Check out, in my opinion, the best and the funniest explanation of SOPA and PIPA here at TheOatmeal.com.

The folks at Vimeo put up an informative video, too, albeit one that’s not as funny.

For a more traditional pro v. con approach, check out this BBC story… note that the “pro” voice is an MPAA executive. Mm-hmm. They just can’t get enough of suing little kids, can they?

For the record, I oppose Internet piracy. But I oppose dumb and ultimately ineffective legislation more.

Thanks as always for reading my blog.

Yeah, well, so much for that.

Tessellated Pavement day walk (really a minute walk) on the Tasman Peninsula, en route to Port Arthur. One of the few walks I did manage to do.

In the end, I did a lot of short walks, and a couple day hikes, but nothing on the scale of what I’d planned. The relentlessly rainy weather was partly to blame, but I was also dealing with an unforeseen health issue that put a damper on things. At the time, I thought I was just being a slacker and lazy, and unused to hiking after 14 months of limited movement in Antarctica. Turns out, according to a blood test I had done shortly after leaving Australia, that I’m severely anemic. Like, ridiculously so. The average hemoglobin levels are 16-45 and mine, at the time of the test, were sitting not-so-pretty at three.

My doctor prescribed iron tablets and also a change in diet.  Or, as she put it: “Google ‘iron-rich foods’ and eat them.” So now I’m on a meal plan that involves a lot of red meat, after years of swearing it off, and frequent indulgences in two of my secret loves: Braunschweiger and Guinness. Don’t judge.

I also eat my weight in spinach most days.

Of course, in hindsight it makes sense that I often found myself utterly wiped out on the trail. At the time, however, all I knew was that I was seriously wimping out, at least in my opinion. What can I say, I am my own worst enemy.

So, when I got to the famous Cradle Mountain end of the famous Cradle Mountain-Lake St. Clair National Park, all full of famous trails, I was dreading putting on my boots. It hailed heavily, with a persistent thick fog, the first two days I was there, so I used lousy weather as my excuse. On the third day, however, with skies overcast but generally calm, I knew I had to either hit the trail or head elsewhere, as I had limited time.

First glimpse of Cradle Mountain, arguably Tasmania's most famous piece of natural real estate, from the Dove Lake carpark.

I wimped out on my initial plan to climb into the mountains and settled instead for the Dove Lake circuit, a graded loop of about four miles around the lake at the base of Cradle Mountain. It was an easy walk, which meant, of course, that there were way too many people on the trail for my liking and most of them were tourists, not hikers…

Okay, wait. I realize how obnoxious and elitist I sound. I want to make it clear that I am not against tourists in general–I am one myself, often enough. I just despise that particular sort of tourist who seems completely unaware of/indifferent to his or her surroundings. The kinds of tourists who litter because they can’t be bothered to find the trash can. The kinds of tourists who feed the wildlife trying to get a “funny” picture or take “souvenirs” in the form of broken-off stalactites or go tramping off the trail disregarding “fragile habitat please keep to path” signs. The kinds of tourists who talk, loudly, the entire time a guide is giving his spiel. The kinds of tourists who block the path walking four abreast, yammering on so loudly about the most inane things to each other that they don’t even hear a faster walker behind them saying, repeatedly, “coming up on your right, excuse me. EXCUSE ME.”

Whew. Okay. Got that out of my system.

Another shot of Cradle Mountain with Dove Lake in foreground. Note the tannin-rich water. All it needs is a slice of lemon and it could pass for a nice Orange Pekoe.

Anyway, yes, Dove Lake had too many ugly tourists to suit me. And, while the environs were pretty, they weren’t as jaw-droppingly breath-taking as I’d been lead to believe.

Moody, broody shot of Cradle Mountain from its base at south end of Dove Lake.

The Dove Lake circuit is listed as “Level 2 with a moderate hill,” by the way, but I would say it was a super-easy walk, even for someone with the red blood cell count of a vampire victim. The hill was a bump and about 90 percent of the trail was flat gravel or boardwalk.

My favorite shot of Cradle Mountain, with the old boathouse in the foreground. If you're thinking "hey, these shots all kinda look alike," well, yeah. And interestingly, despite people touting all the trails in the area, almost all the photos I've seen online and in tourism promotions feature this view. So I don't feel like I missed much.

The next day, with the skies opened up again in a great gray deluge, I decided to skip a few other lowland walks I’d been considering and instead head east to the Walls of Jerusalem National Park.

The Walls are much less visited than Cradle Mountain. The access point–a trailhead leading into the rainforested mountains from a tiny gravel carpark about 25 miles from civilization–means it’s impossible for big tour buses to get there. The fact that the carpark is so remote and then you have to hike a few miles up a steep trail just to reach the park makes it unattractive to, you know, a certain sort of tourist. And, as the National Parks site puts it, “there are no facilities for casual visitors.”

Hells yeah.

The first day I tried to go to the Walls, it was pouring rain and I was feeling under the weather in more ways than one. So I went to Trowunna Wildlife Park and got to cuddle a wombat, which was exactly what I needed. The next morning dawned clear with a brilliant blue sky, the finest day I’d seen in Tasmania, with temps in the 60sF–perfect hiking weather.

I drove out to the carpark and, well, I nearly didn’t get out of my car. I was very sick, the sickest I’d been since my mysterious malaise had taken hold. (Of course, again, at the time I chided myself for being such a wuss.) I tell you this not for sympathy, but because it explains why, when I finally talked myself into standing up and wobble-stepping toward the trail, every step feeling like Jacob Marley dragging his chains through the netherworld*, and after I slowly lumbered up the side of one mountain, through a bog and over rocks up the side of another mountain, through a pass and finally into the Walls of Jerusalem themselves, it was, well, kind of a religious experience.

The hike up to the Walls begins steeply through dense forest, finally opening up (and flattening out a bit) on a tarn-studded plateau from which I was able to see the Cradle Mountain area on the horizon.

[*I have a great fondness for Jacob Marley, Scrooge's dead colleague in A Christmas Carol. I played him in my high school's adaptation of the play (hey, when you're the tallest in your class at an all-girl school, you're going to get guy parts in all the drama shows. That's just how it is.) and, to this day, when I'm stressed or believe that I'm being a wuss, I often mutter to myself "Oh captive, bound and double-ironed not to know, not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere would find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness. Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one's life opportunity missed. Yet such was I. Such was I." This has occasionally led to troubled looks from people on the trail/treadmill/hostel lounge chair beside me.]

The tarns known collectively as Solomon's Jewels. I was struck by the perfect isoceles triangle of a rock in the middle of one tarn. Does it not scream "This is the rock Indiana Jones is supposed to swim out to and turn to open the secret door to the massive underground chamber where Solomon's jewels really are hidden"... or is it just me?

The hike from the carpark to Herod’s Gate, the pass which opens up to the Walls themselves, is probably about four miles. But the change in altitude is fairly substantial for a day walk, starting out at about 2,300 feet and ending around 4,200 feet. It’s particularly steep at the beginning, with an altitude gain of about 1,800 feet in the first two miles.

Approach to Herod's Gate, a pass beside the looming West Wall (on right) that leads up to a glorious plateau

After the initial steep ascent, the trail flattens more or less over rocks and boardwalked stretches crossing a broad fell full of tarns, including a group known as Solomon’s Jewels (because, back in the 19th century when these things were getting named by Europeans, no feature was too small to have a Biblical name).

Just a corner of the plateau beyond Herod's Gate, with Lake Salome at center.

The fell ends abruptly at the base of another steep but much shorter climb up to Herod’s Gate, with the monstrous West Wall looming up to the, er, west.

Looking back, from the plateau, past Herod's Gate. Cradle Mountain is on the far horizon.

Once up and through Herod’s Gate, the trail arrives at another plateau and becomes mostly flat again, and mostly boardwalked to protect cushion plants and other fragile alpine flora. I didn’t mind the boardwalking because I know how slow the plants up in alpine environments grow–one bootprint can destroy decades of growth–but also because it would have been a hard slog through boggier bits where I suspect the black water would have been waist-high at least.

Boardwalked way over deep black water bog and gorgeous cushion plants

The plateau beyond Herod’s Gate is ringed by dolerite cliffs with names such as King David’s Peak and Solomon’s Throne, The Temple and Damascus Gate. I walked around for about an hour, climbing up through the Damascus Gate pass and into Dixon’s Kingdom, a dense alpine forest that has been called “magical” by several people I’d met. Eh. It was pretty and all, but I love me some big, intimidating, treeless cliffs.

Mmm, big, barren, rocky cliffs. Sexy. Solomon's Throne.

It was the first time since leaving Antarctica a month earlier that I had that intense, humbling, awed sense of being overwhelmed by the natural beauty and splendor of a landscape. As far as I’m concerned, the Walls of Jerusalem were a thousand times more visit-worthy than Cradle Mountain.

The Temple, on the plateau. I guess you could also call it the Temple on the Mount, hahahahhaa

I did, in case you’re wondering, encounter Others. You know, other humans. Blech. Mostly it was a couple here and there along the trail, but in Dixon’s Kingdom I ran into, almost literally, one of those obnoxious guided hiking tours, where 25 people walking in a line with their fancy gear and gaiters and matchy-matchy packs and Camelbaks and poles and high-end waterproofs come barreling around an outcrop like they own the place, and when you say “Hi” only a couple say “Hi” back, most of them just looking at you as if to say “How dare you occupy this trail? Can’t you see I’m hiking! I paid good money to walk this trail and have someone else pitch my tent and cook my food and I’ll be damned if I’ll be slowed down one moment by some big-booty chubbette who is not even wearing gaiters!”

Okay. Again, just needed to get that out of my system.

