that the biodiversity being lost could potentially hold the cure for cancer.  That actually seems true now that I’ve read about chemists milking just about every plant they can find in an empirical search for anything that will stop mutant cells from multiplying.  

On a personal note, it’s been really interesting to read about the search for a cure has been informed as the same research and statistical methods used in my field developed from about the 1920s. 

I’ve been lucky so far and really enjoyed all three books, which I would recommend to anyone.

Learning, learning, learning...then beach

Leaving the Spray Tunnel after a delicious breakfast of pancakes and fried eggs, we backtracked to Zeehan and spent three hours at the extensive local museum reading about all of the old mining towns we passed through on the previous day.  While the towns, which didn’t appear particularly prosperous when we drove through, had been a downer, it was even sadder to see what thriving communities they had once been. 

The Gaiety Theatre in Zeehan, one of the largest in the WORLD when it was built around 1900 with 1,000 seats, didn’t fare so well once the entire population of the town could fill the place two times over.  Fortunately, it’s been absorbed into the museum, like every other artefact from about a 200 mile radius.  We could have stayed all day looking at photographs and reading old newspaper clippings, but fortunately Eric and I reach the point of information overload about the same time.

We stopped briefly at the Henty Dunes on the way to Strahan, but they didn’t hold a candle to the ones in Wilson’s Promontory, Victoria.  Strahan was predictably a tourist hellhole, but the museum at the visitor’s centre was fantastic.  It drew a really vivid picture of what it was like to be a convict at nearby Macquarie Heads/Sarah Island.  While certainly some of the convicts had committed offenses, even the most serious crime doesn’t fit the punishment of deportation to such a remote, inhospitable place to be used as slave labour, not to mention the physical conditions and violence to which the men were subjected.  Essentially, the convicts were moved here to extract the valuable Huon Pine, although even that enterprise ran at a loss given the resistance and poor health of the undernourished, maltreated workers.  From what I’ve read, most of them weren’t even serious criminals; it was just a matter of England needing a way to rid themselves of what they viewed as a dangerous underclass once the US won independence and Georgia was no longer an option.

The other main focus of the museum was the local movement to stop the damming of the Gordon River.  While the museum fairly presented the fact that a struggling local population with desperately high unemployment wanted the jobs construction of a dam would bring, and on a larger scale the Tasmanian government wanted to continue the momentum of dam construction projects across the state, it certainly took the side of the winners: the conservationists.

I hadn’t realised what a conservative environment Tasmania, and I imagine much of Australia although possibly to a lesser extent, was even into the 1980s.  It seems like such a more liberal place than the US these days, particularly after what seems like a backslide into fundamentalism in recent years. 

The conservationist movement to save the river was really the first organised protest movement in the state and launched the Greens, the political party that would dominate Tasmanian politics for two decades to come.  A snippet in the museum referred to the fact that homosexuality was illegal in Tasmania until something horrific like 1988, and I wondered if the spirit of protest started by the conservationists sparked a bit of a revolution in this tiny island state.

It was tough to imagine the harsh conditions of convict times today, though, as Eric and I spent six hours walking along a 14 km beach in full sunshine, taking two hours out to sit in a protected grove of trees atop a 30 m sand dune whilst we ate lunch and read.  While it’s still gorgeous weather at the moment, this area is known to be cold, miserable, and rainy most of the time. (I must remind myself of this when our luck doesn’t hold at some later part of the trip – hopefully not the Overland Track).

We did find a heap of whale bones.  Although impressive in size outside of a museum, it was sad to think that a whole pod of whales must have washed up along here. 

Now we’re settling in for a second night camping at Macquarie Heads.  Although about 15 km down a rutted dirt road and pretty basic in terms of facilities, it’s a very popular spot, particularly with fishers, since you can drive down the 30 km or so of beach.  There are some freaky people who clearly live here full time in some kind of bogan fantasy, as well as some kind of religious group.  Last night about sunset, a group of about seven ladies in bonnets and long dresses walked by, something I haven’t seen since leaving the US.  I guess there’s fundamentalism everywhere, just in different proportions.

It’s so nice to spend two nights in the same place and really settle in.  It’s funny that even a week in, I already found myself today looking at today’s entertainment relative to other days instead of to work.  Any other Tuesday in the past 15 years, I would have killed to spend the day walking on the beach, but today it just seemed normal.

