-Took a trip up to Cradle Mountain National Park. One of the real showcases of Tasmania, it’s up in the northwest highland region and is where the famous Overland track starts out. There are plenty of pictures floating around online concerning this park, but here are a few more of mine to add to the collection. Early fall seems to be a nice time of year up there, and the weather was excellent for us.
-Went to the Salamanca Market in Hobart. One of the better open-air markets I’ve been to. I didn’t take any pictures myself, but here’s one I found online to give an idea of it.
-Went to the Mona art gallery. This was a pretty impressive private collection of art that has been opened up to the public. Quite a mix of very old and contemporary art. As with most contemporary art, I found it far from beautiful and often down-right disturbing, but I would say it brings up a mental dialogue and uncomfortablness worth contemplating on occasion. I also liked how the “program” with everything you needed to know about the museum, art, and artists was handed to you in the form of a iTouch. Pretty slick. Again, I didn't take any photos but here are some others I found online.
-Took a tip to Mt Field National Park. This place has some very nice waterfalls and woodlands, but the real jewels are the enormous Eucalyptus trees. The largest approach 300’ tall and are 20’ in diameter at the base. Absolutely massive beings.
-Purchased a chainsaw and cut approximately 4 cords of firewood to hopefully see us through the winter.
-Started learning to play the Didgeridoo. Haven’t got the circular breathing yet, but I’m working on it.
-Took up home brewing beer. A couple friends have been coming over about once a week and between us we’ve got about 30 gallons bottled and another 15 gallons fermenting in my closet at the moment. Two stouts, two IPA’s, a couple pale ales, one wheat beer, an English bitter, and two porters.Hopefully I’ll start up a barley wine on Thursday.
-Been out climbing a couple times. The temperatures have been cooling down and I’ve been feeling a little more motivated. Trying to get into a little better shape I’ve been coupling route climbing out at Freycinet with bouldering in Oatlands. Did an 8a, 7c, and 7b+ out at the Star Factory cliff this past week and have my draws hanging on an 8b+ that I felt surprisingly good on. We’ll see how it goes, but if I can make it out for a few more days in the next couple weeks I might be able to get it done. I haven’t done anything particularly noteworthy at Oatlands yet, just getting back into things with some moderates in the 7A+ range. I’ve got some video but I just haven’t gotten the time to process it yet.
-And of course, I’ve been most of my time trying to get something to show for the last 9 months of my PhD. The next few weeks are likely to be quite busy, but when the dust settles I hope to be sitting in a good position as far as my research is concerned.
That’s about all I’ve got for now. Until next month-
