Tassie

Wow. Tasmania is one awesome place. I had hoped to put up some pictures midweek, but I’ve been pretty far from electricity let alone the internet. But before I get ahead of myself, we’ll start in Hobart.

Tasmania is a battlefield for logging interests and environmental warriors. A swarm of protesters marched from the capital city’s park to the police station to chant and wave signs and, of all things, arrest themselves.

It was a show of solidarity among the greenies whose leadership had been singled out and arrested two months prior at a rally attended by hundreds. Thirty dissenters successfully entered the station and turned themselves in for illegally trespassing on Forestry Tasmania property.

From the protest I went straight out to the front lines of the conflict at the Upper Florentine Valley where a dozen or so eco-sentinels were stationed at a blockade. To prevent Forestry Tasmania from simply arresting everyone and bulldozing away their camps and obstacles, the activists rigged cables up to everything, connecting all structures, gravel impediments to tree-sits manned 24 hours a day, seven days a week, so that any sort of

intervention would be an effective act of murder.

The escalation of more elaborate methods by the Loraxes for self sacrifice for the sake of the forests is evidence for the duration of the conflict. They have people sleeping in cars blocking the logging track with their arms manacled to cement blocks embedded into the earth beneath, so that to move the vehicles without dismembering anyone, loggers must first disassemble the autos piece by piece.

And to prevent forestry from bringing in cherry-pickers to pull the “possums,” as the tree-sitters are called, from their 50-meter perches, the greenies dug some sort of tunnel under the road in which somebody resides full-time that is primed to collapse causing a gruesome death by squishing should any of Forestry’s fleet of heavy machinery venture across the road above.

Anyway, I was mighty impressed with all their courage and determination, but I’m not allowed to post any photos of the warriors online to protect their identity. For similar reasons they all go by groovy superhero pseudonyms like “skunk,” “quoll,” or “bones.” If you want to cheer them on or join the fight check out their website: www.stillwildstillthreatened.com

I continued my whirlwind eco-tour by cruising up the road to Lake Pedder, an artificial body created by the

construction of several massive dams that generate loads of hydroelectric power for the state.

Then straight after drove through the Franklin River National Park, a reserve created in a successful battle to prevent the damming of the river that was slated to meet a similar fate. The saving of the Franklin River was the first campaign of the Wilderness Society led in part by Senator Bob Brown who went on to found the Australian Green Party.

It was pretty cloudy that day. You could even see the clouds forming down below from this elevation. No rain though, which was lucky given the area receives 2 to 3 meters of it per year.

I also got to see some of the biggest trees in the world in the Styx Valley. Without the efforts of TWS they would be nothing but lumber and paper pulp.

I followed a map I got from TWS campaign center in Hobart, but it apparently landed me in some sort of active logging zone off limits to the public. A Forestry Tasmania official promptly escorted me back to the highway. I took some pictures of some of the awful clear-felled, still-smoldering remains of what used to be old growth rainforest, but none of them came out that well as I was snapping them furtively over my shoulder out the window while doing 90 km/hr down a winding gravel road.

I made it out to the west coast and combed the beach for an afternoon. On the way two towns: 1) Strahan, Tassie’s “tourist mecca” contained nobody under the age of 65. 2) Queenstown, the busted remains of a mining town surrounded by a desolate moonscape wrought such by acid rain and heavy metal contamination.

On my way back southeast to Hobart I woke up to this:

…and then on the Bruny Island, just 40 minutes drive and a short ferry ride from Hobart, but essentially the end of the earth.

I ran into a bit of a kindred spirit in a bloke from Queensland named “Pat.” No he wasn’t into birds, but he was into a bit of plants and trees, and was, like me, sleeping in his car, traveling alone and keen to explore the island’s natural wonders while spending as little money as possible.

We complemented each other well with, me pointing out and identifying anything with feathers, while he kept encouraging me to try different edible plants and berries.

We parted ways today in Hobart when he took off for the Tasmanian Peninsula, while I’ve got to fly back to the mainland. I have to say I’m a bit jealous. A week is far too short to spend on this island. It looks so small on maps, but I hardly had a chance to see half of half of it.

