TazMania Part V- On the move

Lake Rowallan, on the entrance to "Walls" NP. The dead trees are the result of the flooding by the Hydro power dam that created this lake.












Tassie has some very remote, very isolated communities like Tullah which is located about half way between Cradle Mountain and Queenstown on the west coast. People living there have to amuse themselves somehow - as it shows.

















A closer look at this teddy bear shop in Tullah was even more bizarre - and quite scary, actually, in a Stephen King kind of way...





















Between the drought that affects all of Australia and the end of summer dry period, by the time I got to the mighty Franklin River it was only a shallow and slow drizzle. But that shouldn't stop an ageing river guide from having a streamside breaky...
















This picture was taken in Strahan on Tasmania's west coast. Strahan prides itself for being Tassie's Eco-tourism Mecca - whatever that means - but aside from some very pricey restaurants and cabins it is a very standard, overcrowded touristic small town. I think this shot is actually giving it more credit than it deserves.
















A post-industrial scene on the outskirts of Launceston. The slogan on the brick wall says "Cook with gas"...

TazMania Part IV - Launceston

Launcseton is Australia's third oldest settlement, home to the famous Boag's brewery and possibly one of the most neatly-packed touristic towns you would ever see. With its vibrant migrants and students' community, you could have a french cafe and croissant for breakfast, Turkish Doner Kebab for lunch and Chili con Carne for dinner, all within the same city block, and this is in a 90,000 residents town! It also has some nice nearby natural attractions, a beautiful waterfront, some really impressive historic buildings, a university and design centre and probably some of Australia's nicest people. It even has its own footy team and - what else - a Chabad centre.

The following pictures were taken in and around the Queen Victoria Museum in the Inveresk precinct. This area used to be the old rail yards of the city, with lots of warehouses, plants and industrial activity. But as these have phased out, the city cleared this area and converted it to a Museum, Academic and cafes' district, with some of the original buildings remaining in thier place. The tools shots are from the Blacksmith shop, a really cool industrial era display.










































































A restoration of an old tram coach. Launceston had an extensive, 20 km tram lines system running around its impossible topography (it sits amid a valley, yet maintains the classic new world streets' grid), but by 1968 they were all disassembled because they were "interfering" with other means of traffic, namely cars. Progress is indeed a wonderful thing...

TazMania Part III - Trail Mix

The Waratah flower, about the size of half a grapefruit.

A beatiful composition of Panadni - the largest heath plant in the world - and other ferns.

TazMania Part II - Fungi Town

After I've completed the "Walls" 2 days track I went to the central and possibly the more famous part of Tasmania's heritage site - Cradle mountain - Lake St. Clair NP. I could taunt you again with some boring landscape shots but what's really fascinating about this area - aside from having some of Austrlia's most beatiful tracks - is that it is also one of the last true old-growth temperate rain forests left. It is therefore a home to an unknown number of amazing cool, dark and damp-loving species of fungi. Of course, they have a very important ecological function of decomposing the forests' rot, but some of them are just strikingly beautiful. I just had to stop at some point because I had started to run out of memory space...








































































It is quite difficult to know how such tiny organisms will look like once they are magnified. I just loved the way that the light was coming through this fungi colony living on an old stump. I was actually amazed when it turned out to be a jellyfish-like close-up...

TazMania Part I - Walls of Jerusalem

Tassie's really big - three times the size of Israel - and so wild (36% of Tasmania is in reserves, National Parks and World Heritage Sites), that one just have to kick off somewhere. So I started in The Walls of Jerusalem NP, a beautiful alpine conservation area. I hear the giggling over there - I didn't went there because of its name! As far as I'm concerned, if someone could pick up Jerusalem with a giant forklift and set it sailing to the southern ocean, that would save the world a whole lot of suffering. I wouldn't provide all the nutcases in this city with flotation devices either...