The Walls. Love 'em. And yes, for those of you who have read my novel "The War's End," the voices in my head were so totally at home here. (For those of you who haven't read it yet, look for it soon in eBook format).

Anyway…

There came a time when I knew I had to turn back. The deal I’d made with myself, you see, was that if I got out of the car and onto the trail and stopped whining already, I would do the walk as a day hike and leave my pack, with my tent and food and sleeping bag, etc., etc., behind. It meant I traveled several pounds lighter, but it also meant that I had to get down off the mountain before nightfall.

The view returning to the carpark. That enormous mountain on the horizon is Mt. Ossa, the highest point in Tasmania. But I doubt it's the prettiest.

I got back to my car just as twilight fell, having completed roughly 13 miles of moderately challenging trail. I slept like the dead and the next morning awoke to fog and rain. But what a fantastic place. If I ever return to Tasmania, I would spend all my time at the Walls because it really was such a special place and…

Uhm. Wait a minute.

Another view of Solomon's Jewels

No. No, the Walls were horrible! Awful! Boring! Don’t go! And tell everyone you know not to go!

How about one more tarn?

Leave it all for me.

Walls of Jerusalem--I'm lichen it.

Eastern Forest Kangaroo (I believe) looking as if he's preparing to give me an obscene gesture because I wouldn't feed him. Taken at the Wineglass Bay trailhead car park.

Many of the animals I got up close and personal with in Tasmania were at sanctuaries, but not all of them. It was not unusual to see kangaroos, wallabys and pademelons (a wallaby-like animal) in parking lots and campgrounds, or to have to step around wombats on hiking trails.

Another would-be beggar in the Wineglass Bay carpark.

I’d heard kangaroos were nasty and liked to kick and bite, but all the ones I ran into (not literally, fortunately) were docile and calm. Not that I tried to pet any of them.

I loved the carpark roo's expression when her joey popped its head out of her pouch. She looked down as if shocked and only then remembering it was there.

Unfortunately, the flipside of having abundant wildlife is that Tasmania is, per capita, the roadkill capital of the world. The few times I was driving around dusk or shortly thereafter were nerve-wracking, especially on the forested mountain roads where it was not unusual to see 20 or 30 kangaroos and wallabies within a hundred meters or so.

They are seriously not kidding.

I am pleased to report that I did not hit a single animal, though I was sorely tempted to have at an obnoxious currowong who stole the half bag of dates I was eating for lunch right out of my hands.

Jerk.

The punk came back moments later and tried to take my empty yogurt container. I was shouting at him “go ahead, try it! You feelin’ lucky? Try it!” as it struggled to fit the smooth, rounded plastic in its beak while horrified English tourists looked on (why does it seem that, abroad, English tourists are either drunken louts or exceedingly prim and judgmental sticks-in-the-mud?).

Anyway…

For those of you who associate kangaroos with the arid, hot outback of Australia (I know I did), surprise: this fella lives quite happily in the subalpine environment of Walls of Jersusalem National Park, where snow can fall year-round.

Australia has more than its fair share of whacky animals, so it was a thrill to see kangaroos and wallabies hopping around in the wild, except when they happened to be hopping right in front of my car (the brakes worked.).

Roadside roo. Taken from my car, showing how common the marsupials are in populated areas.

I had middling hope of seeing the rare platypus (I never did) but was pleasantly surprised by the number of echidna I nearly stepped on/drove over. Echidna are the only egg-laying mammal other than the elusive platypus. They resemble a combination of tiny anteater and hedgehog and, when frightened, curl into a spiny ball. When run over, they flatten into a spiny pancake. While I saw the aftermath all too often, I’m just really happy I never did the squashing.

Echidna safely far from any road, near the Walls of Jerusalem trail

Aside from the Tasmanian Devil, the animal I most wanted to see was a wombat. They’re stocky, large marsupials and, to use one of my all-time favorite words, they’re crepuscular. Okay, yes, they also look like ewoks. Let’s not dwell on that, shall we, because it just reminds me of the pain and sense of betrayal lingering in the air after George Lucas disappointed me ever so much.

Crepuscular Love... Wombat foraging at dusk, Cradle Mountain

I had heard that the boardwalk trails in the lowlands of Cradle Mountain National Park were a great place to spot wombats in the wild at dusk. So I braved the rain and drove out to the trails, hoping to catch sight of one.

Why are animals scratching an itch so universally adorable? Whether it's a wombat or a wolverine, I can't help but squee when I see them doing that. Wild wombat, Cradle Mountain

They were all over the place. Seriously. I probably saw about 30 without venturing more than a couple hundred meters on the boardwalk.

I took some video of this guy walking under the trail boardwalk but it includes some embarrassing vocals by yours truly crooning "under the boardwalk, down by the heath..." I'm not posting it.

One of the many neat things about wombats is their butts. They have virtually no tail and a hard piece of cartilage on their posteriors. They live in deep burrows and, when they feel threatened, they run back to their borrows and “close the door” with their butts, blocking any predators. Because their butt-plate is hard, has no nerves or blood vessels, it’s very difficult for would-be predators to get a good grip and inflict damage or pull the wombat out.

To earn her keep at the sanctuary, Maggie the orphaned wombat must perform for the tourists which, in the case of being a wombat, means letting people hold you a couple minutes every day. Here our guide is showing off her backwards-facing pouch. Wombats burrow tunnels and dig for food with their claws. A backwards-facing pouch means they're not flinging dirt in with their babies.

Wombats are generally shy, but I got to actually hold one–an 18-month-old named Maggie–at Trowunna Wildlife Park. Maggie had been rescued as a roadkill orphan and was being raised at the sanctuary. She was very docile and cuddly but felt like a fur-covered sandbag, weighing in at near 10kg (22 pounds) and nowhere near done growing. A fully-grown wombat can weigh up to 40kg (88 pounds).

Maggie and me... no comments on my wardrobe, okay? It was cold and rainy and leechy.

Trowunna has loads of different kinds of animals, many of them roadkill orphans, including an enormous mob of free-range kangaroos (yes, “mob” is the collective noun, almost as good as a “murder of crows.”)

Mobscene. Note the guy hopping at left midground.

Also wandering about the grounds were an assortment of birds, including a family of Cape Barren geese, the rarest goose in the world and indigenous to Tasmania.

Cape Barren Geese roaming the grounds at Trowunna Wildlife Park. Note the Tasmanian Devil in his enclosure, not roaming freely, as that would result in a lot fewer geese.

Kangaroos are derided as dumb pests by many Australians (certainly several who couldn’t believe I would pay to see them in a sanctuary instead of “just hitting them” with my car. Nice, mate. Proves there are idiots on all sides of the world). Anyway, as far as I’m concerned, kangaroos showed their smarts by being adorable as possible to get more feed from squeeing tourists.

Making love for the camera.

As with other wildlife sanctuaries I visited during my time in Tassie, you could feed the kangaroos and wallabies by hand and they were as docile as well-trained dogs. Good thing, too, considering their physiology. Look at those claws. They could really hurt you if they felt like it.

Check out the claws, particularly the middle claw of the rear feet. Ouch!

Next to the many Tasmanian leeches I encountered, the smallest critter I saw on my travels was a skink. I went to the Parks Department website after spotting it on the boardwalk trail at Walls of Jersusalem National Park but was unable to determine what kind of skink it was, there being rather a lot of different kinds in Tasmania, including more than one variety of snow skink.

Unidentified skink on the trail of the subalpine Walls of Jerusalem National Park. On a related note, I think "snow skink" is an excellent name for a band.

Yes, a lizard that lives in snow. I told you Tasmanian wildlife was whacky.

Kookaburra at Bonorong Wildlife Park

Even the birds are a bit, er, odd, such as the Kookaburra and close cousin the Frogmouth.

Frogmouth. To avoid predation they freeze and look like a tree branch. To avoid being seen by prey, they freeze and look like a tree branch. To avoid... oh, you get the idea.

The Frogmouth is not, in fact, closely related to owls. Unfortunately I didn’t get a shot of them eating, but when they do, you see how they earned their name. Their wide beak opens to reveal an enormous, gaping maw like that of a giant frog.

These beautiful but pushy gray and pink parrots are all over Tasmania, often flying in large flocks. Having lived entirely in places where parrots are pets and usually solitary ones at that, I never got over the shock of seeing several hundred of them flying overhead.

The most memorable birds I saw in Tasmania were, however, a few that found forever homes at various sanctuaries after being shot, mauled, run over or electrocuted in power lines.

No, it's not Photoshop. This beautiful peregrine falcon had his wing amputated after mangling it severely in power lines. Now he lives at the Tasmanian Devil Conservation Park near Port Arthur, where he participates in the daily raptor show by looking badass, even unable to fly

And yes, this being Australia, I saw koalas. Koalas are not native to Tasmania (I saw them in the wild outside Melbourne, subject of an upcoming post) but the Bonorong Wildlife Park had a few hanging around. Personally, I am indifferent to koalas, though I must admit I cannot look at one without thinking of Ed Asner.

I, Asner

Okay, okay, there’s your token koala picture. Whatever. Let’s look at more photos of hoppy and flappy things!

Roo pile, Trowunna

But wait, there’s more:

Two Tasmanian Wedge-Tailed Eagles injured and unable to fly but living out their days at Trowunna. The Tasmanian species can weigh up to 5kg (11 pounds) and have a wing span of 2.2m (well over seven feet)

I think one of the things that impressed me overall during my stay in Tasmania was the dedication of all the people I met, some staff and some volunteers, at the various wildlife sanctuaries I visited.

I've posted this photo before, but I just love it... Mary the nearly-blind wallaby, living in a special enclosure at Bonorong built just for her with more open space and fewer obstacles. She lost most of her sight after well-meaning folks who found her orphaned in the wild fed her cow's milk, which wallabies cannot tolerate.

