Very scenic and a great climb.



Cradle Mountain. There's usually snow up there.
(photo by Martin)



A small fishing shack in front of Cradle Mountain.



We're lost.
(photo by Martin)



Posing in front of Cradle Mountain.
(photo from Martin)



Lunch time.
(photo by Martin)



Martin taught me some more Dutch on the bus.



Here's the group I did the east coast with. From left to right: ? (American, bending over with white shirt), ? (American, standing with black top), ? (American, standing), ? (American, standing with white top), Martin (Dutch, standing in back with red shirt), Damian (our guide, Tasmanian, squatting with green shirt), ? (American, standing with pink top), ? (American, bending over with white top), Ana (Brazilian, standing with white top), K.D. (English, squatting with black top), Pete (Swiss, standing with white shirt), Heike (German, kneeling with black top), me (standing topless), ? (American, squatting with green top), Simon (English, standing with gray shirt).
(photo by Damian's girlfriend)



My ticket back to Melbourne.

From: Jeff Nyveen To: my friends and family Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2000 23:26:52 -0400 Subject: Tassie part 2 Hello people, Back in Melbourne now. Tassie was fantastic. What made the trip so great was Damian, our guide. I had my reservations about him at first, but he turned out to be a really smart, funny, interesting guy. He always had a story to tell or a funny expression to use. He's very passionate and knowledgeable about Tasmanian ecology. A real greenie. Vocal and pro-active. He'd stop the bus in front of a field to tell us how damming or clear-cutting had destroyed the natural environment, or he'd badmouth a logging truck as it drove by. There was an article about him and his friends and their search for the supposedly-extinct Tasmanian tiger in the Fall 99 issue of National Geographic Adventure magazine. Damian and I hung out together for most of the trip. Damian, or Dumpy as I came to know him, is planning on leaving the tour company and starting up his own eco-friendly, green tour with his fiance, Kim. I'm planning on making a web page for him. After we left Hobart, we traveled up the rugged west coast, where we did lots of crazy mountain hikes and freezing rainforest walks. We climbed 10,000 year old sand dunes and walked among swamp gums that were hundreds of years old and the tallest trees in the world. We also stopped at a 30 km uninhabited beach on the west coast. Looking out over the water, you could draw a straight line over the ocean to Antarctica (we were only 4000 km from the south pole), Africa, and Western Australia. And we stopped to eat some wild blackberries on the side of the road. Some of the most beautiful sights passed too quickly for me to take a picture while I was riding on the bus. The mountain hikes were insane. One of our last stops was Cradle Mountain. A tough walk, almost entirely uphill, very steep and slippery. There were chains to hold onto in one section. Scaling the rocky slopes, you'd fall to your death if you leaned the wrong way. Damian hopped up like a mountain goat. I couldn't keep up. I'm not nearly as fit as I thought I was. In all, we did about 45 km of walking. In Tullah, we stayed in a nice hostel right on a lake. We did some canoeing and some mountain-biking along trails in the surrounding mountains. And due to a booking mix-up, I had to take a single room with an ensuite bathroom that is normally reserved for guides. Paradise. The highlight of my trip was stopping at a wildlife farm for injured animals and having a cuddle with Winston the wombat. It was the first time I had ever seen a wombat. I held him like a baby, scratched his tummy, and he went to sleep in my arms. They are definitely the cutest animals I've ever seen. On the last day, we went to Marakoopa caves for some spelunking. It's the largest public cave in Australia, filled with stalactites and stalagmites. It was discovered in 1903. It took white man 100 years to discover what the Aborigines never discovered in 60,000 years. Our cave guide was pretty lousy. She unenthusiastically pulled switches on the light boxes as we walked and used her flashlight to point out formations that looked like a clown in full dress, a tuning fork, Jesus, an emu, and Winston Churchill's ashtray. Hanging out with Damian made me wonder how much of the cave was destroyed by the construction of the concrete path we were walking on the the elaborate lighting fixtures around all of the formations. The cave is filled with glow worms, and we learned a thing or two about them. They only live for 36 hours, and the glowing is caused by their excretory organs burning shit. When they change from worms into flies, they don't have mouths. Only the female flies glow, and their only mission is to screw before they die. The weather while I was down there couldn't have been better. It was unseasonably sunny, clear, and warm. Even Damian couldn't believe it. And the day I left it got cloudy and started to rain. It never works out that way for me. And our group was fantastic, too. Martin, who looks like a short, blond Tim Robbins, was a strange one. He would always talk loud, always about sex. He would fart on people. We thought he was on drugs. Damian said that when God was giving out brains, Martin thought it was milkshakes so he asked for a thick one. But he turned out to be a really funny guy. We never figured out if he was trying to be funny or if he was just naturally goofy, but he made everyone laugh. He smelled like ass the whole time, so we learned to enjoy him from a distance. On the last day, Martin taught me some more Dutch: neuken op de keukentafel - fucking on the kitchen table aftrekken - wanking Wil je my aftrekken? - Do you want to wank me? Jij bent leujk maar je hebt een goede persoonlijkheid. - You are ugly, but you have a nice personality. All the annoying American girls got off in Hobart, and some older people got on for the second part of the trip. One of the guys, Tom, was English and hard to understand. He looked a lot like Grimm, a strange guy I used to work with at the camera store. Tall, skinny. Long, braided, salt-and-pepper hair. Long beard. And the man could fart like no one I've ever met. We all got along so well that on the last night, we had a farting competition. One point for each fart, first one to ten wins. If there was any doubt, Martin would perform a sniff test. Hitting mud was automatic disqualification. Tom ran away with it. It seems to me that in order to have a great trip, you need to have great scenery, a great driver, and a great group. We had all that. Not only that, but Damian played a lot of U2 tapes while we rode in the bus. It was cool hearing Van Diemen's Land while I was actually there. At the end of the trip, I didn't want to leave. Damian told me that I should come back sometime so that we could hang out and explore the wilderness of Tasmania on our own. I told him that I'd return to film a movie down there. On the day I left, Damian dropped off everyone on the bus at a scenic gorge and took me out for some coffee and breakfast. Kim drove me to the airport and I was back in Melbourne an hour later. Tomorrow I fly to Perth. No Regrets. Jeff

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