The park was named by a local hiking enthusiast called Reg Hall in the 19th century, which probably never saw the actual walls of Jerusalem but was obviously very religious. Of course, no one in those days had even thought of asking the local people of this area, the fierce Big River Tribe, how they had called it for the past 11,000 years... By 1848, when an official survey finally gave this area its current name, they were already defeated and exiled to Flinders Island. The Tasmania central plateau remained a wilderness area of Bush rangers, furriers, fishermen and hunters that seasonally lived in local huts (below), until the area was declared a conservation area in the 20th century's 70s.

















Now that we've cleared out the names' origin we can move on - this beautiful, 1100 m above sea level pass is called Herod's gate.













An early look from Mt. Jerusalem over to the walls, the Temple Mountain and Damascus gate.























So you weren't there to smell it, but the scenery is still nice.




















and to think that Tassie is known for its terrible weather - it was cold, but brilliant. Below on the left are Pencil Pines, a spruce-like tree, some of them are over 1200 years old.



































Waterscapes are abundant around this area and create some really dramatic effects. This is just one example, possibly not even the most impressive.

Some updates and then some Graffiti

So there are good news and bad news - the good news are that I've finally found a job, so I won't be a lazy bum no more and live of others' hard work (by saying others, I mean of course Liat). This leads us to the bad news which means that I won't be able to update this blog as much as I'd like to, unless you want to see some really boring pictures of us walking to work every morning (it just happened to be that I found a place which is just 2 city blocks from Liat's office. Yeah yeah, the whole meeting for lunch thing - your people, my people...).

Yet this post isn't quite the requiem for this blog as I am going to Tassie (Tasmania) wilderness areas this week so I hope I'll get some cool (and probably drizzly) shots from there.

But I have promised a Graffiti special before, and although this isn't even close to what Melbourne has to offer in this field, it's still awesome. Also, I know these shots aren't technically impressive, but I reckon the true artists are the ones that actually made these drawings, not someone who just happened to be there with a camera. I have tried, however, to capture these with some contextual elements - background textures, buildings or street elements, people - so they won't feel like museum shots.









































This particular style is called "Stencil Graffiti" (in Hebrew - Shablona) so the artist cut the shape on a card board and then sprays it all around town. Some of it is really ingenious, some technically impressive, some just crap. What's really interesting about this style is the composition that is being created by these so-called "Stencil wars".



















































Just an ambiance shot... quite lyric, ain't it?





















It is really absurd, however, that the city council still considers these to be offensive and tries to fight it, while at least in my view, it is an essential addition to a vibrant streetscape. Then again, no one ever sprayed my property, so maybe I cannot judge. However, who ever done this one should be honored by a museum, or at least by an art gallery, instead of being outcast as a vandalist - it's kind of a delicate combination of most of the mid 20th century art styles, but you can see it for free on the street!

Nothing much, actually

After the long weekend we had a very slow week so there are no amazing shots today. But I reckon that after the Sydney extravaganza this single scene from the Melbourne Comedy Festival will somehow do - luckily some of it is taking place outdoors, 'cause tickets' prices are just ridiculous...

Sydney, Part VI - Harbor Kayaking

This was the last and probably the most enjoyable of our adventures in Sydney - for a couple of hours we were exploring the city's Middle Harbor at sea level, driven by the power of our own paddles. With a briliant weather above us, crytsal clear water below and the scenery of multi-million dollars' houses, pristine bays and beautiful waterscapes, this was our ultimate tourist attraction. We were also very lucky to be there almost completely alone, except of course of a few hundreds Sydneysiders' yachts.

Sydney, Part V - Wildlife

Ibises (below) are not as common in Sydney as Gulls are, but no one seems especially surprised by the fact that such large birds are freely roaming the city's lawns and docks.





















A Flying Fox (an enormous fruit bat) at the Sydney Botanical Gardens. While it's really cool to see a huge colony of these creatures right at the city's heart, it is quite sad to learn that they once covered the sky throughout South-eastern Australia, but over the past few decades their habitats have been so stressed out by human development that they now have almost nowhere else to go.








































This Grevilliea and beautiful Fungi are from the Blue Mountains NP.