It poured rain and leeches nearly every day I was in Tasmania, but these folks were out there in the mud picking up roo poo, harvesting roadkill to feed the devils, answering tourists’ endless questions (ahem).

Mother and joey at the roo paddock, Tasmanian Devil Conservation Park

I salute you, Wildlife Park Folk of Tasmania… may your khakis never crease and your Wellies never spring a leak as you go about your noble mission.

*Yawn*... bored kangaroo at Bonorong

The main area of Port Arthur World Heritage Site, which sprawls over hundreds of acres on the Tasman Peninsula

Of course, thousands of people who went to Tasmania in the mid-19th century also had to go to Port Arthur. They had no choice. They were transported from elsewhere in the British Empire and dumped in the remote penal colony to serve their time, usually for secondary offenses (offenses committed after they already had been sentenced for crimes).

Bewley Tuck, an early involuntary tourist to Port Arthur, sentenced to 15 years for "attempted unnatural acts."

Port Arthur sits on the south side of the Tasman Peninsula, about an hour from the capital city of Hobart. These days, the environs are sleepy farming and fishing hamlets. But back in 1830, when Port Arthur came into being, the landscape was rugged, dense, nearly impenetrable rainforest edged by cliffs.

The Tasman Peninsula coast, looking south from near Eaglehawk Neck.

To get to Port Arthur via land, you had to cross an isthmus about 30 meters (100 feet) wide. Called Eaglehawk Neck, the isthmus was protected by The Line. A series of massive and aggressive guard dogs were chained to posts along the width of the Neck, with other dogs positioned on rafts in the shallow waters on either side of the narrow stretch of land. It was rumored that the deeper waters had a different kind of barrier: sharks. I didn’t read any accounts of shark attacks, but I’m guessing the mere notion of shark-infested waters was enough to deter most would-be escapees.

I couldn't resist. Karl poses with a recreation of The Line.

If any escapees made it through the dense, jungle-like forests and past the dogs and/or sharks, they were promptly shot by guards stationed on a ridge of land looking down on The Line.

Perhaps not surprisingly, escape attempts from Port Arthur were not as numerous as from other sites.

Charles Petts, sentenced to five years for perjury.

When you visit Port Arthur, you’re given a card with a man’s name on it, and throughout the site you can find out what happened to him. My convict, as I like to think of him, was Abraham Hood, a baker by trade–coincidence? The young Mr. Hood, hailing from Dalkeith, outside Edinburgh, Scotland, was just 20 when he was convicted in 1819 of stealing a horse. He was sentenced to 14 years transportation, which means he had to serve his sentence in Australia.

The less-than-fetching uniform worn by convicts, derided as "magpies" and based on medieval jester outfits to humiliate the men.

Mr. Hood, like many bakers, ahem, was not one to keep his head down and do what he was told. According to records, he was sentenced to 75 lashes after writing a letter to the Commandant listing the ways in which Port Arthur was poorly run. After continuing to be a rabble-rouser, he was sentenced to three months on the chain gang, the most dangerous and grueling of jobs. Men chained together at the ankle had to fell enormous trees and drag them to the timber mills. Crushing deaths and injuries were numerous.

The Commandant's House, built in the 1830s but expanded by subsequent administrations

Although the convicts were isolated from the rest of the world, their keepers seemed to stay up to date on all the latest innovations in punishment. After kicking things off with the usual emphasis on physical punishment, prison officials shifted towards the “new” notion of breaking a man’s spirit.

Exterior of the Separate Prison

The Separate Prison, also known as the Modern Prison, was built in 1853. It emphasized psychological punishment by restricting prisoners to small, solitary cells most of the day, briefly letting them out to exercise alone in tiny yards.

Cell in the Separate Prison. I'd like to note it's larger than my room at MMI in McMurdo. I'm just sayin'.

While in their cells, the men could not be idle and worked at a number of trades, including making shoes. Speaking of shoes, guards who patrolled the corridors of the Separate Prison didn’t wear any. They wore soft slippers so that convicts could not hear them, part of the prison’s sound deprivation, er, enhancement.

Hallways of the Separate Prison

Perhaps not surprisingly, tossing a man in the Separate Prison, used as a punishment when he misbehaved in the general population, generally did not have the desired effect of rehabilitating him. Many men, when their time in the Separate Prison was done, were physically ill and mentally shattered. It’s no coincidence, noted our guide, that the Separate Prison is next to the asylum, which is next to the poorhouse where convicts who had done their time but were too mentally and physically broken to return to society, lived out their days.

From right to left: Separate Prison, asylum, poorhouse. It's the Circle of Life, or not, mid-19th century convict style.

But wait, not everything was awful at Port Arthur. For one thing, a lot of men learned trades, including ship building and masonry. Many of them served their sentences and then settled in Tasmania and became respectable members of society.

The first look at Port Arthur that a new arrival would have seen. The rainforest was too dense for overland travel, so all traffic in and out was via, well, the port.

Others didn’t get the chance.

If you go to Port Arthur today as a tourist, you get a lot more choices than the convicts did. There are different levels of visitor’s passes plus add-ons such as the nighttime ghost tour and a day tour that includes lunch. I went for the basic tour, but also bought a side trip to the Isle of the Dead.

Isle of the Dead, at right

No one is sure how many people are buried on the Isle of the Dead, Port Arthur’s cemetery, but it’s estimated to be in the neighborhood of 1500. Fewer than 200 ended up in marked graves, however, and most of them were prison officials, their wives and children.

The resting places of prison officials and their family members, Isle of the Dead

The headstones themselves were carved by convicts learning a trade, including, apparently, a few of the boys incarcerated at Point Puer. Boys as young as nine were shipped off to Point Puer, the first boys’ prison in the British Empire.

Perhaps carved by someone just learning his trade, this headstone has a few spacing issues

The only way to see the Isle of the Dead is on a guided tour leaving from the harbor ferry (the ferry trip itself is included in the basic ticket price). Our guide, a woman with streaked red and fucshia hair who was well into her 60s (or, given the Australian sun, maybe she was 40. Hard to tell.), had a rather dour style. At first I thought jeez, lady, crack a smile or something. Then I felt the cumulative effect of her delivery. After stopping at a headstone and reciting the half dozen or so lines she’d memorized, she intoned “To the memory of Caroline Aylett” or whomever she was discussing.

Tomb of Benjamin Horne, headmaster of the Point Puer school for delinquent boy-convicts. Perhaps as a final act of revenge, Horne's name is misspelled, as is "Point Puer." At the bottom: "Sincerely regretted by all who knew him."

Over the half hour or so of the tour, her solemn words had the effect of taking us back to a time when Port Arthur was a living, breathing city full of individuals, not just names on cards.

Transportation, the practice of shipping convicts off to Australia, ended in the 1850s. Port Arthur began a slow decline. It closed in 1877. Its buildings were ravaged by fires in the 1890s. After much looting and decay, the site’s historic value was recognized as something that ought to be protected. Eventually named a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Port Arthur is now Tasmania’s largest tourist attraction and considered one of the most important  Australian convict history locations.

Turret of Port Arthur garrison, with hospital ruins in background.

Unfortunately, Port Arthur’s misery did not end when the last convict left.

In 1996, a Hobart area man armed with automatic rifles and more than a few grudges arrived at Port Arthur. He opened fire on tourists, guides and workers indiscriminately, killing more than 30 and wounding another 21, some of them seriously. Many were killed at the Broad Arrow Cafe, which was gutted by fire shortly thereafter and made into a memorial. The gunman was eventually captured. He was judge to be sane and sentenced to 35 consecutive life sentences with no chance of parole. In reaction to the massacre, Tasmania and Australia revamped their gun laws, making them some of the strictest in the world.

Remembrance Pool at the site of the Broad Arrow Cafe, marking the spot where many victims of the 1996 massacre perished

To the memory of Port Arthur, and all who lived and died there.

Undated photograph, mid-to-late 19th century, of Port Arthur convict Thomas Jackson, sentenced to ten years

A big part of the appeal of going to Australia, and in particular Tasmania, was visiting the remnants of the country’s convict past. Not because I wanted to gloat (hey, the United States had its share of convict ships/ne’er-do-wells dispatched to the colonies. Really. Look it up.) but because I am fascinated by the concept of sending someone literally halfway around the world to serve time for real or alleged crimes during a period when most people didn’t venture far from the village where they were born.

William Robinson, another Port Arthur convict... and perhaps a distant relative of Pete Postlethwaite?

It’s astounding to think that people not only survived what must have been a horrific voyage, but often decades of imprisonment in conditions that defy our modern concept of humanity (well, most of us, anyway).

More Port Arthur convicts (I just found their faces so riveting). I'm not saying William Meaghers, the guy on the upper left deserved his fate, but James Martin, the one on the lower right, certainly reminds me of the Oliver! line "I'm a bad 'un and a bad 'un I shall stay."

I’m also interested in Australia’s “transportation” history (the term used for sentences that were decreed in Great Britain but served in Australia) because it’s a chance to focus on the experiences of individuals rather than, say, battlefield tactics in which the names and fates of soldiers are often neglected in favor of General So-and-So outflanking Field Marshall Such-and-Such.

I am not condoning his actions at all, but you've got to admit "intent to ravish" sounds somehow less repulsive than "attempted rape."

So, with a curiosity about the people who experienced it and the conditions they experienced, I made a point of visiting several different kinds of convict sites during my three weeks in Tasmania.

Hobart’s Cascades Female Factory–Where Women Were Broken, Not Made

My first stop was arguably the least interesting, largely because it’s been the most neglected over the years.

