First full day in Tasmania

The following account first existed as a chat session between me and the lovely Erika, so the pictures aren't in chronological order.



I'm in Sheffield, Tasmania, at a local rotary club diner. People's local accents are so thick here that I can only barely understand them. You ever have one of those dreams where people speak to you, and you can hear every sound clearly, but not a single word emerges? It's like that. It's English - the words are all English - but unless I concentrate really hard, they all run together into a kind of vocal slurry. To add to the surreality, the folks at the bar just fired up the jukebox and it's blaring honky-tonk music.

I've been riding all day and seen AMAZING THINGS!

Bizarre stands of trees, neat spiders, a whole mess of mud crabs wandering around, a beautiful swampy region, a pooped dragonfly that walked on my gloved hand for many photos, a lakeshore TEEMING with tiny frogs, so thick they had to hop out of the way en masse with each footfall, wild parrots, a local bicycle race, wild CHICKENS, a big ol' snake sunbathing, many tame llamas and cows and sheep, a freaking SKINK (recently dead in the road, alas), ants as wide as my thumb ... HUGE buggers! ... Geese and trails of goslings, enormous ferns ... Oh and at least five dead marsupials by the side of the road that I couldn't quite identify. And I only rode through a tiny, well populated piece of Tasmania, too.

Traveling by bike is the shizzlick.

( This account is rather long. Click here to see the rest of it. )