Travels in the Heat

Hi all
Sorry not much happening at the moment, I’ve been out of reach of a computer for over a week now. Yes there are places where people manage with out but I am not sure how. Anyway I was in Sydney and the heat was a bit much, even the locals were saying how hot it was and how unusual it was to have such an extended heat wave. So I decided to head south to Melbourne, should be cooler there. Silly me. The evening I got there it was still 38C. I was there for 3 days and the first day I took a trip to the seaside at Torquay at the start of The Great Ocean Road None of the people there I spoke to had heard of the real Torquay so that was a bit of an ego busting trip. Nice beach, bigger than the Abbey Gardens Beach but no sign of any surf. I looked round for a pub for a nice cool beer, no luck. I walked over to the RSL Club, didn’t open till 5pm by which time I would be on the way back to Hot House Melbourne. Then I found a café bar called Mojave’s which did beer and a sandwich, very good, if you make it to Torquay Victoria head there for lunch.

Then next day, a look round Melbourne. I had a list of places I had been told were “must see”. But with the temp up to 43C it was a question of survival not site seeing. Did see the insides of a couple of pubs. Now here’s a thing. In Oz I tend to drink VB, Victoria Bitter, so here I was in Victoria and not a sign of Victoria Bitter any where, may be they export it all to the rest of Australia.

Then came the big escape, the flight to Tasmania. That’s even further south than Melbourne so it should be cooler, please god make it cooler. On the trip across the Bass Straight to Burnie on a Saab the smiling attendant handed out newspapers, the whole of page two was given over to the news that Tasmania was experiencing its hottest heat wave EVER! Right, OK it wasn’t quiet on the scale of Melbourne’s attempt to reproduce Hell on Earth but really there isn’t much difference between 43C and 37C when heat exhaustion and sun burn had already taken its toll.

So Saturday and Sunday were spent helping my niece’s partner move the kitchen for one part of the house to an other, it an old house some way out of Burnie and we dug a channel for the waste pipe, moved the stove, removed the fitted cupboards and sink, including taps, re routed water pipes, hot and cold and then fed the chickens and ducks. Then a few beers in the cool of the evening.

Monday we, my sister and I borrowed the car and took a trip to the west coast of Tassie to the world famous Arthur River. Never heard of it? So it isn’t world famous then but a fairly wild place and if you are in NW Tasmania have a look. We looked west towards South America across the Southern Ocean and the Roaring Forties, couldn’t see it though, bit too much spray from the pounding waves.

More, including some photos on Sunday (8th Feb).