Main Yard of Cascades Female Factory, South Hobart

The Cascades Female Factory, or at least what remains of it, is stuck at the bottom of a ravine west of Hobart proper. The neighborhood these days is a dense pocket of single family homes that looked a bit scruffy and industrial businesses, but back in the mid-19th century it was a swampy hinterland. Women convicts were brought here theoretically to isolate them, even though many were sent into Hobart to work as servants during the day.

While there is evidence that some of the women sent out as maids helped themselves to the silverware, there is also evidence that some were sexually abused by their bosses. Many of the women became pregnant and gave birth at the factory–the infants were taken from their mothers when still just days old and many died.

It was a horrible place, without question, and what makes it even worse, at least in my mind, is that many of the women sent there from England and other parts of the British Empire were sentenced to “transportation” for offenses such as “stealing a scarf.”

Scant Informational Signage at Cascades... click to enlarge

Although it’s the only remaining female factory (there were a few at the height of “transportation” times), Cascades doesn’t seem to get the attention you’d think worthy of it, though it is a listed Australian Heritage site. The yards themselves are mostly intact, and there was a tented excavation area when I visited, but overall the place was quiet and the informational signage/self-guided tour somewhat wanting.

Kind of mirrors the way women convicts themselves were treated, I suppose.

Plaque in the main yard of the Female Factory... kind of says it all.

Sarah Island: Beyond Hell’s Gate

The second convict site I visited was the most remote and arguably the most notorious: Sarah Island. To get there, I had to book a spot on a tourist cruise ship that plyed the Macquarie Harbor and Gordon River route, the main draw for visitors to Tasmania’s west coast.

Sarah Island is in Macquarie Harbor, which is accessed from the wild Tasman Sea by a narrow, rocky channel called Hell’s Gate. I was ready for it… how evocative a name! And a woman staying in my hostel who’d done the cruise the day before me raved about the savagery of the seas! Oh, peril, sweet peril! And… yeah.

Hell's Gate. Wake me when it gets exciting.

Not the most hellish gates I’ve ever seen. I hate to sound like the jaded world traveler, but after fearing for my life in a small boat puttering across the angry black waters surrounding the Faroe Islands, after camping in a hurricane in Iceland, after living through Con1 storms in Antarctica, ah, I was just a little underwhelmed, especially since the old lady at the hostel had painted a picture of crashing surf and heaving seas and the devil, the very devil, possessing the waters!

That said, what I thought of when we glided through Hell’s Gate, briefly into the Tasman and then turned back toward the harbor, was wow, what did the men arriving to Sarah Island make of their new home? Sarah Island was a secondary offense site, a place where they sent convicts from other sites because they couldn’t behave. It was for “the worst of the worst,” but I still wonder what these hardened men thought after days, often weeks, of rough travel through the notoriously mean-spirited Tasman Sea as they passed the not-so-scary Hell’s Gate and saw nothing but impenetrable rainforest, distant gray mountains, low cloud and black water, and felt nothing but a cold, stinging wind.

Perhaps, as most of them originally were from England, they thought “oh, reminds me of home!”

Who knows? Maybe they didn’t care at that point, so inured were they to suffering.

Sarah Island (right foreground)

In any case, Sarah Island was smaller than I had figured, a mere blip of an island, much of which was landfill used to create a shipyard where convicts learned–and eventually mastered–how to build ships.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Ruins of the solitary confinement cells at Sarah Island. The guy on the right in the black pants was our tour guide. I wish I remembered his name. He was highly entertaining and possessed a great booming voice that was welcome, given the amount of mindless chatter among the other tourists.

Sarah Island was actually Tasmania’s first convict site and was in operation for a scant 11 years, beginning in 1822. For the first half of its existence, it was known mostly for its isolation and impressive number of floggings, but in 1828, David Hoy, a Master Shipwright, showed up and put the convicts to work learning a craft. Sarah Island became known for building some exceptional quality ships and the number of floggings fell by about 75%. Convicts moved into better housing and the conditions, while never grand, improved considerably.

The bakehouse at Sarah Island is nearly gone, but the oven still stands

Eventually abandoned because it was simply too remote and supplying it was too difficult, Sarah Island fell into ruin, but not before sprouting some of Australia’s wildest convict tales. One successful escape party spent two years terrorizing the countryside before being recaptured while another escapee, Alexander Pearce, could be considered the Hannibal Lechter of Tasmania. Because yes, he cleverly took his rations in the form of fellow escapees. No word on whether his meals also featured fava beans and Chianti, but I suspect not.

Perhaps most impressively, convicts stole the last ship built at Sarah Island and sailed it all the way to Chile in 1834. That’s some quality shipbuilding.

Mines, Why Is It Always Mines?

From the spice mines of Kessel in Star Wars to the unfortunately real prison mines of North Korea, ever notice how mining and slave/convict labor seem to go hand in hand? It speaks to the horribly grim and dangerous work that is mining, I suppose, but if I could I’d go back in time and change all the prison mines to something more along the lines of Puppies Behind Bars.

Anyway, when I visited Port Arthur (the largest and most famous by far of Tasmania’s convict history sites, and worthy of its own upcoming post), I learned that a few miles to the north of it on the Tasman Peninsula was another, less-visited site known simply as The Coal Mines Historic Site.

I cringed, already knowing it would be a grim place, but sallied forth anyway.

The Coal Mines site was, according to signage, “for the worst of the worst” (a phrase you’ll find in an awful lot of places on Tasmania’s historic Convict Trail, reminding me of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s response in True Lies when Jamie Lee Curtis asks him “did you kill people?” He says “Yeah, but they were all bad.” It’s as if we want to rationalize that these places existed by dehumanizing the people put there. I’m not saying they weren’t criminals, and excessively naughty ones at that (though there is also evidence that more than a few innocent folks got “transported”). I’m just noting that, whatever their crimes, they were still human.).

It was about a half hour drive from Port Arthur through what is now farmland, though back in the day it was all thick rainforest.

The Coal Mines Historic Site

There’s not much left of the site, and the mines themselves have been filled in, but when I visited on yet another gray and windy day, there was a palpable feeling of despair about the place. Walking down into the basement cells used for solitary confinement, I had to turn back. It was partly because it was so dark, and I was alone and without a flashlight, that I worried about stepping on a wild animal or hobo or other living creature that may or may not be pleased to see me (or simply wiping out on an ankle-breaking hole). But it was also because I could feel the misery seeped into the very bricks of the place.

The better-lit of two once-subterranean halls leading to solitary confinement cells at the Coal Mines site

Puppies Behind Bars, people. Puppies Behind Bars. It’s the way to go. (There are other similar programs out there where prisoners train dogs to be service animals or part of K9 units, but I happen to love the name of PBB.)

How Do You Say “Gaol,” Anyway?

I’ll admit it. “Gaol” is one of those words that always gives me pause. I know how it’s pronounced. Really. But every time I’m about to say it, I pause, flinch a little and end up grabbing a dictionary.

Yes, it’s essentially pronounced like “jail” but even as I type this I want to say “gowl.”

Anyway, the last convict site I visited in Tasmania, the day before I flew back to Melbourne, was Richmond Gaol.

Richmond is one of those impossibly attractive towns, like Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia or York in England, where history sort of smacks you in the face around every corner and you are never more than 100 feet from a shop selling fudge (one day I will figure out why fudge and taffy shops are so prevalent around historic places). I even stayed in converted 18th century barracks that were adorable (at least in their converted state. I suspect, before the digital HDTV, free WiFi and kitchenette, ah, not so much).

My final two nights in Tasmania, after nearly a month of leech-infested tents and slacker-infested hostels, I splurged and stayed at the lovely Richmond Barracks

Richmond Bridge was famously built by convicts and is still in heavy use today, both by traffic through the town and as a photo opp.

Richmond Bridge, built 1823-1825 by convicts, is the oldest bridge in Australia still in use.

But what took my fancy most in the town was the small but fascinating Richmond Gaol. By the time I visited it, I had already had my curiosity peaked at Sarah Island, my imagination stirred at Port Arthur and my spirit crushed at both the Female Factory and the Coal Mines. Maybe because it was (finally) a sunny day, maybe because Richmond Gaol was more intact and tidier (the warden’s quarters are still used today, albeit as a private residence). Whatever the reason, I found the place to be fascinating.

Bailey of Richmond Gaol, with the warden's residence on the right and an almond tree on the left. I'm not saying it was all tea and crumpets, but at least on the day I visited it seemed a hell of a lot more appealing than being stuck in the coal mines.

The gaol was built in the 1820s, after Sarah Island but before Port Arthur, and housed both men and women. Here’s some signage giving examples of male convict’s offenses and punishments:

And here are the women’s:

I don’t know about you, but 21 days in solitary for “insolence” seems a bit harsh.

One of the rooms where prisoners were chained to the wall at Richmond Gaol.

The prison provided a handy source of labor for a number of public works projects around rapidly-expanding Richmond in the 1830s but was eventually eclipsed by the larger penal colony–penal city, really–at Port Arthur.

No, it is not an artist's easel. Flogging yard at Richmond Gaol. I knew right away what it was because I've watched every episode of Sharpe's Rifles. The English sure did love their flogging, didn't they?

As for Port Arthur itself, I spent an entire day there and could have gone back for more, but my time was limited and I had to squeeze in a couple more Tasmanian Devil sanctuaries. Still, Port Arthur will get its own post in the coming days, one featuring savage guard dogs, shark-infested waters, an asylum and the Isle of the Dead. Soon, I promise.

“Cool” and “temperate” I got–that’s one reason the place appealed to me, as I hate hot weather. “Forest,” okay, sure, seems like there would be a lot of trees. “Rain,” well I guess it gets a lot of–

Ooh! Tasmanian Devils! Wombats! Kangaroos and Wallabys! Historical convict sites!

