wouldn't it be nice if the world were chocolate?

Cadbury's has a tour of their chocolate factory in Hobart, Tasmania. Is there really much more that needs to be said? The only disappointment was that, due to health regulations, you can no longer just grab chocolates off the assembly lines as you walk through but instead get a box of chocolates at the end. Health, smealth. I didn't really care much about the process but it was heavenly just walking around inside the factory surrounded by the chocolate scent!

Port Arthur

Many people in Australia can trace their family tree back to one of the convicts that was sent here in this colony's beginnings. The transportation sentence was often for something like stealing a loaf of bread in England or pickpocketing. Port Arthur, on the south tip of Tasmaina, was a centre for convicts who got into trouble while serving their 7 or 14 year sentence elsewhere in the colony. These were the bad boys of the system and were thus treated accordingly: sent to the coldest, most isolated spot in the colony for a few years of hard work, living in crowded conditions . Reasons to be sent to Port Arthur included anything from disobedience and talking back to your work gang superiors, trying to run away, or murder.



This is another one of those places that is all about the stories and the fascinating history. We began our exploration of Port Arthur with a card representing one convict, following his path through an exceptional exhibition. Then we joined up with a tour lead by superb story telling guides who told us about the horrors of the place or some of the enlightened changes--this is the first prison system in the British Empire that saw a need to seperate young boys from adult males. A teacher I work with has an ancestor who was sent to the boys' prison at about age 13 and, once freed, he settled in Australia and never reoffended.

At night, appropriately an exceptionally dark and rainy one, Damo dragged me along to the freaky ghost tour. Damo tried to tempt fate by casually strolling through the worst part of the prison grounds--the insane asylum and isolation cells, risking an encounter with one of the mad spirits they warned us about. Damn skeptical Damo.

Cinco de Mayo

I just got back from a very nice weekend in the city (i.e. Melbourne) with a few other exchange teachers. Americans, Canadians, and British celebrated the Mexican independence with maragitas and salsa. Then we went for yum cha (dim sum) the next day and out to the comedy festival that night. Melbourne, and possibly all of Australia, does not have spectacular sushi (this is the collective opinion of the Canadians) but they do have good Chinese food. Damo thinks it has to do with WWII--Japan was hated for many years after Kokoda (and the larger threat of their almost invasion of Australia) . Kokoda is like Gallipolli of WWI for the Aussies. One word just sums up so much tragedy.

We were at Flinders station when one footy game was over and another was soon to begin and everywhere you looked were fans decked out in their teams colours. The MCG holds something like 100 000 people so you can just imagine the crowds. It was so exciting! Next week will be my first AFL match: Freemantle vs Melbourne.

Always wash your hands after being out in public. This little tidbit of information comes courtesy of the little drunk 13 year old who puked on the train, left her soiled tissues (given to her by some nice person) on the seat and then spit up again by the door, wiping her mouth on the handrails. Who does that? Well, drunk little girls obviously. Too gross. How many people unknowingly touched that the rest of the night?

Mungo National Park

On the map, the lakes of the Willandra Lakes World Heritage Area show up as big blue expanses, a deception. In reality, they are dry, salty, scrubby plains and have been thus for most of the past 10 000 years. So we didn't come here for the swimming, but instead, the Wall of China, a 33 km long white sand dune. It was very beautiful and, of course, we visited it at sunset to capture the colours.





But the thing about this outback park is not so much what you see now but the stories in it. 40 000 years ago, these were permanent lakes with huge wombat creatures, 3 metre tall kangaroos, giant Tasmanian tigers, and the ancestors of the local Aborigine groups all living here. As the winds have sifted through the sands of the dune, bones of these extinct animals, the people and their artifacts have been uncovered. Two most famous discoveries are of Mungo Women (1969) and Mungo Man (1974), two people that were buried here around 40 000 years ago in a ritualized manner. They are, as the archaeologist who found them, Jim Bowler, says, 'the earliest evidence on earth of cultural sophistication.' It just make you ponder our human history--the immensity of time we're dealing with and how very little we really know of our collective past.