I’ve learned though that with traveling that no matter how long you plan to stay in a good place, it’s never long enough.

This is probably my longest post, yet it could have easily been quite a bit longer. Ironically my parents are en route to Sydney at the moment, so nobody will probably read it anyway. Ha!

To be honest, not a whole lot worth mentioning has occurred over the past 10 days. So you might as well go back to watching the NCAA tournament…just kidding! I successfully turned 24, returned to Australia, and then flew down to Tasmania to check out some of those big trees and animals I’ve been working so hard to protect. Not many photos to show for all that, so it will be a quick entry anyway.



I ended up spending my birthday in Wellington with a couple of my friends I met while working at a resort back in the US: ‘Carl’ who I introduced a few posts back and a fellow American who requested an especially elaborate pseudonym that I cannot recall, so we’ll just call him ‘Grievous Vasquez.’

Here we are with several of ‘Carl’s’ mates carrying what sums to a shocking number of beverages through New Zealand’s capital city.

I managed to score a free ticket to Wellington’s massive waterfront music festival called Homegrown. You may not quite be able to recognize them (or be able to have ever heard of them before) but in the background there is no other than New Zealand’s premier drum and bass act, State of Mind.

I know how mighty impressed and jealous you are.


The days since haven’t really inspired my photographic muse. You all know what an airplane looks like and I’ve already spent better than 3 months in Sydney. I will say that Emirates is the best airline I’ve ever flown, just eclipsing my experience with KLM.

Also I woke up at 3 am the other day to catch the first round of the NCAA tournament with an American friend and basketball fan with whom I went to high school and who happens to be studying abroad at UNSW. For some reason ESPN stopped covering the action after 5 hours in favor of showing reruns of world’s strongest man, which means I missed seeing Duke. Anyway, my bracket is now busted with Wake’s pathetic first round loss.

I just arrived in Hobart a few hours ago so no Tassie pics yet, but stay tuned… I’m going to some Wilderness Society protest tomorrow morning and will hopefully meet some nature-lovers keen to explore a bit of the bush with me.

too many scenic vistas

Wow. I’ve been so busy riding my thumb around the south island I haven’t gotten around to posting any pictures or stories in quite awhile. I left off just before Queenstown:

Gorgeous place and though it is a bit overrun by tourists, it has the only disc golf course I have encountered thus far in the country. I would have happily stuck around to play it, but with my tight schedule I had to get a move on. In fact that has been a bit of a theme for the south island—so many places that make me want to stick around for a week or two, but with only a month in the country it just isn’t possible to take things that slow. So I woke up at the crack the next morning to catch a tour bus to one of the most splendid sights on the planet, Milford Sound.

It’s really tough to capture the shear scale of the place. With cliffs jutting vertically up from the fiord 1,500 meters and capped by the occasional glacier, it sure is magnificent. It is also one of the wettest places on earth and I lucked out with the weather. It gets so much rainfall, 10 to 20 meters of fresh water rides atop the salty ocean water below, which creates a very unusual marine ecosystem.

Next stop on the whirlwind Thumbelina express: Stewart Island. But not before a stop off in my town.

Funny I must have founded it prehumously.

But on to Stewart Island...it is a pretty unique place. It rains there an average of 15 times per day and stops raining just as frequently.

These flightless birds called Wekas roam the island and don’t have any fear of people.

This one really wanted to eat whatever was in my bag and stuck his/her head entirely inside it. Another tried to jump in my lap as I was trying to make myself a peanut butter sandwich!

More fascinating than the bird life is that of the locals. I happened to be present for the live band Saturday night.

That’s right. A guitar, a one-string broom-handle bass, a washboard and a tambourine—the classical Stewart Island quartet. After they completed their repertoire of about 5 songs (for most of which the complete lyrics eluded them) they just went back to the top and repeated their set. Of course the gumboot clad fishermen scarcely seemed to notice and seldom managed a sip of Speights without spilling an equivalent portion on the carpet.