Did someone say something about rain?

In this blissful state of denial, I landed in early November, Tasmanian spring, at Hobart International Airport, in bright sun and cloudless sky. Lovely! I spent several days in Hobart walking around the surprisingly hilly city (it reminded me of a tiny and tidy San Francisco or Seattle), climbing Mt. Wellington and accomplishing other must-dos for the Tasmanian capital, almost entirely in dry, sunny, lovely weather.

Then I headed out into the hinterland.

My first day of travel (by rental car, as there are no trains and I found the bus network extremely limited, expensive and convoluted) took me as far as Lake St. Clair, at the southern end of the famous Overland Track. The Overland is Tasmania’s answer to New Zealand’s Milford Track, a must for anyone who hikes, hyped by the tourist board as the single most fantastic experience you could have on the island, blah blah.

Lake St. Clair, at the southern end of the Overland Track and part of Cradle Mountain-Lake St. Clair National Park, as well as Tasmania's UNESCO World Heritage Site. The pointy peak on the right is Mt. Ida.

Originally, I had planned to do to the Overland. But, just like I planned to do the Milford in New Zealand and ended skipping it in favor of the less-visited but arguably more spectacular Rees-Dart and Kepler Tracks, I decided not to. Transportation was one issue. The Overland, like the Milford, is not a circuit, and in high season you have to walk it in one direction, north-to-south. I spent several frustrated hours online in Hobart trying to piece together getting to and from the trail. It costs a couple hundred bucks just to hike the Overland, plus a couple hundred more (at the very least) to cobble together transportation using a variety of different buses from different companies, all of which required overnight stays at transfer points.

Close-up of Mt. Ida. What can I say, I'm a sucker for pointy peaks.

Note: Tasmania is not a large island. Okay, it’s bigger than, say, Manhattan, but compared with Iceland or New Zealand or other islands I have known, it’s not on a scale that merits that kind of time and expense to get from Point A to Point B.

Lake St. Clair's northern tip, near Narcissus Bay

What convinced me to skip the Overland, however, was this: all the photos I saw online, all of them, were of one of two images: the iconic Cradle Mountain (at the northern trailhead) or Lake St. Clair (at the southern terminus). I got suspicious when I realized route descriptions mentioned walking in forest. A lot.

A view of Mt. Olympus from Narcissus Bay. I should note this is the Tasmanian Mt. Olympus. In case you were wondering.

Don’t get me wrong. I love walking in forest. I am a fan of trees. But I have walked through many a forest, sometimes day after day after day in New Zealand. Beautiful, yes. Soul-touching, sure. Boring? Uhm, after a point, yep.

All the blogs and brochures also mentioned that notoriously bad weather on the Overland meant that seven out of ten days it poured rain–

La la la la la la… What? Did you say something about rain?

Anyway, I decided it made more sense to rent a car (getting a good deal) and, in addition to seeing everything else I wanted to see in Tasmania, stop at the southern and northern ends of the Overland for day hikes and skip the middle bits.

This turned out to be an excellent decision on my part. Yay me.

On an interpretational trail near the Lake St. Clair campground... trees were still somewhat of a novelty for me after Antarctica so I took lots of photos of them.

So, my first stop out of Hobart, as mentioned, was Lake St. Clair. The day was bright and lovely, as surely all days in Tasmania are, right?

Right?

What? The forests are so dense and tangled and atmospherically lush because of the massive amount of rai–

Oh! Look! It’s a kangaroo right by the side of the road!

Arriving in early afternoon, I decided to take a boat cruise the length of the lake, a rather touristy thing for me to do, but why not. I could do a bunch of day hikes the next day when surely the sun would shine as brightly (as it turned out, the boat got back early enough that I did several short hikes around the campground where I’d pitched my tent).

Another moody eucalyptus shot near Lake St. Clair on the Lar.mair.re.men.er tabelti Nature Walk (no, I did not doze off on the keyboard. The walk is an interpretational trail introducing people to the local historical Aborginal culture, and Aboriginal words often include punctuation like that).

On the Platypus Bay Trail, allegedly my best chance of seeing a platypus in the wild. They were apparently otherwise engaged.

The first big excitement once I’d settled in for the night was hearing a thump thump thump outside my tent as dusk set in. I peeked through the mesh window at the back of my tent just in time to see a wee wallaby hopping past. An actual wallaby! In the wild! Adorable!

The second big excitement arrived around midnight, waking me with a start. Someone had dumped a bucket of water over my tent! What the hell! Wait, they’re dumping another bucket! And another! And…

Oh. Rain. Serious rain.

That’s okay, I’m sure it will be over by morning.

MmHmm.

Morning of Day Two: atmospheric fog shrouding Mt. Rufus, my intended destination. I skipped it in favor of finding less obscured vistas. Ha!

Oh, don’t worry. The rain did end. Eventually. In December.

That’s right, dear reader, after that first day at Lake St. Clair, it pretty much poured rain every day I was in Tasmania. My tent, my clothes and my boots were perpetually soaked and I made the acquaintance of many a Tasmanian leech. They are actually quite cute, like independent wiggly eyelashes out of a Dr. Suess book.

Tasmanian leech I discovered on my jacket after getting in the car (and after having de-leeched, or so I thought). Curiously, while they were all over my tent and gear and boots and outerwear, I never found any on my skin (I put this guy there to get a good photo because yes, I am that willing to suffer for my art).

There were a couple days the sun came out for four to five hours at a time, but mostly it was rain, gloom and fog so dense that Steve my Guardian Angel got a few more white hairs as I drove through the mountains. There was also a day of hail mixed with rain, which I guess counts for variety.

Donaghys Hill lookout, at the terminus of one of the allegedly most spectacular short walks in the world. Its claim to fame is its view of the famous Frenchman's Cap, Tasmania's equivalent of Half Dome in Yosemite. Mmhmm. Frenchman's Cap is right there. Beyond the fog. I am including this photo because the two other tourists at the lookout were actually, really, as-God-is-my-witness French, and I stood there staring at them, for what they seemed to think was an uncomfortably long while, desperately hoping one of them would put on a hat so I could make a quip about finally seeing Frenchman's Cap. Alas, they did not oblige me.

Of all the moody fog photos I took (and believe me... I took a lot), this is my favorite. I just like the contrasts--try embiggening it. Taken at the Surprise Valley overlook in the World Heritage Area near Frenchman's Cap.

My roughly clockwise circuit around the island took me eventually to a hostel in Launceston, the largest city in the north of the island. As I was checking in, four extremely wet and smelly hikers arrived. They were flying out the following morning, back home to England, after spending a week on the Overland Track. Coincidentally, they did the trail on the same dates I had planned to do it. It poured rain nonstop every single day, they told me, with heavy fog that made it difficult to see the trail, nevermind any of the scenery. They were glum and stank of mildew, their boots and gaiters black-brown with crusted mud.

I got to see Frenchman's Cap in the end, albeit from quite a long distance away. It's the Half Dome-y looking peak on the horizon. Taken from another touristy cruise boat, this one doing the Macquarie Harbor/Gordon River route, which I took because it was the only way to see Sarah Island, the topic of another upcoming post.

Mm-hmm. Just as I suspected.

Gordon River, famous for the reflections in its dark, tannin-stained waters. Whatever. I feel great bitterness towards the Gordon River because UNESCO decided it ranks higher on the World Heritage criteria list than THE ENTIRE CONTINENT OF ANTARCTICA. Seriously!

I felt bad for them, as they had traveled all the way from England just to do the Overland and were flying straight home with nothing to show for it except perhaps a fungal infection or two.

Another shot of the Gordon River. But does it have penguins, seals, auroras, katabatic winds, glaciers or volcanoes? No. Pfft.

“I had no idea it rained so much here,” muttered one of them.

“Well,” I said before I could stop myself, “Tasmania is one of the world’s largest tracts of cool temperate rainforest, you know.”

Brat.

Hey, how about some more gloomy overcast landscapes for you? Here ya go:

A view towards the famous Cradle Mountain. It's out there. Really.

My second try at visiting Cradle Mountain. Better, but it was the third time that was the charm. Look for those photos in an upcoming post.

When the vistas won't cooperate, one must make one's own fun. Anzac Cow outside a cheese factory near Cradle Mountain.

Well, it's almost a clear day. Looking south to the Walls of Jerusalem National Park from the Devil's Gullet. The Walls turned out to be the best hike I took in Tasmania--look for photos of that in, yes, an upcoming post.

Devil's Gullet. I don't see anything devilish or gullety about it, but that's just me.

My rental car was a Hyundai Getz (I named it Bernie. Think about it. I'm guessing those of you who lived in the New York area in the late 80s will get the joke). While it lacked pick-up and got middling mpg, Bernie happened to be the exact size as my two-man Kelty tent, and often served as a drying rack.

The Bay of Fires, named by early Europeans not for the brilliant orange of its lichen-stained rocks but for the multitude of Aboriginal camp fires dotting its shore until said early Europeans arrived and made quick work of decimating the local population. It's supposed to be one of the most beautiful stretches of beach in the world. On the day I visited, ah, not so much.

Curiously eroded rock on the Wineglass Bay Trail on the east coast. Good for sheltering from the rain, that's all I'm saying.

Wineglass Bay, another of Tasmania's famously scenic beaches.

Neville, resident Devil at the Trowunna Wildlife Park near Mole Creak, Tasmania

They are reviled as ugly, disgusting, capable of making only the most hideous of sounds.

Tasmanian Devil, Devils@Cradle, near Cradle Mountain

They are adorable and I love them.

