another somewhere

Tasmania

Cockle Creek would have to be one of the most beautiful and peaceful places in the world. The whole area just radiates a sense of calm. I think it’s the tranquillity, the colours, the sounds, creates a surreal serenity. After just an hour or two you feel like you never want to leave, if it wasn’t so bloody cold you would pack up and leave this material world and venture out into the unknown never to return to the realms of Woolworths and Caltex again. It really nearly is the end of the world as we know it. Antarctica is your next stop, and let’s face it the majority of us will never set foot that far south, even in our dreams.

A quick loop through Tassie and a short stop in South Oz.

The Woodroffe family went separate ways the day after Australia. The Woody Wards headed back to W.A, the Big brother and Little Meegan headed south towards Hobart and The Honey Mooners and the oldies came with us to explore Tassie for a week!

We did a fair bit of driving during those 6 days, first down towards Hobart and Port author, down to Bruny Island and then across to Cradle Mountain, a day stop in Launceston then back out to Daves home town Campbell Town before spending the last night BBQing with the Woodroffe Clan of Westbury. Have a look on a map and we basically ticked off most of Tasmania, well a lot of it anyway!

One thing both off us have always wanted to do but never had the chance was Canyoning. Canyoning is very straight forward- first of all your kitted up in a 5mm wetsuit, gloves, booties, helmet and a specialised harness. Once your kit is ready you throw yourself off the edge of a cliff and abseil 30m into a freezing cold Tasmanian river in the middle of a canyon. After you enter the numbing abyss, the only way out is at the end of the canyon: everything in between is canyoning.

Initially you wade, swim, and in some peoples cases waddle down the river, you then reach a ledge with a 6m drop into the river there’s only one way forward and that is to throw yourself off the edge. Luckily for us our 2 guides had only just started there canyoning business, therefore they were very casual about the whole approach. So back flips, front flips, corkscrew flips, off the wall jumps and any other imaginative way you could launch yourself off the edge was encouraged.

Initially the group was a little cautious about flipping of a waterfall into a 2m wide pool which was 6m below. But with a bit of encouragement and some demonstrations from our guide Timmy, most of us were happy to attempt a flip or two by the end.

One of the highlights of the canyoning was the laundry shoot. To begin, you wedge yourself into a tight nook at the start of a narrow tunnel (or shoot). Slowly you nudge yourself forwards, once the water pressure behind you builds up behind you, your squeezed through the shoot at a fairly rapid rate until the shoot suddenly ends and your shot off a 3m high waterfall into the pool below. It may not sound like much but its pretty sweet.

At the end of the canyoning adventure a 1hr long hike is in order back to the car park, which isn’t too bad as you are hiking thru beautiful rainforest. The problem with the hike back is removing the legion of leaches which have been sucking away at various and very interesting parts of the body.

Photos and video coming shortly.....


At the end of our quick peak at Tassie with Leesh and Ric and the parentals, everyone left. Everyone but Brett. He was left in Tassie all by himself for a few days to surf, enjoy some rain and then jump on a plan to Melbourne to stay at the dodgiest hostel in Oz. Getting a little bit ahead of our selves let us take you back a few days.

February and March were our months of catching up with our WA friends and family on the other side of the country! We basically put Tassie on hold for a few weeks, leaving bob in the very capable hands of Mr and Mrs Scott and Maggie Woodroffe of Westbury, we crossed the Tasman in Tiger Airways style to head over to Melbourne and South Australia for some quality time with some of our favourite people.

First Stop was an all girls Weekend in Melbourne. Brett obviously wasn’t invited so Meegan enjoyed a few beverages, endless hours of playing shopping assistant, a Scary evening of Cabaret and a special Birthday Surprise of The Musical Mary Poppins.

The weekends climax would certainly have to be running through the flooded streets of Melbourne in black plastic Garbage bags to try and catch the start of Mary Poppins. It was all Farmers fault by the way.




Brett and Meegan (that’s us by the way, I know this blog is written from a very strange point of view but that’s just the way it is so if your not used to it by now then bad luck), finally met up in Melbourne. Brett booked the worlds worst hostel, the tiniest room you could fit a bed into as well as vomit, no exits, bodily hairs all over the bathrooms not to mention what else could be founds in the female toilets. Meegan was in the building for less than 2 minutes when she exclaimed “what would happen if there was a fire” I mean that generally isn’t the first thing that pops into your mind when entering a building which goes to show how dodgy this place was.

From Melbourne we boarded a plane to Adelaide to meet up again with Sue and Dave to spend a few lazy days floating down the Murray River on a Houseboat.







We had a little, major leak from the transfer case! All fixed!

A well awaited update....

WOW we are back! After a month back on the road we have become very slack with keeping the Trailing Bob Saaga up to date! We are spending a few lazy days now floating down the Murray River in South Australia so we now have no excuse but to catch up on the last few months!(well the murray was a couple of weeks ago which proves just how slack we really are)!

We’ll take you back to the beginning of the year…….Brett and Meegan are again back to bob and hitting the road after spending Christmas back in Perth, our bellies are full, our livers have been overworked and we have at long last found some sunshine!

We flew into Sydney on the 3rd January, stopped back at the Kemps to catch some shut eye after the midnight horror flight from Perth. After a few hours snoozing, we were on the train back into the big smoke to catch up with the Kemps for the night on their Boat in the darling harbour. The weather for the first week was pretty average so we decided to stay put and spent a few days chilling out at the Kemps place while the rain poured down around us.

