TASMANIACS 2005

9/17/2010

hellooooooo

Hi all,

I blog nowadays at my Fiddle Jammer site. See you there.

5/06/2008

Hello from Albany, NY. Here's some springtime photos from Washington Park and the neighborhood where we're staying. This coming weekend is the tulip festival, the Pinksterfest, which celebrates Albany's Dutch heritage.

Back to Tassie on Friday, though, so I had to go have my own private tulip fest ahead of the big celebration in the park without the crowds.

3/28/2008

Earth Hour

Earth Hour

Translate the participation in Earth Hour into political currency. The politician that grabs the issues around global warming and convincingly presents some real change will rule the world.

2/09/2008

Maria Island overnight

Maria Island is a 1.5 hour drive + 20 minute boat ride away from Hobart, TAS. It is a national park, an old convict settlement, an old cement manufacturing plant, an old vineyard, many native animals, and a place of long walks. It is not a place with any food, so you must bring everything with you on the ferry and carry it to your accommodation in 'little' carts that weigh a ton.

Unfortunately, we'd forgotten our steaks, so we had ham, cheese, and salad for a lunch, a dinner, and other lunch. Not that we'd starve to death.

A path of old evergreens from the jetty to the little town of Darlington, where the penitentiary is.

The picture below is on the veranda of the penitentiary. It looks out on a courtyard (above), with historic buildings around the edge. There was a family of wombats that lived under some verandas. They would go from one side to the other, depending on the heat of the sun, I would guess. It was cute to see the little baby wombat. It's not the wombat picture above. We spotted that one in an open field during our dusk walk to the painted cliffs beach.

Here's the inside of our 'cell'.

Here's some remains of an older building.

Here's another view of little Darlington Town.

We could have camped, but were wary of wallabies and wombats running around. And, it would have made the tiny cart even heavier. There are many native hens and Cape Barren geese roaming around.

One of the walks was a circuit to an old reservoir. It was started by convicts who dammed a creek. I had some fun watching little birds dive into the water.

Stringy bark.

Some long shadows at sunset.

11/28/2007

Our neighborhood

Hello again.

Short version is that my backpack was ripped off about a month ago with our old camera inside. And, my raincoat and 2 extra sets of fiddle strings. Good thing it was my old one, only packed for a day out and had nothing else of value inside. Someone 'nicked' it while it was underneath the stage that I was playing on. Grrrrr.

So, now I'm learning how to use the new camera. The photos here are a larger resolution that what I used to use, so they should look bigger, better, and of course take longer to display if you have a slower connection. Sorry.

The other thing that's been keeping me busy is the huge amount of music that I recorded over the north american summer at music festival jam sessions. Listening to it, editing out the hours of chat and other non-interesting bits, burning the tunes that I like the best to share with friends I'm trying a new method of sharing tunes on my fiddlejammer.com website. Check it out at http://tunes.fiddlejammer.com You know how I like to say that one can never have enough websites, right?

Here's a tour of our new neighborhood.

The front of our building. Our apartment is smaller and cheaper than our last one. Although, with the dollar sinking against the AUD, it might just be about the same.

Liz looks out the back stairwell. Only 2 flights this trip instead of 3 like the last visit.

Looking out our back door.

Looking down Elizabeth Street, the main street through North Hobart.

We're quite close to the fancy post office.

The State Cinema is just a quick walk away. Cheap tickets all day Wednesday... $11 AUD. No popcorn. Just flat whites, wine, cafe food, and desserts.

Here's what's playing and what's coming.

North Hobart is noted for many cafes, pubs, and restaurants.

I spied a flyer promoting the workshops and dance from last weekend. I'll be posting about my music on my fiddlejammer blog. Just to say here that we had a really good workshop and I collected a few new favorite contra dance tunes.

Just up our street is the Friend's School. We hear a bit of school noise during the day, bells ringing, kids cheering, coaches yelling. Not unpleasant really, just a fairly regular reminder that the school is nearby.

Our street has limited access from the main drag. That makes it a quite street, with mostly foot traffic and cars that have entered from a round-the-block access. Here's the corner that allows for out-going but prevents easy in-coming.