Devil on the rocks, Devils@Cradle

I’m talking about the Tasmanian Devil, of course, one of the most maligned animals on the planet. I don’t know why I gravitate towards the lesser-loved and little-understood in the animal world* (the devils, Great White Sharks, bats…) but I’ve been a little obsessed with devils since I was a child. Getting to see them was one of the main reasons I headed to Tasmania after leaving Antarctica.

[*Actually, I do know why... just as many people rush to judgment about these generally solitary, "different" animals, many people judge me, usually getting it completely wrong. But that is for another post. Or, perhaps, a session with a therapist.]

More adorable devils: juveniles at Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary

I loved all of the wildlife I saw in Tasmania–from kangaroos to wallabies to wombats*–but the devils have a special place in my heart. They got their name from early European settlers who heard their distinctive growls in the bush in the thick of night. The legend quickly grew, turning them into hideous creatures that were blamed for killing livestock and causing general mayhem. Neither charge is true, by the way. Devils are almost entirely scavengers and couldn’t take down even a calf if they wanted to, and they’re shy, solitary creatures.

(*okay, it’s a lie that I loved all the wildlife. I’m still pissed at the obnoxious Currawong who flew off with my lunch, but that’s for another post.)

More baby devils at Bonorong

Tasmanian devils perform an important job in their last refuge (they once existed on the mainland of Australia but went extinct before Europeans arrived). Sometimes called the “garbagemen” of Tasmania, they will eat anything, and everything. And I mean everything. The Tasmanian devil has the strongest jaws of any known living animal with the exception of the Great White Shark. They use their amazing jaws, which can open nearly 90 degrees, to eat the fat, meat, bones and skin of an animal (and in that order, smartly starting with the most calorie-rich stuff first). Because Tasmania is also, unfortunately, the roadkill capital of the world, the devils’ scavenging helps to keep the roads, if not clear, than at least a little less messy.

Devils@Cradle residents enjoying some roadkill wallaby. At all the devil sanctuaries I went to, staff members harvested roadkill to feed the devils. It's the circle of life.

As for the devils’ infamous sounds, I don’t think it’s any worse than the noise made by Chico, a family pet Chihuahua that was the crankiest dog I ever knew, and would steal my Grampa’s cigarettes, hide under the couch and eat the entire pack and then make rather devil-like noises at anyone that came near.

Devils make noises, starting with a sneezing sound and escalating to a full-on yowling screech when they feel threatened, when they're jockeying for position at the dinner table or, in this case, apparently to show off for the tourists. Taken at Devils@Cradle.

While I got to hear a lot of devilry, they had a habit of knowing when the camera was on and shutting up… So here’s the best of the video I shot that captured their sounds (this was from the Tasmanian Devil Conservation Park on the Tasman Peninsula):

Here are the same two devils moments later chasing one another. How can you not love them?

As mentioned above, devils generally only get noisy when they feel threatened. They’re fairly little guys, about the size of a Boston Terrier, they’re shy, one could argue they’re asocial (they live alone, not in packs or even pairs), and really the only time they get together is when they smell something munchable and crunchable.

Devils setting down to dinner... and you thought Thanksgiving with the family was noisy.

As they converge on carrion, the only way they have to communicate with each other is making those sounds, opening their jaws and occasionally taking a bite.

Action shot! What I loved about this photo is the two teeth in the upper left of the frame.

I shot this video at Trowunna Wildlife Park during feeding time… see what happens when someone shows up late for dinner:

Here’s a video of a few of the devils at Devils@Cradle during feeding time… nom nom nom:

Devils also bite each other around the mouth and genitals during mating. Hey, if it’s between two consenting adults, I don’t judge.

But Tasmanian devils are not always ferocious. Here’s a mom with her babies just chillin’:

The more time I spent observing devils (and believe me, I spent a lot of time), the more I thought of them as the lapdogs of Mordor, with their little orc ears and their tiny eyes and their black fur and long canines and Nazgul-like noises. Sigh.

You never forget your first Devil... the first Tasmanian Devil I saw in person, at Devils@Cradle

The more time I spent around them, the more I also really wanted one for a pet.

A face only a Mordor geek could love. And I do.

A couple random facts I learned about devils: they can smell blood from two kilometers away; they can be outrun by a chicken, and those Mordorable orc ears get redder and redder as they get more excited.

Feeling excited (notice the ears) at Devils@Cradle

It’s a good thing devils can smell blood from rather a long way away, since their eyesight is horrible. They can’t see clearly more than a foot or so in front of them. They need spectacles… OMG can you imagine how much evencuter they would be with spectacles!

The very definition of Mordorable

Devils are the world’s largest carnivorous marsupial, a claim they landed in 1936 with the death of the last known Thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger, a fascinating, beautiful and unique animal that humans wiped off the face of the earth in little more than a century.

Nice going, humans. Jerks.

Anyway…

You may have noticed in the captions that the photos and videos were shot at sanctuaries and conservation parks. That’s pretty much the only place to see devils these days. They’re still in the wild, sure, but being shy and nocturnal they’re not often seen.

Shy guy at Bonorong Wildlife Park

And now the sad part of the story. The other reason you don’t tend to see devils outside of sanctuaries and such is because their numbers have been reduced up to 90% throughout much of their territory. Many of the people I met trying to help the devils survive believe they will be extinct in the wild within the next decade.

To the memory of Horror, a grumpy bugger, at the cemetery on the grounds of the Tasmanian Devil Conservation Park

Blame it all on DFTD.

Devil Facial Tumor Disease showed up in the 90s in one of the most densely devil-populated areas of Tasmania. Initially a mystery, the disease has since been determined to be a contagious cancer. There are only a couple known contagious cancers in the world, and for that we should all be thankful–because imagine if cancer spread like the common cold.

Anyway, the reason DFTD is particularly devastating to devils has to do with their lack of genetic diversity. Living on an island for thousands of years doesn’t do much for your genome. Devils have incredibly little variation in their genes. The tumors are mostly around the mouth and genitals. And they bite when mating or, on occasion, when arguing over dinner.

Here’s what happens, at least as I understood it from various sanctuary staff members who patiently answered my pesky questions. A devil with a tumor gets bitten by another devil. In the process of biting, some of the cancerous tissue gets on the biter. Devils are so close to each other genetically that the biter’s immune system does not reject the cancerous tissue as foreign, mistaking it instead for part of the biter. Unimpeded, the cancer then infiltrates the biter.

I won’t show you the utterly heartbreaking photos of what happens next, but DFTD has a 100% mortality rate. The cancerous tumors grow in size and number and, since the tumors are mostly around the mouth, soon the devil can’t eat. It starves to death.

There is no known cure for DFTD, and no way to isolate populations. Although it’s taken the disease time to spread across mountains, narrow isthmuses and other natural barriers, the dense rainforest of Tasmania and the devils’ own stealthy, nocturnal nature make it impossible to track and prevent one infected animal from getting into the territory of a disease-free population.

There is hope, however. Scientists found that one of the devil’s genes flipped somewhere along their inbred evolution. The gene affects immunosupression, and is believed to be one reason foreign cancerous cells are not rejected by the body of the healthy devil they invade. Occasionally, some devils show up with the C5 gene not inverted–and these devils also appear to be immune to DFTD.

Now, devils are caught, quarantined and tested for the C5 gene, then bred with other healthy devils in an attempt to increase both genetic diversity and the prevalence of the right-way-up C5, as well as to create a large reservoir population in case the wild population does go extinct.

And there are more encouraging signs in the wild itself. Preliminary evidence suggests that infection rates may have bottomed out, and that the devils in highly decimated areas who have survived may have the C5 gene, or some other natural immunity, are now mating with each other and passing the immunity on to their offspring.

I hope so. I can’t think of any animal that deserves to slowly starve to death, especially not one as Mordorable as the devil.

I visited four different Devil parks during my time in Tasmania. Each one had its own character, but each one was also amazing. And at each park I met men and women who love the devil as much as I do–arguably even more, since they’re willing to stop and drag roadkill into their cars whenever they see a potential devil meal. Here’s a quick recap of where I went and what I thought of each place:

No, I am *not* repeating photos. I just have, er, rather a lot of shots of devils.

Devils@Cradle: one of the newer places, near Cradle Mountain, allegedly Tasmania’s most beautiful national park (meh… I was more impressed with the Walls of Jerusalem National Park, which you’ll see, eventually, in a future post). The focus here really is on devils, though they also have a few of the devils’ nearest living relative, the enchanting quoll.

Spotted tail quolls, about the size of a cat, at Devils@Cradle

Okay, I’m not going to lie. I want a quoll for a pet, too, even though I know owning exotic animals is wrong and I’d never do it. I still want one.

Another quoll... don't you just want to give it a tiny banana that it can peel with its adorable little paws?

As Devils@Cradle was my first devil experience, it was extremely exciting. The guide, a wildlife biologist who looked disconcertingly like Rob Thomas of matchboxtwenty, was a little, ah, devilish (when I asked if I had time to run to the bathroom before the presentation started, he muttered “I’m starting in five minutes whether there’s anyone there or not.” I can’t blame him. If you spent your day evenly divided between screechy devils and annoying tourists who point out that you look like Rob Thomas, you’d probably be irritable, too).

Rob Thomas and a devil... yeah, they're so fierce. Not.

Anyway, Rob Thomas knew his stuff, that’s for sure, and cleared up a lot of misconceptions I’d had from reading general science stories on DFTD.

One of the highlights of the whole experience was getting to pet a devil, albeit briefly (they don’t really like it and we each got one stroke in before Rob Thomas put him back down). Impression: like a Jack Russell terrier.

