Adelaide, Melbourne, and Tasmania!

Hi! Just wanted to let you all know how my travels have been going. Great! On June 21st Marie and I left from Brissie (after our exams went by...and we passed our classes!) to Adelaide. Adelaide was a lot quieter than I thought it would be, and we went to a chocolate factory (with lots of free samples) a tour of wineries (also with tastings), and a pretty cool botanical garden. We were there for three days or so, then headed to Melbourne. I really liked Melbourne, the city's a lot bigger than Brisbane, more comparable to Sydney. We toured the Great Ocean Road, walked around the city (and rode the trams), did a cool tour of the old Gaol (jail) which included being treated what it's like to actually be arrested these days (which makes me determined not to be arrested...not like I was actually considering it anyway), and bought groceries at one of the biggest markets in the southern hemisphere.

That night Marie and I visited my dad's cousin and his wife (and their kid and dog, who were simply adorable). My relatives were super cool and made us dinner and let us do laundry and it was SO nice to sleep in a real bed without five other people in the room. Backpacking life is fun for a bit, but it's so nice to take a shower without needed flip-flops on in dirty bathrooms. My relatives drove us to the airport the next day so we could go to Hobart, Tasmania. We met up with my friend Lahiru, and that night I met up with my dad's other cousin for dinner. They were pretty cool too, and that night our hostel was really cute and was probably the best hostel we've stayed at. The next day, we went to Port Arthur, which a settlement kind of thing where they set up jails for the convicts in Tasmania.

After that, we drove to Lake St Clair, out in the middle of nowhere. The GPS system we were using gave us a really convoluted route through the mountains and boondocks, so it was a five hour drive or so, but we saw a (live!) wombat on the side of the road. We started screaming in excitement (Marie and I are wildlife biologists, after all) and ran out of the car to take photos. When we finally got to the Lake, our dorm was pretty cute and since it's winter here and off season we pretty much had the whole place to ourselves. It was really cold (well around 1 degree celcius) but we had hot chocolate and a warm fire and we drank wine and read books for the two nights we were there. The next day we went hikingn for a bit and there was snow higher up! When we woke up the second morning, there was snow on the ground. Lahiru and Marie were pretty excited, but I'm not such a fan of snow, and it made running to the showers a few meters away in flip flops not fun, since our room and the bathrooms werent heated. We had to drive a few hours in the snow, and then we arrived in Launceston.

Launceston was uber small (I keep picturing cities to be really big here, but they're always much smaller than I picture. Tasmania has half a million people, and half of them live in Hobart). We spent half the day walking around town. The next day, we drove to Coles Bay and hiked up to Wineglass Bay, which was really pretty. That was yesterday (it's been really hard to keep track of the date or what day it is). Today we had our flight from Hobart to Melbourne. I'm at Lahiru's aunt's house now and they're feeding us dinner! I have my flight from here to Cairns at 9:30 in a few hours. I'm surprised I could recount this all so fast! I've taken tons of photos and I'll post some when I get to Brisbane and can upload my camera to my laptop.

Anyway, it's been really fun travelling. I've gotten used to sleeping in hostels, but I'm sure it will be so nice to sleep in my own bed in a few weeks and do laundry (soon...I'm running out of clean clothes). I have to get going, but I hope everyone's well! Much love. Oh also, I got my ticket back, and I get back to Albany August 12th! Initially I didn't want to leave Australia, but I'll be happy to see everyone soon. :-)