Bob was starting to get a bit restless and Tasmania was calling, after a couple of days chilling out on the couch we packed up and headed for the Blue Mountains. It took about 3 days to cruise through the hills and valleys, checking out markets, taking in plenty of amazing views on some very impressive hikes and of course the Jenolan Caves. The caves themselves were worth the drive up there, however we didn’t quite have time to check out the 15 show cave tours they had going, let alone the 5 or 6 adventure tours. Luckily our cave crawling days saved us a few dollars with a friendly guide taking us though free of charge.

It was time to catch the up with the new and very well respected DR JAN in the nations capital! We were both actually pleasantly surprised with Canberra, after hearing many dud tales of the city. The war Museum is amazing and defiantly worth a few days of anyone’s time. Jan took us to the Tuesday night hotspot where we downed a few brews and munched though the gastronomic delights of some yummy Pizza.

Heading south from Canberra, we stopped in Jindabyne for Meegan's Birthday and rustled up some info about the coming snow season, jobs, accommodation and the like. Just in case we decide to head back there in a few months time. It was a little late in the day to climb the infamous Mt Kosciusko so we settled for a Birthday horse ride through the snowy mountains. There was no snow and the ride was a little bit slow but the views were breathtaking and the horses very friendly.

Mt Kosciusko ended up being a very expensive climb. We ascended the mountain through some patches of very heavy rain by the time we were half way up we were soaked through and very chilly, the patches of snow dotted along the way give you an idea of how cold it gets up there in the middle of summer. After taking some happy snaps from the top of Aus the decent was in order. On the way down the rain was not letting up so we put the cameras in the backpack with the waterproof cover over it.
When we got back to the car and started unpacking everything Meegan made the gruesome discovery of a much waterlogged, foggy, dead looking Nikon SLR camera.
All efforts were made to try and save our special little friend who had managed to capture a lot of our memories with amazing detail. Unfortunately the water had run its course and the damage was done, with the loss of a very important piece of equipment for the trip and our blog. Enthusiasm for writing the blog disappeared, without any pictures interest and passion just wasn’t there anymore.

But we have some new inspiration now courtesy of Helen and Scott. You see when Meegan received her camera for her birthday (thanks everyone we will be replacing it soon) it was under the condition that Scott and Helen would be able to take it on the 6 month trip around Aus. So when our camera packed it in; a brand new shit hot Sony SLR found its way into our hot little hands. And the results of this tidy piece of equipment speak for themselves.

After we left Kosciusko national park we made our way down into Victoria, which was very uneventful you just head past a sign, no armed guns no border checks no barking dogs just a sign. Unfortunately our first few days in Victoria proved to be just as uneventful as it absolutely pissed down with rain no stop for 3 days. At least all the dams are now full.

On the day when the sun finally came out we couldn’t really make much use of it as we had to wait for 3 hrs while all our stuff dried out. As we made our way through the Victorian highlands we tuned into the local radio as there was mass flooding across the state at the time and many roads were badly damaged. Unfortunately that meant we took a shortcut through some very narrow mountain tracks, in some areas that were badly washed out and it probably added at least 5hrs to our drive. Poor Bob doesn’t like hills, however he did manage to plough to the top of a fair few summits during those few days.

When we arrived on the Victorian coast it was still school holidays and every campsite was loaded like a refugee camp. To dodge the crowds we quickly located Dave on the Mornington peninsula and made a beeline for where he was staying with his cousin. Arriving at a campsite with hot showers right on the beach with some amazing views was pretty awesome and very much appreciated after our treck to Victoria!

Spending 2 nights at the camp we cruised around the Mornington peninsula checking all the overpriced tourist sights which were exclusive to the area, much the same as every other tourist area around Aus. The summer sun had still failed to shine and the surf was still very, very average therefore the beaches were a bit of a swing and miss. The natural sights in the area turned out to be more up our alley so we spent the days dawdling around lookouts and hovering around blowholes.

With Tasmania calling we made our way into Melbourne town to get bob loaded onto the massive ferry to Tassie. Having a bit of time on our hands we cruised around Melbourne and Brett dragged Meegan around another botanic garden. While we were there we came to understand what the fuss with Melbourne is all about, Brett came up with this conclusion; apparently every suburb is bohemian and alternative so what makes something crap in another city suddenly becomes chic and uber cool in Melbourne.

The ferry ride over to Tassie was pretty uneventful with the only thing coming to mind was if you fell of the boat at night there is no way you would be found again.
After arriving in Tassie and regrouping and welcoming new members of Brett’s family to our touring posse, we ventured south east towards Coles bay. This was to be our home for the next week along with all the Woody’s. Luckily we had a nice beach house with killer views and plenty of room for 10 adults and 5 kids.

Luckily most of the week fine weather prevailed with only a couple days of slight drizzle. Our time over the week was spent- walking up to the lookout over wineglass bay, fishing on Woodduck with uncle Scott, Hiking up Mt Amos, sampling some fine produce at the local wineries and berry farms (we didn’t purchase anything we left that to Brett’s cashed up brothers). A few surfs were had nothing amazing but some fun waves were scored, Ric and Brett even managed to throw the kite up one day but unfortunately the wind died when the were less than 10 minutes into it. Australia day was spent down the beach with the family playing beach games and other family things.

Of course we also shared a few customary Aussie day beverages, we quickly realised there was a shortage of alcohol so we took a quick trip across the bay into town to stock up. When we rocked up the chick behind the bar told us we weren’t allowed in without anything on our feet. So we scoured the car looking for something cover our toes. The only thing we could come up with were reef booties so we donned them headed back into the tavern and made our purchase. The look on Alicia’s face made the day, she didn’t stop laughing for most of the ride home.