Cdn Politics

Do you know what's weird? Stephen Harper is our Canadian prime minister. I was reading the Aussie Time magazine and there was a quote from him, and, really, it just threw me for a moment. Harper? I haven't lived in Canada since he became PM so therefore it's not real.

The Outback

I loved the outback. It was very flat, dusty and dry with scrubby bush and a few red rocky hills amidst the sandy soil. I admit, it does remind me of my home province Saskatchewan. It's different in a lot of ways but evokes that sense of spaciousness and the wind was ever constant.




This deisel drum is one of the outback mailboxes. Remote stations (i.e. big ranches) and national parks like this one get mail delivered weekly, as long as roads are passable.

Ohh laa laa, the view from our tent in the morning at Mungo National Park. While chilly, it was at least dry enough to sleep with the fly off and the screen open--divine! Look at the red red earth!





Scrub, scrub, scrub and one very long fence just out of Silverton. Some of the stations are millions of acres big.

Interesting but sad fact: it's so dry and dusty in the Outback that kids often get ear infections that, if untreated, cause them to go deaf. In a town near Uluru, a good chunk of the little kids have hearing aids. The solution? A community salt water pool like the one in Jigaloo (a town featured in Rabbit Proof Fence). See all the interesting things you learn as a Social Studies teacher watching the weekly news program with the kids?

wildlife attack!

It's not so much the wild animals that are dangerous here but, rather, their plastic and fun fur counterparts. These rare photos depict some of the more horrific moments from on the road in Australia. From giant koalas who grope and choke, to montrous Cadbury chocolate Freddo frogs, swarms of bush honey bees or surprised red Mallee bulls, the average tourist needs to be constantly on the lookout.

Broken Hill

We completed a major road trip over the Easter weekend (about 2000 Kms round trip.) It's funny - when you're on vacation it seems like no distance is too far. At home, it's the opposite, any distance is too far.

Broken Hill is on the western edge of New South Wales and is actually closer to South Australia's capital of Adelaide. It's a city founded because of its enormous silver deposit. Since then they've developed a thriving artist community as well. We couldnt help but think Nat would love the place, except for the flies, and the heat, and the cold, and the barrenness. But other than that...ya.

Just outside of Broken Hill is Silverton whose population peaked in the ealry 1900's and then crashed. At its peak it had over 2000 homes. All that's left now are piles of bricks, a bar, and a few other buildings. The other buildings are, by and large, are local artist's galleries. In addtion to being a ghost town, Silverton is also where Mad Max II was filmed.

Can you tell which one's the REAL mad max??

relics of the convict past

One of the prettiest towns we stopped at in Tassie was Ross, where we stayed overtop a wood-fired stove bakery (yummy!) in a coaching inn dating from the early 1830s (convict build, of course). This same bakery is also the Anne of Green Gables destination in Australia for Japanese tourists because it is the setting for an anime film about Kiki, a cute little witch (Kiki's Delivery Service by Miyazaki).


The highlight of town is this interesting 1836 bridge, built by convicts after the first bridge collapsed. The main stonemason, Daniel Herbert, carved all the intricate arch stonework with Celtic imagery and stylized people he knew--the gov't officials he didn't like were depicted as grotesque monsters!

As this was the only major road between Hobart in the south and Launceston in the north, the bridge was needed urgently. However, it took much longer to build than it should have--material kept disappearing mysteriously, convicts got rich, the town houses aquired elaborate sandstone decorations and the government had to pour more money into this project. As a tourist, you can solve this mystery by buying a Skulduggery book and following the clues all around town--here I am sleuthing at the local hotel bar. We were disappointed it wasn't a murder mystery but it was still fun.


It seems almost everything old in Tasmania is convict built. This bridge was near the east coast on the way to Freycinet. I like all those spikey stones sticking up. No one really knows why they are there although they guess perhaps it has something to do with keeping the cattle on the bridge. Instead, I think it's all about upholding the convict image--a spikey bridge looks much more menacing.

Deadly Spiders

This post is dedicated to the smaller arachnids that live in our community. Friendly critters such as the white tip, the red back, the brown widow, and the trapdoor spider none of which, despite urban legends to the contrary, are in fact 'deadly.'

