Its not that the Australians don't have history

Its just that they're a bit rubbish at it, and don't really know what to do with it when they have it.

The Australians have this sense of guilt regarding history.  This can be manifested in a guilt as to the lack of it.  Canberra is full of sculptures, public art, an obvious attempt to make up for a lack of history in this young purpose-built town. If you can't have interesting buildings, then at least have interesting spaces.  This is fine and a good thing.  It can be quite fun finding random sculptures dotted around Canberra.  The set of spirit levels running down a hill near the lake is one of my favourites. But Australia does have history.

More often, the guilt is at what happened in the past.  Perhaps more so than other countries, the Australians feel rather guilty about their past.  The past is brutal, there are no all good nations.  Yet young countries like to believe they are, that their country is good. I don't think any Brits are under the impression that our country has been the good guys at all times, though we might believe we had overall good intentions. We know as being part of a 1,000 year old continuous country, that there are probably felons in our heritage, a few dubious characters.  Do we believe that we are partly criminals or have criminal tendancies because of this.  Not really.  Do any of the numerous Lynch's of the world, one of Ireland's more famous family names, believe they have communist revolutionary tendancies because Che Guevara was a Lynch, or at least partly one.

Yet the convict past of Australia still has a certain amount of taboo about it. The Australians feel sensitive about the idea that there is convict dna within them. Maybe this feeling is fading, something that can be joked about more as the number of generations slowly increases. Its still a touchy subject though. When you look back at the numbers of convicts that came to Australia, and the crimes that most of them committed, why is this country sensitive about the idea that maybe one of their great-grandparents came to Australia because they stole a few handkerchiefts (look at the convictions of some of those sent to the Australian prison colonies, some of them aren't for much).  Its not like most of the convicts were murderers or rapists.

This beautiful place is Port Arthur, the prison colony's prison colony's prison colony. A place with a supposedly brutal history. If only they'd tell you about it. Its alluded to, hinted at, but never mentioned, never discussed. This place is where the really bad convicts came, and those who continued to reoffend in Australia.

The biggest idea about who the convicts were came in the form of the political prisoners, some Irish separatists, English chartists and some French-Canadian separatists. (You'll be interested to learn that then as now, being a former convict didn't stop anyone from being in olitical office in later life). Not the juicy stuff.

Perhaps the most brutal part of Port Arthur's history came in 1996. The world's largest gun massacre occurred at this no tranquil site, 35 people were killed, including two children, and 21 injured.  I understand completely how they don't want to bring this up.  Its still fresh, raw and upsetting, the staff still remember it and knew some of those who died.

But I don't quite yet understand why the older stuff is quite so raw. Perhaps it is just a couple of generations too soon.  I guess time will tell.

The Asylum, where everything was bright and breezy according to the museum inside.

Visiting the Olympic stadium and site also highlighted this issue of what Australians do with their history. Whilst still known as the Olympic Park there is hardly any trace left that this place once hosted the Olympics. No Olympic rings, no Olympic flag, no museum, no gift shop. Yet around the entire site, things were happening, all the lesser stadia had people and sports taking place in them. There was a charity cycling event on.  One of the event halls had one of those motivational speaker shows on (the kind where you can improve your life with the power of thought and some colouring pencils) and allegedly a Doctor Who convention (or at least a fan looking for one). The place actually had more bustle about it than some Olympic sites.  In this way the legacy of the olympics is being realised.  There are no (or at least very few) white elephants. But why so few mentions of the Olympics? Lets have a museum please!

The ANZ stadium, not many mentions that this stadium was the centrepiece of what was regarded as the best olympics ever. Lots of stuff about the various footie teams that populate the stadium.

 These poles out the front do at least pay some kind of homage to the Olympics. This being the most interesting one, the Olympic Torch, which is kind of awesome.

 I assume this has something to do with the Olympic Flame, there being a couple of non-descript inscriptions below it.

 And a lake full of algae, with a circular walkway, and a very strong smell of dill.  Is this the Olympic legacy? An integral part of Australian history? The Australians have a lot of history, they just don't quite know what to do with it when they have it.  Instead sweeping it under the carpet and getting on with the here and now.

