Tassie!

I am writing from Hobart, Tasmania on our day of freedom, which is -as usual- rainy. But I have so much (not that much) to update since Melbourne! Well, the most exciting thing that happened to us lately was our "ferry" ride across to Devonport, Tasmania. It was not a ferry! It was almost a cruise ship! It was very fun, we had dinner on the boat, it was not particularly rough sailing at all, and woke up to beautiful skies and the Tassie coastline.

We spent the day --Monday--driving down the length of the island towards Hobart. We stopped at the Great Lake....and some other places, attempted and failed to climb Mt. Wellington in our van, and finally made it to the hostel. The hostel was an interesting situation in itself-- it was the day before their opening day-- we were the first to stay there! So it had no sign, and was still in construction more or less. But it all worked out. And I spent yesterday afternoon and all day today walking around Hobart. Tasmania is at the ends of the earth, and I can't believe people just live here, like that is normal.

Here is a picture of driving through Tassie that I took from the van ride. It is a very beautiful place, but heavily heavily logged. We heard that the logging industry basically runs the country, and in an article we read they referred to it as "Gunnsmania"- Gunn being the big logging company. But....I'm sure we'll hear all about that on our trip. We leave tomorrow and we are making our way to the west, going through Cradle/ Lake St. Clair national parks, old prisons, taking a boat trip up a river, camping....seeing the land. We get back to Devonport Monday night to take the ferry back over to Melbourne, have Tuesday free in Melbourne, and then start the journey back up to Byron Bay.

This last picture is Hobart at 6pm yesterday... completely empty! Seriously, where is everyone? This is a main road.

Well, I think that's it from here. I put up a few more pictures on Facebook, here is the link: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2071894&id=9803563&l=ef1a1

Hope everyone is doing well and talk to you soon!