Beer... thats good!

Okay, one last post before I join the working world again. heh.

I'm starting a job tomorrow (Tuesday) doing tree planting. Woohoo! It has free accomodation and free meals so thats good. And its supposed to pay around $17 an hour, but it depends on how hard you work. So hopefully I'll be able to make a little more than that. This is for the same company I worked at briefly a few weeks ago, so I already know a bunch of the guys that're going to be there. Also there's a French-Canadian guy I met (who has a car, sweet!) that's supposed to be working there too.

So I'm in Hobart right now anyways. Its the capital of Tasmania, down to the south-east of the island. The day after the last post I called about this job and found out I could start on Tuesday (Monday's a holiday here). So I wanted to travel around a little bit before I started that, and spend what little money I had remaining. :) So I met a Dutch guy at the hostel in Launceston that had a rental car for another couple days, and I asked if I could tag along. heh. So we went to a place on the east coast called Wineglass Bay, that was very nice... and a good spot for a swim too! We were the only people swimming, I can't figure out why... :) Lets just say I almost disappeared completely after swimming. haha



Hiked around there for the afternoon, then went south to Port Arthur. This was an old penal colony back in the day.



We stayed in a hostel there for the night... and I ran into a German girl who I met on the Overland Track. Kinda cool running into someone you know out here! Me and Karel (Dutch guy) had to return the rental in Hobart Friday morning, and Mel (German girl) was going to Hobart also, so we went out for some beers Friday night.

Uhhh... what a night. We started out in a pub called Irish Murphys, which wasn't that bad. It was a dark beer night for me, so it was a good place to get some Guinnesses. (y'know, a pint of Guinness or five...) I'd already had a few beers before we got there back at the hostel too :) Anyways, we left that bar and went to another one where they had Hoegaarden. Mmmmmmm. A few of those, then we left and went back to Irish Murphys again. There was a band there by then so that was cool. Dancing and drinking the rest of the night, till we stumbled back to the hostel. Goood times. heh. I ended up spending around $55 in beer that night though :( But in my defence, my parents told me in an email to go out and have a beer or two on them. I must have misread it at the time though, I could have sworn my mom wrote a beer or ten :)

The last couple days were about the same, just smaller amounts of beer every night. My bank account can only take so much of a beating. haha

So right now I'm just sitting in the hostel in Hobart waiting around. This place is kinda cool, its called the Pickled Frog :) Its kind of a pub/hostel, which is a good mix. There's a few Canadians here too, so its nice to talk to someone without an accent. But anyways, I ran into another girl here Saturday that I'd met on the Overland, she's the Israeli girl I mentioned last post. She wants to work at the same place as me so we're gonna hitch up to Launceston later today. She is kind of a magician at getting rides :)

Oh yeah, congrats to everyone back home who finished school! Have a beer or two (or ten...haha) on me!

-Brad

I'm an experienced woodsman, really!

Yeah... yeah... what a great week. The walk was excellent and the weather was great. On the bus ride to the start of the walk we were told the area gets rain 300 days a year. We ended up having rain two out of seven days... and both times you couldn't really call it even rain. When it comes to weather I must have a horseshoe up my ass... doesn't make walking any harder at least :)

There's just too many pictures to post all on my blog here, so I'll put up a few of my favorite ones. But check out my pictures (link on the right) to see all of 'em.







The walk was pretty different from any of the others I've done in Australia so far. There's supposed to be around 10000 people doing the walk every year, so it gets kind of crowded at times. We ended up travelling with mostly the same group of people who set out on the same day as us and were staying at the same huts. Even still, I can see why this walk is so popular. I would have needed a far bigger memory card on my camera take a picture at all the pictureworthy things.

Lots of wildlife still... but mostly possums and wallabies. I'm kinda disappointed I didn't see any Tasmanian Devils, but they're pretty rare (and nocturnal) so I'd probably have to go to a zoo to see one.

Heh, met a lot of interesting people on the walk. I think its part of the package; to be a bushwalker you have to be a little crazy. Lets see... there was a girl from Israel, she was hilarious. She kinda said whatever popped into her head... her comment to a couple German people she just met talking in German was "You two talking remind me of Holocaust movies!" ...to which there was kind of a stunned silence. Heh, that was funny. There was a guy who didn't really pack very well (he brought two sleeping bags??) and had over 30 kilos in his pack. Heh, he was hurting by the end of every day I'm sure. There was an older guy who was probably the craziest of the bunch; he kept telling all the girls walking on their own stories about how people disappeared over the years, and how people have been murdered out in the wild before. Heh, very reassuring!

Sure was nice to get a shower today. I'd post some more pictures of me towards the end of the walk, but you can literally see the stink lines coming off me :)

Anyways, its getting past my bedtime here now. When we were out on the walk everyone kinda went to bed very early... since there's nothing at all to do after its dark! (you can only play so many games of Shithead (a card game))

Here's one more picture for good measure I guess. I like this one.



Well, looks like I'll be in Tasmania for a while longer yet. My bank account is gonna kind of slip into the negatives when I have to pay my Visa bill at the end of the month, so I'll have to work for a while so I can get off this island in decent shape. So probably no new posts for a while. Oh no! hahahaha

-Brad

That's bad!

Well, the dream is over. My career as a tree pruner appears to be at an end. *fights back tears*

The job kinda sucked anyways. I was paid based on the number of trees I pruned, at a dollar a tree. On Tuesday, my first day I did 100 trees, the second day 110. Then the third day I went to go to work and everyone had a day off because of the rain. Rain... hmmmmm... it was kind of spitting for about 10 minutes in the morning, then it cleared up and the sun was shining the rest of the day. Rain my ass! Friday was the same, another rain day. It actually rained some that day but I still could've worked for half the day and made some money. Ah well... So I told them I wouldn't be back Monday. :) Instead I'm gonna walk the Overland Track with Annette (the Danish girl who was pretending to push me over the cliff last post). So if I mysteriously disappear, it was probably because I annoyed her enough that she actually pushed me instead of just pretending :) The walk is a little over 80km so it'll be the longest one I've done here so far.

We're leaving for that early Tuesday morning, and it should take about a week to finish. Its possible to do it in 3-4 days, but I don't see the point in rushing through this kind of thing. Its not like I'm pressed for time or anything! A couple pictures, even though I've hardly gotten out of town at all. First is part of the hostel I've been staying at, and the second is from a drive I went on today to a mountain nearby. A guy from Wales is staying here and rented a car for a few days, so Annette and I tagged along.





I don't think I've posted this link before, but its the photo site I use to post my pictures. I upload more pictures there that I don't post on my blog here, so check them out if you feel like it: Brad's photos. You can download full-sized pictures 'n stuff there too.

Oh yeah... stupid stuff... hmm. Don't think I did much of that last week, sorry! I got a leech on my foot today... thats about it for dumb stuff. Oh yeah, at the job there I had a couple pine branches come down on my head and I got sap in my hair. :) I'm working on doing some more dumb stuff, don't worry.

Time to go laze around some more :)

-Brad