First, the white tail (also known as the white tip.) This much maligned spider has been suspected of causing necrotising wounds around the bite area. This means that the victim ends up with ulcerations and lesions around the bite area and, in the worst cases, advanced gangrene resulting in amputation. Recent evidence debates this and seems to point to this spider causing no worse than a very painful bite.

That said, it is only recently that I learned all of that through research. Everyone you meet here tells you how dangerous these spiders are and so far I've seen five of them (three in our house.) One actually crawled into my shorts that were lying on the floor. When I put them on, she crawled down my leg trying to escape. I freaked out because I thought I had narrowly escaped a horrible case of gangrene of the penis leading to the commencement of my career as Androgo-Damo. Turns out, from what 'the authorities say' I had nothing to worry about.

We ended up killing the white tip that you see in the picture anyway because we also learned that they prey solely upon other spiders which are generally good in that they eat all the other nasty bugs.

This little fellow lives just outside our back door and is a trapdoor spider. Trapdoors also have also been the victim of a misleading media and urban legend blitz as they are often mistaken for the very deadly funnel web (the only truly deadly spider) and have been suspected of killing people in the past. The truth is that their bite, although very painful, causes no severe illness in humans.

They are nighttime spiders and hide during the day. I didnt even know this guy lived there until one night when I was sitting out back and happened to look to my right to see her poking her head out of her funnel home waiting for some misfortunate critter to crawl by. Since then I've been feeding her ants and moths, one such victim you see in the photo. She is super fast and darts out, grabs the victim, and carts it off to her home to be devoured in seconds flat. Glad I'm not a moth.

Last but not least are the 'widow' family of spiders including the red back and the brown widow. The former we have only seen in museums & zoos. The latter I almost put my hand into her web while cleaning our barbeque. I'm pretty sure it was a brown widow as it had the telltale leg patterns and a small white marking on its back. I missed being bit by about an inch and the widow's bite, while not as bad as the redback, is very painful and can cause illness.

I took the photo of the redback you see to the left in the Melbourne museum. She was alive and spinning a very intricate web. The redback can kill small children and will make an adult sick. Their bites are common since it lives in places where human contact is likely - such as urban areas, gardens, tool sheds, etc. So far we have not seen one in the wild.

In a later post I'll discuss two other spider types. One is very cool & unique - the huntsman - of which I've only seen one so far. The other is very scary and deadly - the sydney funnel web - which I have yet managed to avoid. Thank God.

For now I'll leave you with the deadliest spider we have come across to date - redbacks that have come into contact with radioactive waste and grow to massive size as a result. Nicole narrowly escaped with her life after I successfully beat it back with an oversized broom stick.

school, surfing and spare time

Today I was called "mom" in class by a student--second time this has happened! It is rather funny but it's also a bit disconcerting because this hasn't happened to me before. Damo tells me I must be looking matronly.

While I still get this knot of reluctance (not quite dread) in my stomach when I think of going to work, it is a lot better than when I first started. It's just not as good as the holidays, of course. The kids are starting to get a bit more self-sufficient, settle into the routine of school and they are starting to listen to me. There are a few yucky malicious ones and the loud energetic-ness of grade 7s is a bit too much at times (12 year old boys don't talk, they shout), but overall, we're getting used to each other.

In other Nico news, I have now stood up on a surf board! It only took me four outings whereas Damo was up by the end of the first lesson but I'm a slow kinesthetic learner.

In other Damo news, I think he's addicted to Australian game shows. We might need an intervention.

Maria Island, Tasmania

March 17th and 18th, 2006

Maria Island National Park is located just off the eastern coast of Tasmania and is only accessible via 25 minute ferry ride. Cars are not allowed on the island. It has a long history with it being originally settled in the early 1800's as a penal colony (Tasmania is the home of 19th century penal colonies.) The settlement peaked sometime in the 20th century with over 600 people living on the island (well after its early penetentiary phase) and had a vineyard, a cement factory, quarry, wheat silos, etc.

All these buildings still remain in varying degrees of disrepair - some fully maintained (like the penetentiary in which we stayed the night) and some just bricks strewn across the landscape. From the base in Darlington (the old village) one can hike to goregous views in just a few minutes without running into another soul. It truly is stunning.