West Coast Classic and Western Explorer

The extra day in Marrawah/Arthur River was well spent, the first on which we managed to both surf and cycle.  We returned to the same beach, but the wind had picked up to make conditions more challenging.  You know it’s not been an epic day when you can count the waves you catch (in this case a measly four), but it still beat those early days of my surfing career when I paddled for what seemed like hours without ever making it out.  Similarly, the cycle was hot and windy, but surely we were building muscles and endurance that will come in handy on another day.

We’ve been getting out of camp later and later each day, but the next morning we set an alarm for 7:30 to attend the West Coast Classic.  The sign outside the general store had the name of a point of land down a long dirt road on the map, so we set off like a couple of deranged groupies. 

I was worried that we would stand out as the only non-surfing people in what I imagined was a tight community, but I was only half right.  Everyone at the competition did seem to know each other, but they were more than welcoming.  One couple picked us up on the 4WD track down to the break on their way to watch their 19-year-old son compete, and another proud dad chatted to us about other local breaks.  My favourite part of the morning, though, was listening to the teenage boys nervously chatting before their heats and then talking about their exploits when they returned.

The wind had continued to howl overnight, and the surf was monstrous.  Eric and I certainly never would have even made it out, and even if we had, we would have shat ourselves when one of the waves approached.  Watching those young guys paddle out, seemingly effortlessly, and then ride each wave for ages was awesome. 

I was delighted to see that at least 10% of the competitors were female, but I felt a bit better when they said the girls wouldn’t compete until conditions improved.  In fact, only the elite male categories were allowed out while we were watching.  So it really was rough.

By noon, though, my bum was sore from perching on a rock (no grandstands for this event), so we hiked back up the hill and took on the Western Explorer.  Although we planned to make it a two-day ordeal, we just kept ticking off the points labelled on the map until we’d made it through only a few hours later.  We can imagine that it would be much more treacherous during the rainy season, though. 

Feeling quite pleased with ourselves, we pulled off next to Reece Dam as we thought we might need to give a few things a rinse.  As we started pulling bikes and boards out of the van, having moved them inside to keep them cleaner, we found that everything was covered in about a quarter inch of dust.  It took three hours to sweep off the major dust and then clean each container of food and dish in our cupboards. 

Fortunately, Eric thinks he can minimise the amount of dust we take on in future offroad adventures by better sealing some of the tubing installed for our sink pump and shower and by creating temporary covers for the gas and fridge vents.  At this point, his list of improvements is stretching to about a week.  It’s frustrating to think of returning to Melbourne for that long, almost like we’re returning in defeat: “Hello, remember the to-do we made about leaving?  Well, we’re back!”  However, some of the improvements will make the rest of the year so much smoother, and what’s wrong with another week among friends?

Speaking of which, today marks the seventh day on which Eric and I have barely spoken to anyone outside of brief, anecdotal exchanges.  We’ll have to stay in a caravan park eventually just for human contact.  Hopefully we’ll meet some nice people in the huts on the Overland Track.  We did share the parking lot at the dam last night with a crazy lady trying to quit smoking and a bizarre European couple who were practicing the recorder (!), but after being accosted by the crazy lady and cleaning every crevice of the van, we were more than happy to hide in our van with the lovely bottle of pinot noir that Lucky and Katanya gave us.  Despite many people thinking the contrary, Eric and I both really are introverts.

Not that we’re bored with each other already!  Today we resumed our leisurely pace, leaving camp about 11, puttering around some old mining towns for a few hours, and then hiking a few hours return to Montezuma Falls.  The waterfall, one of the highest in Tasmania, was lovely and the walk through the dense rainforest refreshing on a 33 degree day, but the mining towns were so depressing.  I’m not sure I saw anyone with a full set of teeth.  The teen pregnancy rate here must be astronomical.  And the incidence of heart disease given the size of people.

Tonight we followed signs offroad to a “Spray Tunnel”.  I wasn’t sure what the heck that was, but it seemed far enough off the road that no one would bother us.  Although Eric is still really nervous about parking at night, I consider it a challenge to avoid paying for somewhere to park when our batteries are fully charged from driving. 