Rob Thomas and friends (and a very dead wallaby)

Trowunna Wildlife Park: Located relatively close to Devils@Cradle (and even closer to the Walls of Jerusalem, which I totally need to post about), Trowunna had a wide range of wildlife, including mobs and mobs of kangaroos free-ranging about. I’ll post more on the roos and wombats and other residents soon. But devil-wise, they had a wonderful range of them, including babies!

Dang, I wish I could remember this guy's name. He was one of several very cool, laidback but knowledgeable staffers at Trowunna... note the babies!! Tassie devil babies!!

We even got to pet, gently, one at a time and only one or two strokes, the babies. They started making a sneezing noise, however, a sign of stress, so he put them back to bed before they got seriously annoyed.

Devils dining at Trowunna

One of the special things about Trowunna is that it’s the first place that’s been able to breed devils with the C5 gene in its DFTD-immune form. All of the parks I visited, by the way, as well as several others, work together on breeding healthy devils through swapping and borrowing and generally setting any competition aside in the interest of saving these amazing little animals.

Tasmanian Devil Conservation Park: Located near the Port Arthur Historic Site on the Tasman Peninsula (and man, do I have a giant post about Port Arthur in the wings…), this park has tons of kangaroos and also a lot of birds, many of which were crippled by motor vehicles or yahoos with guns.

An Eastern Quoll, smaller than the Spotted Tail Quoll (and small enough to fit into my pocket, ahem), at the TDCP

It’s on the Tasman Peninsula in the southeast of Tasmania, an easy day trip from the capital of Hobart (Devils@Cradle and Trowunna are more remote, but accessible within a day’s drive of Launceston in the north of the island). I loved the passion of the guy who did the raptor show (there’ll be a post about that, too) and the devil feedings.

Mom devil and babies at the TDCP.

And they also had a really good gift shop.

Baby devils! Too much cuteness! I can't stand the cute!!

One thing the Tasmanian Devil Conservation Park had that moved me, and that I saw nowhere else, was a cemetery for its residents, from kangaroos to devils.

To the memory of Errol, a devil caught in the wild and found to have the promising C5 mutation... or re-mutation, since a messed-up C5 in the majority of the devil population is what's causing all the problems with DFTD spreading.

Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary: I visited here on my last day in Tasmania. I almost skipped it, since it’s small and right outside Hobart and I worried it might be touristy. Wow, I’m glad I went. Sure, it seemed a little cozier than the other places, but they’re in the middle of expanding and adding huge new enclosures not only for the devils, but for many other residents, including Mary, a blind wallaby. She has a special enclosure with fewer obstacles so she can move around easier.

Mary, an orphaned wallaby raised by well-meaning folks who fed her cow's milk, which caused her to lose a significant amount of her eyesight.

Bonorong, perhaps because it is located in Tasmania’s most populous area, the greater Hobart metropolis (such as it is), also is very active in rescuing animals injured or orphaned by motor vehicles. They have a 24-hour volunteer response service, and it made me happy to know that animals like Mary can find a comfortable forever home here.

An older devil relaxing in his Bonorong home

If you’re planning on traveling to Tasmania, you must see the devils. I would, quite frankly, urge you to visit all four parks above (and there are others, too, though I can’t comment on them since I didn’t visit). Sure, none of them are free, but all of them are working hard to save the devils, and the cost of visiting all four is less than one stupid bungy-jump, or a ticket on either of the tourist trips I took to Bruny Island and the Gordon River (oh yeah, there are posts on both of those places coming, too).

So give the devil his due.

Mordorable baby devil at Bonorong

In an hour or so, I’ll be boarding a flight to Auckland. After a six-hour layover there, I’ll fly to Los Angeles, which I like to call LAX, not because I’m one of the cool kids, but because I like the idea of the TSA dolts there being LAX security. After another six hours or so of staring vacantly into space*, I get on a flight to O’Hare and then a ridiculous 15-minute flight to Milwaukee. I say “ridiculous” because I told my employer, the one arranging and footing the bill for the ticket, that it’s actually cheaper for them and faster for me to take the airport bus from O’Hare to Milwaukee but there’s something in the regs about having to fly someone to the airport closest to their home address. There’s always something in the regs, isn’t there?

[*Staring into space because my Kindle broke! I am quite verklempt about it, as it happened yesterday, out of the blue, when I tried to charge it so I would be able to spend all those layover hours reading. Amazon is going to hear about this, you can be sure... Also, I can't find my MP3 player. It is so tiny that I fear I may have swallowed it, but more likely it fell out of my bag at some point and now my Sigur Ros/Rammstein/Fun Boy Three/Britney Spears playlist (don't judge) is being enjoyed by some unwashed hostel monkey.]

Anyway, flight to Auckland, layover, flight to LAX, layover, flight to O’Hare, short layover and then a flight to Milwaukee, arriving about 36 hours from now.

It’s going to be a long haul.

I haven’t updated the blog in nearly a month for two reasons: first, online access in Tasmania was abysmal. WiFi was virtually non-existent and, when I did find it, it was outrageously expensive and/or limited, with sites like Facebook and You Tube blocked. No YouTube? No silly animal videos? What’s the point?

The second reason is that, once I got back to Melbourne, where the libraries, most cafes and even the trams (the trams!) have free WiFi, I was so far behind that I didn’t know where to start. Part of it is my fault. I took approximately 93,000 photos and videos of Tasmanian Devils and every one is so gosh darn cute that I want to post them all. People at the Devil sanctuaries I visited started looking at me like I was the creepy old guy parked in a van beside a playground.

So I promise I will get at least a few of the photos and videos up once I’m back in the States, as well as several posts about my time in Australia which, distilled into a single sentence, amounted to rain, fog, rain, leeches, rain, high prices, fog, rain, staying at a couple Lord of the Flies hostels, camping in the rain, hiking in the rain, wrestling a wet, leech-covered tent in the rain, Oh My God! aren’t they adorable Tasmanian Devils, wallabies, Devils, kangaroos, Devils, wombats, rain (that was not adorable) and a bout of projectile diarrhea that rivaled the worst case of giardia I ever had.

Fortunately for you, the upcoming posts will focus on the Devils and other wildlife, with some atmospheric shots of fog and gloomy shots of rain and only one more mention of my ailment, the latter just because I don’t think I’d be able to convey fully the character-building nature of wrestling a wet, leech-covered tent in the rain whilst my digestive system was hosting its own wrestling match.

I don’t regret going to Australia. Seeing and even getting to pet Devils, holding a wombat (I held a wombat!) and having kangaroos eat out of my hand was worth it. And even the leeches were kind of cute (really… alas, an opinion not shared by anyone I held a leech up to and declared “isn’t it cute?”).  Melbourne was also a treat for my taste buds (and a vacuum on my wallet). But I do not feel the need to return to Oz. I’ve seen enough, thank you.

Coming back to New Zealand on Wednesday was a relief. I spent two days getting my physical and lab tests done to be cleared to return to the Ice in February (clearance pending. The damn dentist “saw a shadow on an x-ray.”). A few of the appointments were near downtown, where I looked for the dominating profile of the Grand Chancellor Hotel but failed to find it.

Turns out Christchurch’s post-quake rebuilding team was busy while I was away.

This is how the Grand Chancellor looked on October 30, the day I flew from CHC to Melbourne:

Grand Chancellor Hotel (the tallest building, the one with the alarming lean), late October 2011

And this is how it looked December 3:

The Grand Chancellor as it stands, somewhat, these days. It's the partly-dismantled building between the Westpac and Holiday Inn.

Yes, after months of trying to figure out the best way to demolish it and settling on a floor-by-floor plan, they’ve really gone to town on the building in a mere month. The entire demolition will take more than a year, but I think it’s a great start to getting Christchurch back on its feet.

Yesterday, Saturday, my final full day in the Southern Hemisphere, I walked the half mile or so from my short-stay apartment in New Brighton to the beach, where I did something I haven’t done in years–lay out in the sun in my swimsuit.

New Brighton Beach

And I’ve got the splotchy full-body sunburn to prove it. Man, I forgot how annoying it is to burn the tops of your feet.

Now, after the gruesome journey in the immediate future, I’m looking forward to being back in the States mostly to visit friends and family and, truth be told, the stuff in my storage unit. And to give this blog the updates it really needs.

So I’ll leave you now with this… The first person to identify what the image below is will win a prize. Only answers posted as comments on this blog will be considered (so don’t email or Facebook your answer to me). Please be as specific as possible. Once I comment on the winning entry (it may be a while, given my airplane odyssey), you can email or Facebook your address to me if I don’t already have it. Previous winners of contests on my site are also eligible to participate, but this contest is void for people I don’t like.

Clue: taken in the last two months, so it could be anything in New Zealand, Australia, or Antarctica. Just helping you narrow it down.

[Note: I ran out of free WiFi time before I could post this yesterday--the photos took several minutes apiece to upload--so I'm putting it up now, while I'm nestled in the comfy home of Dread Pirate Iron Bluebird and her Cabin Boy in Milwaukee, where a light snow is dusting the yard, Wisconsin Nature's way of saying "welcome home." The flights I took after typing the post above were cramped but uneventful, the only two real issues of the day being general exhaustion (Aside from a half-hour nap immediately after drinking a venti latte from Starbucks, I didn't sleep at all) and a small meltdown at LAX after Continental staff told me I had to check in with United and United staff told me I had to check in with Continental*, but it was all resolved, to my satisfaction, in a matter of minutes with a minimum of shouting.

