Tasmania

We flew into Tasmania on Anzac Day, which is sort of like Remembrance Day for Australia. Tasmania is part of Australia, it's an island about the size of Ireland off the southern coast. Our first stop was Port Arthur on the Tasman Peninsula, which is the ruins of a prison used for the extra bad criminals who got in further trouble after being transported to "Van Dieman's Land" aka Tasmania for crimes in England, Ireland etc. We saw it by day, and then returned that night for a ghost tour. This involved walking through ruins of the prison hearing stories of deaths, murders and ghost sightings that happened at the prison, all by the light of a few lanterns. Brian claimed to be completely comfortable. I, on the other hand, was completely freaked out. One of the highlights was the basement of the prison doctor's house, which doubled as a morgue where he could do autopsies. In those days autopsies were not allowed, with a few exceptions including those who died in prisons.

On our second day we drove up to the Freycinet Peninsula, on the east coast of Tasmania. This area is known for it's beautiful white sandy beaches and great hiking. We did a hike down to Wineglass Bay (amazing beach) through the woods and then over to Hazard beach. We ran into quite a few wallabies, which are like small kangaroos. That night we stayed in a great bed and breakfast in Launceston run by an Irish pilot.

On Friday we drove across the Island to Cradle Mountain, which is a huge national park, thought to be somewhat similar to the Canadian Rockies. We did another great hike up to Marion's Lookout, which offers fantastic views of the park, glacier lakes and Cradle Mountain itself. The drive back to Launceston that night was frightening - hairpin turns up and down mountains, no lights, crazy Australian drivers speeding by, and tons of wallabies and wombats running out in front of the car. We were told later that if you hit a wombat (marsupial that looks like a giant hamster) they can really damage your car - they're built like a pile of bricks. Luckily we didn't hit anything and made it back to town for a well-deserved steak dinner.

We ended our trip in Hobart, the biggest city in Tasmania. They had a market on that day, the specialties being lavender (Tasmania has the largest lavender field in the world) and objects made from Tasmanian timber. It was raining so we spent the afternoon in a wine bar sampling Tasmanian wine and reading by the fire. That night was the cricket world cup final, which people have been following closely here. The game started at 11:30 pm local time, we had to get up early for out flight home so we didn't watch the match, but Australia won!

Wine tasting in the Hunter Valley

On Saturday morning we picked up a rental car in Sydney and hit the road headed for the Hunter Valley (2 hours north of the city). Brian did an excellent job driving on the left side of the road - other than the fact that every time he tried to turn on his indicator to change lanes he instead turned on the windshield wiper - oops.

The Hunter is similar to Niagara, except quite a bit bigger. The specialty is semillon and shiraz, they even make sparkling shiraz which we'd never seen before. We went to a dozen or so wineries, sampled a ton, bought a few bottles and had a great time.

One of the highlights was the beautiful hotel we stayed in, complete with kangaroos hopping all over the grounds, and the excellent Australian cheese that we ate too much of.

Dinner in Chinatown

On Thurdsay night we went to Chinatown for dinner. According to our guidebook (we're such tourists) the Chinese population in Sydney has been populating this area around Dixon St since the 1870's, when it used to be known for its opium dens and gambling. Now it's known for great food, patios and cheap prices. The hostesses/hosts all actively try and recruit customers, our host in particular had very appealing way of explaining of how we could "shaaaare" dinner (Al and Zed, Brian is now very good at sharing). Even after we had finished dinner and paid, he tried to get us back in for a second round as we were on our way out! (see picture of very enthusiastic smiling Asian man). We decided against sampling any of the kangaroo on offer on the menu, same goes for the herbal remedies available in the gift stores across the street.

Sydney Aquarium

We live a few minutes walk from Darling Harbour, where we went for dinner by the water on Tuesday night. The aquarium is right down the pier, so we went after dinner to check it out. Some of the most impressive exhibits were the pools with sharks and rays that you can observe from underwater tunnels and the giant fish tanks with many tropical fish and sharks, many of which are unique to this part of the world. It gave us a taste of what it would be like to meet a shark under the water (while still very concerning, we would now be able to identify the species and gender).

Brian's work

I'm working on the colorectal service at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. I'm working under the supervision of Michael Solomon, who did a fellowship at Mt. Sinai in Toronto. A lot of the other staff have also done training in Toronto. Because of this, most of their management is similar to that I'm used to in Toronto. However, they run a very active anorectal physiology lab to measure anal sphincter pressures to help solve the problems of fecal incontinence. I hope to bring back this expertise for the good of my friends. I'm planning of doing some research to develop the Modified Pinchuk Stool Scale, so I'd ask you all to keep samples for analysis.

Kayaking in Manly

We took the ferry out to Manly for some sea kayaking on Sunday. We met up with Sumit (a friend from Sick Kids) and his friend Alex - she lives in Manly. We kayaked all around Manly, saw some secluded beaches that you can only reach by hiking or by water, and picked one to have a picnic. Brian and I jumped off a 20 foot cliff at the water's edge - I screamed the whole way down, he cut his foot on a rock climbing up the cliff and was worried that a shark would eat him if it smelled his blood (note to Emily - it reminded me so much of Corfu!). After kayaking we went to Manly beach, another beautiful beach popular with surfers. Some very famous surfers ( ex. Kelly Slater) live and train in Manly.

Bondi and Coogee

On Saturday we went to the famous Bondi beach (pronounced bond-eye). We had breakfast at a beachside cafe, then spent the morning lying on the beach and swimming. It's a popular beach for surfers, and the waves are huge. So rather than just jumping over them, sometimes they come crashing down on your head, sweep you off your feet and you come up a while later somewhere else. There are lots of lifeguards, and apparently there are shark nets to keep the sharks out. After Bondi we did a 2 hour walk along the coast to Coogee. We went by lots of beautiful beaches and amazing houses perched on cliffs overlooking the ocean. The weather is perfect almost everyday (25C and sunny), the scenery is fantastic and the water is clear with only the occasional great white shark :-)

Sydney Royal Easter Show

On Friday night we went to the biggest annual show in Australia - the Royal Easter Show. It's held at the Olympic park. It's basically a big carnival with rides, games, and a nightly show. We watched the show (rodeo, motorcross, fireworks) while eating meat pies - usually made from 'roo (aka kangaroo) but thankfully made from beef this time. After the show we checked out some of the livestock - farmers all over the area bring cows, sheep, pigs etc to compete in the show and also to sell. During the course of the night Brian declared he would quit medicine and become a cowboy... or maybe a stunt motorcross hero... or maybe a farmer....