Ted’s (Excellent?) Adventures

At the risk of personal embarrassment, I’ll confess that prior to this trip I wasn’t sure exactly where Tasmania is.  Worse, if pressed, I think I would have offered up that it was an island off the coast of Africa.  Well, Tassie (as the locals call it) is an island, to the south of (and part of) Australia. 

Tasmania, Australia, home of the Tasmanian Devil!

Tasmania lies on the 41st parallel — the only other landmasses at its latitude (The Roaring 40’s) are New Zealand and the bottom of South America.  It has the cleanest air of any country in the world, and you can get your drinking water right out of its streams (we didn’t).  There are 450,000 people living on an island the size of South Carolina.  It’s unspoiled, temperate, and absolutely beautiful. 

Right away, the Tasmanians did lots to make us feel right at home.  Here, Elizabeth stands next to a sign welcoming her to the island (note, for those of you who don’t know that Elizabeth’s last name is Hazard, this was a joke :-)).  And while we usually don’t allow our 9 and 11 year olds to down some suds (below right), it was hard to resist in friendly Tasmania (again, another very feeble attempt at humor, playing on my wife’s last name :-)).

More seriously, I’m sure everyone has met some Australians in their past, and come away impressed with the Australian personality.  The people here are fun, witty, don’t take themselves too seriously, and have a “go for it” attitude.  We could really see that in Tasmania.

As if we haven’t shocked our friends and families enough this year, we are happy to report in this blog that we have a new addition to our family.  While in Tasmania, we met a darling Wombat (see left), tragically orphaned at an early age by a careless driver.  We are filing adoption papers for said Wombat and hope to add young “Wizard” (the name our kids came up with for him) to our family soon.  Watch for him in this year’s Christmas card!

The wildlife in Tasmania is almost beyond belief.  Isolated for millions of years and largely free of introduced predators, indigenous wildlife flourishes on Tassie.  Whether it was the exotic Superb Fairy-Wren landing at our feet, a farm field full of Sulphur-crested Cockatoos, or a moonlit field of wallabies, wombats, and possum, we were constantly amazed at the abundance of exotic species.

Speaking of “moonlit,” a highlight of our stay on Tasmania was watching a full lunar eclipse unfold.  We had the benefit of the world’s purest skies, no clouds or background light (we were, quite literally, in the middle of NOWHERE), and the convenience of having it all happen before our children’s bedtime.  Below are some of the shots I took of the eclipse as it unfolded, but they don’t do justice to the experience of having all four of us watch this transformation in the isolation of Tasmania.  But the way we really felt about Tasmania is best captured by the picture Gibson took of the moon above.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 1st, 2007 at 4:44 am and is filed under Oceania. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.