The painted cliffs are a short 45 minute hike from the main encampment and offer amazing views of Tasmania's coastline (not to mention the painted cliffs themselves.) The best part of Maria Island is the solitude you can experience by hiking a few kilometers from base camp.


That said...the solitude is can be interrupted by a hysterically crying thirteen year old girl in the next penetentiary dorm who didn't realize the thinly insulated walls resulted in us being able to hear every sob (over something that got wet or it was too dark or another relatively trivial matter) and every yell by an overbearing father that failed utterly in calming down a hysterical brat.

Ya, that's the penetentiary below where we thumbed our noses at the ghosts of ex-convicts and managed to survive what would have been a well-rested evening if not for the sobs of the teenaged girl and our OVERLY HEATED accomodations...apparently those old wood stoves can generate temperatures approaching that of the sun...

one woolly wombat

Wombats, aboriginal for Bloodlust, are vile creatures that can strip the flesh from a freshly killed carcass in seconds flat, leaping up to twenty feet from a standing position to murder its prey in a cold blooded feeding frenzy. We came across this little critter in the wilds of Maria Island, Tasmania.






Fortunately, Nicole had some GHB handy (I'm not sure why she maintains a supply of it, a fact which is worthy of some follow-up questions on my part) so we subdued it with a healthy dose in order to examine it closely.

Hop Skip and a Jump

So you want kangaroos, do you? Well, we have plenty of kangaroo moments caught on film for your viewing pleasure! Smart people like me feed only the smaller cute ones. They must be the moms and young 'uns. Up close, these little ones are like pretty deer-rabbits creatures with their big brown eyes.







Damo likes to live dangerously so at the wildlife park he decided to sit down (first mistake) and feed the big males (second mistake). Here he is in various stages of getting mobbed by a mob of 'roos.







Lastly, we have Kanga and Roo. The joey (almost half the size of his mom) has just jumped into the pouch. How she fits all of him in there, we just don't know. It must be stuffy but we didn't see any joeys peek out--all you see are feet and maybe a tail. We think it's because the milk is way down in the pockets so once they dive in head first, they stay that way to take advantage of the open bar.


Ballarat, March 5th, 2006

Speedos...Time for Some Booze!

There's only one way to respond to Nicole's post with photos of men-folk sporting overly tight speedos. With booze...and lots of it! It's the only way to drown the images that have been forever etched into my brain. I mean it was bad enough being there, but having it reinforced with photographic evidence. Arg. It's enough to make a grown straight man cry.

So...ya, booze. Um...that's not booze, but it is the wonderful fruit (different from the 'fruits' in Nicole's post) called 'grape' that becomes the second best booze - wine. We hit Penola on January 20th. It's the gateway to the Cooawarra wine region renowned for its Cabernet Sauvignon and to a lesser extent its Shiraz. Since I had driven the whole way from Sydney down along the Great Ocean Road (over 3000 KM in total) Nicole had the pleasure of chauffering me around to all the cellar doors! We only hit about 8 or so but I was nicely buzzed by the end of it - and the price was right - FREE!

Now, that's better, clearly booze. This was taken after a wonderful dinner later that evening. We met Cathy & Mark at a pub who invited us over for Kangaroo steaks and wine. Never knowing when enough is enough as Wray and Marsh, and, well, just about anyone in the Calgary gang, can attest to, by the time this photo was taken we had made our way onto scotch. The walk home back to our cabin was quite enjoyable. Nico the babysitter looking after a completely innebriated & stumbling damo. Kangaroo steaks are yummy, I don't know why there was that big outcry when it was found that Aussie made pet food had kangaroo meat in it. Boohoo. There's over a hundred million of the things hopping all over the place. It's not like you're eating a panda or something.

And, to clearly wash the images of the previous post from everyone's mind, here's one for the boys.

Oh...hehe...let's try again here...someone not from the 1970's Russian womens' hockey team.

Ahhh...much better...someone that would make even the overly discerning Fearman proud! The horrors of the previous post are now clearly washed from memory and we can all sleep easy once again. Your welcome.