*Sidenote: what is the point of codesharing and putting one airline's code on your ticket if only the other airline is capable of checking you in and, if this is the case, should not a sign perhaps be placed at the entrance to a 40-minute line at the first airline noting that passengers bound for O'Hare need to be checking in elsewhere? Also, might it not be appropriate to train employees that, when a weary passenger, who's already been up more than 24 hours and has lugged more than 100 pounds of suitcase the half-mile from Tom Brady International Terminal to the Continental desk in Terminal 6 and then another quarter-mile to your check-in line at Terminal 7, appears at your counter and tells you the airline actually listed on her ticket told her she has to check in with you, the correct response on your part is not, in fact, "Well, I'm tellin' you dat you gotta go back to'em!" I'm just saying.]

As a result, I am hopelessly backlogged on posts and may not get around to even trying to update the blog until I am back in Melbourne, where libraries have fast, free WiFi (ahem… Tasmania, take note).

While I’m currently staying at a hostel with free WiFi, the access is super-limited (many sites, such as YouTube, are blocked entirely) and less than speedy. So I’m going to try to upload one photo and then call it a day.

Yesterday was Armistice Day on this side of the planet, by the way. The commercial radio station that’s played truly terrible Europop the past few days switched programming to play, among other things, “Waltzing Matilda,” a variety of ’40s tunes and “The Ballad of the Green Berets.” It’s back to music that makes me lose faith in humanity today, but it was pretty cool that even they shut Katy Perry up long enough to remember those who served. Thanks to the members of our armed forces and intelligence services who put themselves in harm’s way for us.

The first time I saw this sign, for a moment I misunderstood it. I thought it was a warning about huge and aggressive kangaroos attacking your car, lifting it by the bonnet, perhaps, and shaking the occupants out to drag off into the bush and feed its young. I saw a kangaroo by the side of the road shortly after snapping this shot, by the way, and it was a shock. I think of roos as roaming the open desert wastes and savannah-like environments of central and northern Australia, but apparently they do quite well in Tasmania's lush and dense temperate rainforests.

Mount Wellington stands about a thousand meters over Hobart, the largest city in Tasmania. It’s not a big mountain, but it has a commanding presence, looming over the city and visible for miles around.

Salamanca during a Saturday market; Mount Wellington visible at far end.

Just off downtown Hobart there’s a fashionable spot called Salamanca, home to many restaurants and, on Saturdays, a huge market (more on that in a future post). Mt. Welly towers over that, too. Leading from Salamanca, named for the 19th century battle, is Napoleon Street, which goes rapidly downhill.

Get it?

Napoleon goes downhill after Salamanca while Mt. Wellington rises above. Ha! I love military history humor!

Today, on my final day in Hobart (I’m picking up a rental car and heading off into the hinterland tomorrow), I decided to do what ol’ Boney never managed: to get on top of Wellington.

Here's another view of Mount Wellington, this time towering over the family home of the founder of the Cascade Brewery, Australia's oldest and the topic of another post.

I took preparation very seriously by purchasing a massive almond croissant from Jackman and McRoss bakery, one of the finest I’ve tried in the Southern Hemisphere (which is not saying too much, since I can count the number of decent Kiwi bakeries I know on one hand, but no matter…). At A$4.00 (about US$4.50), the croissant is one of the few bargains I’ve found in Tasmania.

I do not exaggerate when I say "massive." My hand featured for scale. Almond croissant from Jackman and McRoss.

Girded for battle, I took a city bus out to Fern Tree. From there, the interpretational signage advised it was a 2.5-3 hour trip, one way. And that way was up.

This church, at the trailhead, was the only building untouched by a devastating 1967 brushfire that turned Mt. Wellington and much of southeast Tasmania into a cinder.

I wasn’t sure what to expect on the trail. I’d heard it was pretty steep, and when I mentioned I’d be heading up it, both the manager and night manager of my hostel shuddered and asked “Why?”

Oh, you know. Because it was there.

(Actual reason: because I worried that if I spent the day in town I would buy yet more  clothing I don’t need and can’t afford but find adorable and would then eat my way out of fitting into the clothes by hanging around Jackman and McRoss… both topics featured in greater detail in upcoming posts, I swear.)

I love peril signs. This is the first I can recall seeing for what I'm thinking is either hypothermia or uncontrollable groove-shaking (lower right image)

I was pleasantly surprised by the Mount Wellington trail. The way was steadily uphill, but the first 80% or so was at an easy grade. The last part, called the Zig Zag, was steeper but not difficult. It was rocky as well, but the rocks were fixed in place, in many areas carved into stairs, so it was straightforward and easy on the ankles. Compared with Byers Peak in Colorado or the sadistic Mount Alfred in New Zealand (the two day hikes from hell by which I measure all others) it was a stroll.

Two alpine crickets doin' it right in the middle of the trail. These crickets have no shame!! And no, I didn't intend to take a photo of cricket porn... I took it thinking "wow, that's a big cricket!" then leaned closer to zoom in and realized "oh."

I took my time, snapping photos and at one point putting my feet up on a bench for a while, stopping to talk to the few other hikers on the trail (odd it was so deserted considering it was a Sunday and the weather was fine) and generally ambling. I still made it to the summit in about 2.5 hours.

Dolerite rocks huddled near the summit reminded me of a sort of handyman special version of Stonehenge.

You may be thinking “hmm, that mountain looks kinda igneousish*” and, if so, you would be correct.

Summit of Mount Wellington, looking northwestward

(*igneousish is not an actual scientific term, but I think it should be.)

Looking south towards Bruny Island, where I went on Friday and got to see a humpback whale live and up close.

The top of Mt. Wellington is dolerite, formed when angry magma shoved its way up through the earth’s crust. The mountain itself is not volcanic, but its summit resembles lava plugs.

Looking east toward the Hobart metropolis... for a city of only 200,000, Hobart, Tasmania's largest city, seems a lot bigger to me.

Another cool fact I learned: Mt. Wellington has a big impact on Hobart’s weather. Its location west of the city protects Hobartians… uhm… Hobartoids… uhm… Hobos? from much of the wet and windy nastiness that slams into the island courtesy of the Roaring 40s (that would be latitude… Hobart is roughly the same latitude as the South Island of New Zealand, but its position means it gets the full force of the winds from the west).

Close-up of some of the dolerite columns... They were all my height or taller!

And hey, how about another cool fact: Charles Darwin climbed Mt. Wellington, too, back in 1836 when he was Beagling about the Southern Hemisphere.

Another southward shot... what I like about this is that it looks like a forest of dolerite columns all along the summit ridge and down the mountain's flanks

Earlier that day, enroute to my croissant (which I had been thinking about since yesterday), I stopped by the Visitor Information Centre to check on bus times. I had the option of walking back down to catch the public bus, hitch-hiking or getting a one-way ticket on the tourist shuttle that runs twice a day, bringing the less-upwardly mobile (get it? hahahaha) to the summit.

I knew I could walk back down well in time to catch the final public bus of the day, but ability and desire are two different things. Rain was in the forecast, it was starting to cloud up and well, my ankles, for once, were so happy despite hiking half the day. It was early for the tourist shuttle, which was supposed to arrive at 2:10pm (it was only 1:45), but I saw a bus parked near the lookout.

I walked over and asked the driver if he was the guy Shaun from the Visitor Information Centre had called this morning to check on the possibility of a one-way ticket for A$15 back to the city from the summit.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” replied the driver. “But I’ll do it for $10.”

Deal.

So I took the early shuttle back down, ending up back in Salamanca where I provided reinforcements for the croissant by stopping at a fancypants chocolatier, Norman & Dann.

This was an error.

The attractive case at Norman & Dann

Sure, it looked lovely, and while I don’t particularly like chocolate I do enjoy doing research and sampling new flavors, seeing how things are put together packaging-wise, etc.

Cute packaging, and that's all the really matters in life, isn't it? (Note: sarcasm)

When I got back to my hostel I lined up my purchases. Hold on to yourself… this is what A$12.50 (about US$14) buys you at Norman & Dann:

Back row: passionfruit snowman, "Insanity" (the store's most popular, allegedly, liqueur plum in dark chocolate), mango penguin. Front row: "Mudslide" (allegedly soft caramel) and chocolate covered fig.

To make matters worse, I was unimpressed with the lot of them (though I did think the penguin was adorable… They made the beak by sticking a piece of almond into the ganache before dipping it. Cool idea, but no one told me the product had nuts. Good thing I’m not allergic. I know, I know, I’m taking all the fun and excitement out of chocolate. I can’t help it. I care about the details.)

None of the chocolate had any snap. The coatings were too thick and had that mushy texture that I equate with cheap and/or poorly tempered chocolate. Not only that, but the passionfruit and mango ganaches were nearly tasteless, the caramel was sweet with no bitter notes as it should have, “Insanity” tasted like bad cough syrup and well, the last one was a waste of a perfectly good fig. Boo!

Lest I be too hard on the chocolates–no, wait, for the price I paid I could have bought three almond croissants and still had change in my pocket. Screw the tact. Bring on the blowtorch! It just reminded me of so many places I’ve been to where the chocolate is crap but with the right “look” they make money hand over fist.

Though I will say that I’ve noticed Tasmanian tastes seem to lean, much like most Americans, toward sweet and plain rather than intense. I had a walnut caramel mini-tart from Jackman and McRoss the other day (yes, ahem, I have been there more than once) that really surprised me because the caramel was blond, basically just sugar, with no depth color- or flavor-wise.

Me, personally, I like a caramel that looks like it was forged in Mordor, but that is another matter.

And yes, I felt it’s been far too long since I threw in a LOTR reference. So there it is.

On the walk back to my hostel, I passed this sign, which I found hilarious. Maybe it’s just me, but if you had to create a character that screamed “untrustworthy” I’m guessing you’d come pretty close to this guy… excessive hand gestures as if deflecting attention from the fact he’s lying, bad tie, generally questionable look. Would you go to this guy for a loan? He looks like one of the wheelers ‘n’ dealers from a Guy Ritchie movie.