Apparently we’re on the site of an abandoned mine called “Silver Spray”, and there’s a 400 metre tunnel you can walk through: hence, Spray Tunnel.  We’ve read lots of mining lore today, but just a few interesting tidbits:

·        

• When Tasman sailed by this area in his coastal exploration of Tasmania in the 1600s, his compasses stopped working, and he hypothesized that the mountains were full of ore.  Right he was!
• ·         To lay claims to areas people thought might have valuable minerals, they would sneak in key finds from other areas and claim to have discovered them locally.  Given the paucity of gold eventually prospected in the area, the two largest nuggets ever found in Tasmania are now suspected of having been smuggled in from Ballarat in Victoria.
• ·        The mine where we’re camped was called “Silver Spray” to evoke images of silver fairly leaping out of the rocks.  Those who owned the claims would give their site the most hyperbolic name they could think of to encourage investment, even if they didn’t know whether anything was there or not.  We read about a lot of shenanigans going on during the mining days.  It really was the wild west.
• ·        Although there are a lot of valuable minerals in the area, the freight costs often rendered mining unprofitable.  Until 1962, there weren’t even roads in most of the areas through which we passed today.  Instead, boats had to sail around to Strahan from Hobart through such a treacherous pass that it cost 600% more to ensure a ship to sail from Hobart to Strahan than from Hobart to Sydney, a much greater distance.  Even at that, the miners had to get their load to the coast.  We’ve passed every manner of abandoned train, tram, and trolley today to get ore down to the water, and the track to Montezuma Falls was entirely along an old tram track.

Much of our talk on the hike to the falls today was about the looming Overland Track.  If the good weather holds, we’ll probably be setting out within the next four or five days.  I haven’t done anything longer than an overnight hike since Costa Rica in (gasp) 1998, and Eric hasn’t either, so we’re a bit trepidatious.  From all reports, though, you can’t do a much easier week-long trek than the Overland Track, though, with huts and fresh water supply every 15 km or so.

Best surf day ever (for now!)

After my last post, we never did make it out of Stanley that day.  Eric could tell my cycling legs were getting jumpy (maybe because I kept suggesting I go riding places), so we did a 40 km ride and then went for a swim.  There was a short 14% climb that we did twice to remind my legs and lungs why I need regular training sessions. 

I forgot my shampoo so washed my hair in the outdoor shower with a bar of soap.  I’m not sure which part of that scared the schoolchildren on excursion back onto their bus.

Last night, I dragged Eric on a penguin hunt, but all we found were five dead penguins.  Given that there was clearly a penguin-killing zombie on the loose, we high-tailed it back to the van.

Today we drove to Marrawah in time for an AWESOME post-lunch surf.  I often say it was my best surf ever (except when I’m saying it was my worst surf ever), but this was the BEST.  They were nice, small waves, but they went on for ages.  Lately, I’ve been getting cold and thrashed by erratic surf and lucky to get four or five good waves.  Today, I probably got about seven or eight good ones before the tide came in and the waves died.

The amazing part, though, was that we were just in rashies.  I’ve never surfed in Australia out of a wetsuit, and since Boxing Day in Phillip Island I’ve had few days in my short suit that my teeth didn’t start chattering.  Since Tassie is known to be so cold, I debated even bringing my board but grudgingly agreed to let Eric throw it on top.  We only brought our long suits as we suspected that even with those on, the water might be too cold. 

It must have been 35 out: way too hot to put on a giant body condom.  It felt amazing to be out without a wetsuit, although I now know I need smaller bikini bottoms before we take off for warmer country.

Which reminds me: poor Eric is tramatized by the fact that I’ve flashed most of northwest Tasmania at one point or another now.  You just can’t be shy living in a campervan!  I reckon if anyone’s main source of excitement is seeing a flash of nip or bum as I change clothes, it’s really a public service for me to provide it.

We were headed on to the Western Explorer (150km+ unsealed road down the west coast of Tassie) tomorrow until we found out that the West Coast Classic, part of the Tasmanian surfing championship, begins in Marrawah in two days.  Hopefully the good surf conditions will hold tomorrow, but if not I’ll happily kill the free day cycling (500 metres of 13% up from the beach).  We battled our momentum that was pushing us down the road but reminded ourselves that we’re taking a year so we don’t have to rush.  We’ve never seen a surf comp before, and this remote corner of Tassie is a magical place to kill a few days.

Anyway, we’re pretty nervous about the Western Explorer, so a few extra days to steel our nerves and make sure everything is securely strapped down will be welcome.

Freaking awesome surf beach, Marrawah

Another reason we couldn't tear ourselves away from Stanley

West Point near Arthur River

Turquey and The Nut

I could get into this...

The first couple of days have been great!  We've had phenomenal weather, which we are told doesn't happen very often.  We're heading over to the West coast of Tasmania today, at which point we are expecting a fair bit of rain.

We got off the ferry about 7 pm on Monday night and found a quiet beach just outside town for a dinner of red wine, cheese, and hummus.  Eric was afraid to put up the pop-top as he thought that might make us too conspicuous.  However, we were joined by a couple of other campervans, and the police rolled through about 3 am - more to check on our safety, I think, than to harass us.  We're just going to have to get used to the fact that we will be asked to leave at some point, but that's not a big drama really.

