The Gordon River

The Gordon River is Tasmania’s longest river. It cuts through an area of incredible wildness—an area that has in fact been designated a World Heritage Wilderness Area. Then, near the coast, the river empties into the broad expanse of Macquarie Harbour.
While the history surrounding this river dates back to Tasmania’s days as a convict settlement, [...]

Strahan

The Roaring Forties is the name sailors gave long ago to the latitudes in the Southern Hemisphere from the fortieth to fiftieth parallel. It is the same latitude range in which one finds South America’s rugged Patagonia. It’s well south of Africa’s Cape of Good Hope. It is also the latitude range in which one [...]

Round Mountain Lookout

Tasmania is actually the tail end of Australia’s Great Dividing Range, the range of mountains that runs like a spine down the Eastern seaboard of the continent. As a result, most travel in Tasmania involves crossing mountains. This afforded us frequent glorious vistas during the time we spent traversing Tassie. My first crossing was soon [...]

Tasmanian devils

Okay—here’s the one you’ve been waiting for: the Tasmanian devil. Echidnas and wallabies are all well and good, but it was the Tasmanian devil that we grew up watching in cartoons. While the whirling of the cartoon character is entirely fictional, the snarling/growling sound is anchored in reality—though real Tasmanian devils sound much worse than [...]

Echidnas

Monotreme is an order of mammals that are so odd, they originally confounded scientists and were at first thought to be hoaxes. Monotremes are egg-laying mammals, but that is not the only odd thing about them.
The monotreme with which most people are familiar is the platypus, that delightfully wacky composite of duck and otter, with [...]

Tasmanian Wildlife

Wildlife is fascinating everywhere in Australia. However, there are places it is more concentrated, usually due to the presence of a better supply of food and water. Tasmania offers much that makes life easier for critters, from abundant greenery to rivers and surrounding ocean full of fish, as well as the abundant flowers and foliage [...]

Cataract Gorge

Perhaps it was because I was still so weary and battered from my riding trip, or perhaps it was because I missed the silence of the mountains, but when we stopped at Cataract Gorge, I escaped the crowds and headed up a lonely path that carried me up a cliff face and far into the [...]

Judy’s Photos

As promised in the “Into the High Country” post, here are a few of the photos taken by Judy-of-the-white-crash helmet.
The first image is climbing up the Bennison Spur on day one of the trip. As I noted in the book, it was a mighty steep climb, which I think you can tell from the photo, [...]

The Great Ocean Road

That first trip to Australia, I took a day tour along part of the Great Ocean Road, getting as far as the small town of Lorne. If that’s as far as you can go, I think it’s still worthwhile, as the entire coast is splendid. However, even on that first visit, I found myself wishing [...]

Feathered Friends

While staying in Melbourne, I caught a tour down to see the large penguin colony on Phillip Island. I actually wrote about this, and included an excerpt from my book about the penguins coming ashore, back in June 17, 2007, when the blog was still fairly new. (However, if you missed the earlier post, you [...]