Tassie Trip: Cradle Mountain

In the wild west of Tasmania lies the real wilderness. While we didn't reach the far west, battered year-round by the roaring forties, we did visit Cradle Mountain (kind of on the east of the west!) for a day walk up one of Tasmania's most iconic mountains.  Its the start of the Overland Track, Australia's best multi-day walk, taking anywhere from three to nine days depending on which mountains you want to climb on the way, all self-sufficient so its pretty tough.  Two of my friends did it a few weeks before.  We considered it but really when you only have a week in Tasmania theres lots else to do.  Maybe one for the future. Anyway, we had an excellent day's hiking.

Crater lake. I assume its a crater lake, i didn't actually check, but that's it's name.

The approach to Cradle Mountain. Its 1,545m high.  But the plateau it rises from is about 1,100m and the carpark is at 900m so its a 600m climb or so.

However, the top is very rocky.  And involves a good thirty minutes of scrambling (which is a lot).  I love scrambling, its like being in an adventure playground for adults, you get to clamber and use your hands and its great fun.

Perfect weather for climbing mountains. Clear, warm.

Its a great fun mountain to climb.  I love it!

The view from the top is not half bad at all.

Barn Bluff, the next destination on the Overland track.  Probably in reach of a day's walk if you get up early enough!

Like a jaggedy Suilven.

Some pretty awesome skies on the way back down.

Tassie Trip: The A5

We were told this was the scenic route through the heart of Tasmania, and it was.  But this was no minor road, it wasn't even a B-road, it was an A-road, the A5!  And when it got the Great Lake, the tarmac dived off down the B-road and it was several tens of kilometers of dirt gravel track, with very isolated communities overlooking a large expansive lake with grey moody clouds gathering overhead.  An unexpected but quite cool adventure.

Tassie Trip: Wildlife

Tasmania has wildlife, and more wildlife and then some more wildlife.  It is a) oddly named b) fearless. Depressingly this means it also has a lot of roadkill.

Lizards, lots of them.  And snakes too.  All three of Tasmania's snakes are venomous (though as the National Parks authority in Tasmania points out, no-one has died for decades and frankly peanuts and spouses are far more dangerous). We caught glimpses of a couple.  Then on our final day we came across a huge black snake sitting in the middle of the path, normally you just see a tail end disappearing off.  It was probably a Tiger Snake. It slithered off reasonably quickly but it was still quite scary.

On another occasion we were walking down a small track towards some interesting geology/geography (very much a GEM stop for those who are initiated into such things) viewpoint.  The people just in front of us caught a glimpse of a Tassie Devil scurrying off into the bush as they rounded a corner.  We didn't quite see it, but it would have been cool to do so.

 In Freycinet National Park the wildlife is reasonably used to humans and is really not that scared, with wallabies hanging around the campsites, minding their own business, being photographed, nibbling on some vegetation.  They realise that clumsy humans like us occasionally spill pieces of pasta when cooking camp food.  Not being fussy about the lack of sauce, they quite quickly eat this up, like this little fellow above.  But they get far more fearless than that.  Accidentally, a bag of trail mix fell out of my bag as we were moving stuff into the tent for a while.  The first we realised this was when we heard the sound of three possums fighting each over over the bag, and then noisily munching away just outside our tent.  And they weren't afraid of anything, making noises, getting out the tent, torchlight.  They were temporarily abated by clapping but returned within twenty seconds.  Then after this they went snuffling round for more, reaching little paws underneath the fly sheet and poking their heads under for a closer look. One got too close to the side of the inner-tent for my liking, so a swung my fist, pushing out the tent material and making contact with the possum on the other side of the fabric.  It yelped, ran off and we weren't disturbed again that night.

In the morning this wallaby was even braver, coming over to investigate MC's water bottle and remains of breakfast.  He got really close, I had to forcibly nudge him a few times in order to persuade him to move along.  The Tasmanian wildlife seems to only respond to physical violence.

On Cradle Mountain a few days later we saw an Echidna which was awesome.  They're furry, spikey little egg-laying mammals with long pointy snouts. Here is a photo of the Echida escaping into the undergrowth faster than I can get my camera, the cheeky little snouty thing.