View during dinner - tough

I began the second day with some stretchies on the beach.  I think sleeping on a cushion laid over wood is going to require some limbering of the old muscles!  I always feel better when I have a good stretch, and for once I'm not going to feel rushed and skip it.

We spent the morning doing errands in Devonport before driving through Penguin to get some hot cross buns at the bakery, doing a short walk to a lighthouse in Table Cape, and then settling in for the afternoon at Sisters' Beach.

Last time we drove this stretch of coast, there were gorgeous purple flowers everywhere (pic below from last time).  It turns out, Tasmania has the largest legal supply of opium poppies in the world for use in a variety of pharmaceuticals!

For Americans, hot cross buns are only sold around Easter and are basically raisin buns.  I suppose there's nothing all that special about the, but somehow the scarcity of only being able to buy them around Easter makes them so appealing!

We had a long walk down Sisters' beach followed by a refreshing swim and a play in the waves. While our teeth were still chattering, we thought we'd take advantage of the outdoor shower in the park - brrr!  Then I epilated my legs sitting on a picnic table - all class.  Eric had a good laugh, but that's the price of having a non-yeti wife when living in the wild.

I made our first hot meal to warm us up, a nice pasta with fresh zucchini, mushrooms, green onions, and eggplant.  Imagine my disappointment when the campervan filled with a horrible smell!  Turns out it wasn't my fault for once, though.  The fridge can run off the battery when we're moving or plugged in or gas when we're parked away from a connection, but apparently it wasn't venting properly.  Looks like we'll be in Melbourne for a few days cutting new holes in the van in April, but at least we didn't burn Turquey down on day two!

This morning we started with a 30 minute hike up and around a hill to a cave, and now we're squatting in a park in Stanley in view of The Nut using the internet before we head in the western wilds of Tasmania.  In another hour or so, we should be in territory we didn't cover in our last trip, which is exciting.  It's hard to believe that on our last trip to Tasmania with my sister, Piglet, we made it to Stanley with several walks along the way and then finished with a 3.5 hour trek in Cradle Mountain at dusk all in one day.  It's a bit of a different pace this time!

Anchors away!

We’re finally on our way! After some lovely drinks with a few friends in Port Melbourne last night, we had our last sleep in a bed and our last showers and then boarded the Spirit of Tasmania this morning. I already demonstrated thrift (and humility) by paying for our coffees using $8 of 20 cent coins. Yesterday I bought us packets of peanuts at the petrol station rather than cashews, because they cost half as much. I figured nuts would have the most protein and thus keep us full longest of the available snacks. Maybe I’ll be good at being poor and homeless!

The last few weeks have been a blur of to-do lists and tasks: packing up the St Kilda and Phillip Island houses, sorting out insurance for our stuff in storage and the $28,000 of stuff we’re dragging around in the van, working through our U.S. taxes, getting our Australian passports, strapping random things to the van, etc. Eric worked full time until late last week, and I worked about ¾ time until last Monday, which made for some long days and short tempers. The hardest part was saying goodbye to Otis. I would have felt entirely like an irresponsible cat mother if he hadn't immediately taken to Sharon and Matt, who I know will give him plenty of love

Leaving Melbourne

Waiting in line to board the ferry

It's all in there - barely!

Sunrise in line for the ferry

Ready to begin!

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Arriving in Devonport, Tasmania

I thought I’d feel euphoric finishing up work last Monday, but instead I felt really, really anxious. I think because I tend to be very structured, the thought of not having any structure the next day was really confronting, even with plenty of tasks left to accomplish. There’s also something scary about not being needed by anyone, not that I think my job was really that meaningful anyway.

Even Eric, who tends to be less anxious (although equally compulsive with making sure doors are locked, stoves are off, etc., which I find comforts me in my own insanity), remarked on our last full day in the house that it was kind of alarming to think of living in our van for a year. I believe he called it, “a big thing”. He was surprised to find that he was a bit overwhelmed by the thought, but at least he finally had a glimpse of my private panic room.

It’s just a very long time, isn’t it? I’m sure we’ll have some ups and downs, but I hope I can appreciate it even on the more challenging days since I know plenty of people would rather be having a rainy day in a smelly campervan then sitting at their desks.

It’s been a relaxing 8 hours on the boat so far, and in two hours we drive off the ferry and “turn right”. That’s the only decision we’ve made so far, but I look forward to reporting how we go settling into a rhythm of life on the road.