Back across to the mainland and planet Earth, I hitched to Dunedin, sister city of Edinburgh, Scotland, and New Zealand’s biggest college town. I rented a car so I could go see Otago Point and some of the Catlans National Park.

Unfortunately I forgot to recharge my camera the night before so this is the only shot I got of the beautiful scenery.

Don’t try to hitchhike in a hailstorm. It just isn’t worth it. Catch a bus. After about 5 hours of hiding out in cafés and of short rides with very friendly farmers going to the next town, I actually got picked up by a commercial bus. The driver charged me $20, but it was still a $10 discount off what I would have paid if I had done the smart thing: checked the weather and booked online.

This morning I signed up for a car relocation at one of the rental places, which is basically a $19 one-day rental. Of course it limited me to a straight shot form Christchurch to Picton, but allowed me to explore Kaikoura by car in between.

Yes another incredibly scenic place. I know you’re getting as bored of dramatic sea-scapes and mountains as I am. One of the big draws of Kaikoura is its close proximity to an extremely deep ocean canyon that attracts a vast array of rare sea birds, whales and dolphins. Unfortunately the water was far too rough to go out on a boat, so I explored the rocky coast and gazed at thousands of sea-birds too far away for me to identify.

There were loads of fur seals crashed out of the rocks everywhere. They always look like they're hungover from a huge night out.

I was going to try to go to farewell spit tomorrow, but I think it’s a bit too far for the time I have left, so I’ll probably just catch the ferry back to Wellington tomorrow. That will get me back to Hawkes Bay well in time for my 24^th. Friday the 13^th...yikes!

Why pay for bus tickets?

So hitchhiking in New Zealand is a really easy and cheap way to get around so far. It did take four separate rides to get to Murchison for the kayak festival. A local logger, an ex-pat hippie, a New Zealand Air pilot and a fellow American traveler made up my relay team.

At "Bullerfest" they set up a massive 25-foot ramp out of plywood and scaffolding, lubed it up with cooking oil and dish soap, aimed it at the Buller River and sent off a slew of crazy fools in kayaks for a big air competition. It’s only a matter of time before it becomes an official X-games event. Heck they’ve already got a pair of color commentators and sent a drunk and naked local off the ramp who had never before kayaked.

Anyway, I met this really nice guy there who gave me a life down to Franz Josef. I found out he’s a glacier trek guide and not only did he let me stay at his flat, but he also hooked me up with a free full-day glacier tour.

I was pretty impressed with our leader, this Swiss girl who basically carved the group a set of stairs up, down and around the crevasses with a pick axe. Here’s me with her axe at the high point of our hike.

That night I went out on a Kiwi tour and after an hour of waiting in silence in the woods, a cheeky little snuffling wingless specimen, one out of the last 300 of its kind left in the world, probed the nostrils on the end of its bill into the ground 3 feet in front of me before hustling off into the bush.

No pictures allowed unfortunately.

The next morning I caught a ride down the gorgeous west coast with the ocean on one side and the Southern Alps on the other.

Those tiny dots down on the beach at Knight’s Point are fur seals. Unfortunately they weren't the rare Fjordland Crested Penguins that sometimes come ashore this time of year to molt.

It wouldn’t be a post without a bird pic.

This one’s an alpine parrot called a Kea. They supposedly have the intelligence of a 3-year-old and are known for stealing food from backpacks, dropping cameras off cliffs and peeling rubber seals from car windshields. Fortunately this one just came to check out our glacier hiking group.

I’m in Wanaka in the moment which is maybe a bit like Switzerland, not that I’ve really spent much time there. I like the feel of the place and am tempted to stick around a bit, but got to keep moving since I’ve got lots left to see and less than two weeks to fit it all in. The next target is Milford Sound, where cameras run out of film and poets run out of words.

Here’s me and my most recent ride, an Aussie surveyor on holiday from Abu Dabi, where we stopped along the Haast pass on the way to Wanaka. Hope the next one is this friendly!