The disadvantage of such abundant wildlife is that it makes driving at night in rural areas both interesting and quite scary.  We were late getting into Cradle Mountain National Park the night before we did a walk there and had to drive the last hour in the dark, mainly though forest.  We saw so much wildlife, more than any night-safari I've been on! There was so much wildlife to see, from possums of different kinds to various bounding rat/kangaroo crosses (Pademelons).  The possums again were fearless, we had to stop for a couple sitting in the middle of the road.  We pulled up, revved the engine, flashed the lights and they just sat there, not caring.  The horn worked, eventually, but even then they had a think about it before letting us on our way.  We saw a few Wombats, which are oh so cute, but really quite slow, had to slam on the brakes for a couple of them.

Unfortunatly the night didn't end well for all the wildlife we saw.  We ended up hitting two creatures.  The first was small and dark coloured and very speedy, it just ran straight out under us.  There was a yelp, but we didn't find it when we stopped.  I hope it wasn't a Tassie Devil. The second time we hit what we think was a Bettong.  This time much more forcibly, enough, in fact to decapitate it.  Which wasn't nice at all and rather put a dampner on the entire evening to be fair. :(

So Tasmania has loads of wildlife, its everywhere.

Tassie Trip: Freycinet Peninsula

As part of our trip to Tasmania we went walking on the Freycinet Peninsula on the east coast of the island.  It was warm, sunny and beautiful.  Perfect for a three day, two night walk and a chance to test out my brand-new shiny super-awesome tent.

Hazard's beach looking towards Mt. Freycinet.  It was really windy that afternoon and the waves were big and pounding

Cook's Beach. Camp for the first night was at the far end.

It had a nice view.

And sunset (though you shouldn't always trust the sunset pics from my camera, they're suspiciously good, often better than reality! it really emphasises reds and such)

The view from Mt. Freycinet out towards the Hazards with Wineglass Bay in front, beautiful.

 More nice views from the top.

MC's boot died a death on the trip, it only just made it round thanks to the power of paracord, bandages and plaster tape.

Wineglass Bay, camp for the second night.  A beautiful place.  Voted/rated one of the top ten beaches in the world according to some American magazine, the obvious authority. It was very very nice. With a stunning backdrop of the Hazards behind it and waves that broke almost perfectly round the curve of the beach.  I think the beach was shaped in a pretty much a perfect spiral (or part thereof) with an ever decreasing/increasing radius of curvature.

Novel engineering approaches for getting through a three day hike when the rubber midsole of your boot decides to disintergrate on the first day.

At long last: My Cherry Ripe Cherry is gone

Finally, the iconic chocolcate bar of Australia has been thoroughly product tested by yours truly.  Ladies and Gentemen, this is the Cherry Ripe Review:

I'm just back from a week's holiday in Tasmania with MC.  It was awesome, and hopefully there'll be lots of blog posts coming in the next couple of weeks with lots of photos. Located in Hobart is the Cadbury factory, originally producing chocolates for a large area it now produces all of the slab chocolates for Australia and New Zealand, providing hundreds of jobs to Hobart and the entire state with their constant need for a hefty supply of milk.  Anyway, we went for their tour which sadly is no longer a tour due to 'ealth and safety but a talk, and a video and some tasting!  Obviously very glossy and brightness and lights and happy, but then the kind of people that go on chocolate factory tours (mainly old ladies on the day we went) are those who will lap it up and are willing to overlook the propoganda style talk.  Isn't being part of Kraft wonderful for example.  Anywhere that gives me a bar of Dairy Milk (now Fairtrade!) on entry gets my vote, and then free samples at the start of the tour! Like putty in their hands.

Named after the poem by englishman Robert Hendrick (1591-1674) (quite how I have no idea but i think it became a song, then something else, then a song again) the Cherry Ripe is Australia's oldest chocolate bar and is currently manufactured by Cadbury's.  Its pretty important to the Australians, JB's kids were really suprised to learn I hadn't ever had one. Fittingly my first Cherry Ripe was a free sample, a welcome to Australia here's your Cherry Ripe moment.  I went and bought another one half an hour later at the end of the tour!

A cherry ripe is basically bounty style semi-dessicated coconut, with Cherry juice to keep it moist and fruity.  And its covered in dark chocolate.  The result: pretty damn good.  Tastier than coconut based chocolates thats for sure. Not blow my socks off this is the best thing ever, but then thats rarely the case with iconic chocolate.  Certainly good, certainly will have them again. Tasty, tasty, tasty!