Our Own Oz Odyssey

We've been bouncing around Australia for a few weeks, with no plans to do the Big Three touristy bits - Ayers Rock/Uluru (too far), the Great Barrier Reef (Karen can't swim) or climbing Sydney Bridge (too costly). Instead we visited the Blue Mountains outside Sydney, the Adelaide Hills and Tasmania, which allowed us to focus on hiking and wine-tasting, two of our favourite activities. Australia has not disappointed us on those counts, with lots of information about shorter hikes (4 hours max) and wine regions we weren't previously aware of, both of which we have found in Tasmania. Even though we never saw the mountain at Cradle Mountain, and it rained (again) most of the time, we enjoyed the hike around Dove Lake in the drizzle and took lots of macro shots of flowers whose names we have no idea of. That's another thing about Australia: the flora and fauna are completely different. We feel like idiots. We had a fit of giggles the first time a wallaby hopped across the road in front of us - a bit of hysterics over not creating a roadkill mess with our first wildlife encounter. In Adelaide, we had the great fortune to be able to rest at the home of a couple we had met in New Zealand. Thanks Angela and Simon. They had offered their trailer and we had meant to take them up on it for just a few days, but Karen caught a cold and the timing was perfect for her to rest up with short forays into the Adelaide Hills to visit an animal sanctuary and a few wineries. The sanctuary protects native wildlife from imported predators and we hand-fed some eastern grey kangaroos. My, their muzzles are soft. We also spotted a few koalas and heard our favourite quote (from the night-walk guide): "Please don't step on the bandicoots" as the cute little buggers ran around our feet. Tasmania is a small place with oddly long stretches of driving. They warn you about that, but it's hard to believe until you actually drive across the island in one day. It was something like 300 kilometres in 8 hours, with a few stops, obviously. The scenery is so sprawling it's hard to fit it in a photo and outposts of civilization are so small you can stroll through whole towns in less than an hour. Bob splurged in Bridport after we discovered a golf course rated 7th in the world among public access courses. He started early enough in the day that there were wallabies munching on the first five fairways and he didn't see another golfer until the eighth hole. Karen spent the same morning hiking along the coast, shooting photos of the beach boulders covered in orange lichen and losing her way on the poorly marked trail. We are staying through Christmas on a working farm overlooking the Tasman Sea a couple hours north of Hobart. Yesterday we spent a whole day in Freycinet National Park, hiking over a steep mountain saddle to the iconic Wineglass Bay beach. We bought enough groceries and wine to get us through the holidays, which is good because then we don't have to drive that winding gravel road in the rain. There are hikes near here, books to read and wine to drink. Not Christmas as we know it, but not a bad substitute.