More beautiful Tasmania

Last Friday we had Danny Chin from Hong Kong visit us.  He is the tech person for the Pacific region for Family Search.  He spent the day with us, learning what and how we do things.  On Saturday, we took him for a mini tour of the countryside since he had never been outside of the city in all the years he has come here.  We first went to Richmond, a historic town, and poked around the shops, buying some interesting wood products.  Then down to the peninsula around Port Arthur.  We did some hiking at Remarkable Caves and then at Tessellated Pavement.  Very unusual geologic formations.

Remarkable Caves

Kay and Danny Chin

Tessellated Pavement

We had another holiday on Monday.  It is called "Eight Hour Day".  It is like our Labor Day, when workers finally got an 8 hour work day.  We decided to take a mini vacation, so after Church on Sunday we drove up to Swansea, on the east coast, about 2 hours from Hobart, and stayed in a Bed & Breakfast which was a lovely Victorian home.  They called it a Colonial home.  It seemed like a little farm, with ducks and ducklings and turkeys greeting us upon arrival.  We wanted to see the penguins which come in at dusk, so we drove up to Bicheno.  We found the tour place, but the tour was sold out for the evening.  But the note on the door made up for our disappointment.  They were only seeing 5-10 penguins coming in at night.  We didn't think it was worth the $50 for the tour for that few penguins.  So, hopefully we will be in a place to see many more next Nov/Dec when the numbers are in the hundreds.

On Monday we spent the day at Freycinet National Park. (Pronounced Fray si nay.  It is French).  It is on the coast with Oyster Bay on the inland side.  Marv hiked to the top to see Wineglass Bay.  Kay got 3/4 of the way up but realized she couldn't get to the top and back down in time for us to meet a group doing an ATV tour.  Our tour consisted of a couple from Darwin, AU and three from Hong Kong who had never driven an ATV before. Marv and Kay were in a Ranger and the guide took one of the Chinese girls in his Ranger. Our guide did some training with all of us and determined that the other two Chinese people could not operate the ATVs well enough to drive.  So the other girl joined the guide in his Ranger and the Chinese man took Kay's place in our Ranger and she got to drive the ATV.  She was so glad to have had the experience of driving over rocks and holes in the White Mountains of Arizona on our ATVs.  We drove 10k (about 6 miles) through the forest to the coastline at Friendly Beach.  Had a snack, then drove back through the rain shower.  It was a fun experience.

Oyster Bay

Granite Mts of Freycinet Nat'l Park

Wallaby on the trail

Wineglass Bay

Ready to Ride

Friendly Beach before it rained

Here comes Kay

Marvin and the Ranger

East coastline

Unusual phrases we hear often:
"Good on ya" said when you are doing something that they like.
"Let's see how you went" We would say "Let's see how you did."
"How are you going?" We would say "How are you doing?"

Prisoners!!!!!

As you probably already know, England sent their “hardened” criminals to Australia.  The destination was Port Arthur, 60 km from Hobart, Tasmania.  It is on the beautiful Tasman Peninsula and was known as a non-escape prison.  It was used from 1833 to 1853 and used a psychological approach to reform it’s prisoners.  Food was used as reinforcement for good and bad behavior.  Young boys were also sent to prison, as young as age nine.  One boy stole 3 boxes of toys and was sent there.  The boys were not housed with the adult criminals, but in a separate building.  Life was hard with a lot of physical work.  Many of the prisoners were also sent to Hobart to build the infrastructure of the town.  So here we are at Port Arthur.  We took our two zone leaders and a young elder who is waiting for his visa. (He got it and will fly to Provo on March 17 to learn French in the MTC and then fly back to New Caledonia to really start his mission).  Google Port Arthur and in the wiki you can read all about the prison.

Marvin in leg irons

Boat building site

Elders Harvey (England), McCleary (W.Jordan, UT), Tempany (Melbourne AU)

The main cell block building

All prisoners were made to attend religious services

We planned this trip in conjunction with the Fun For Less tour group. (They usually are composed of 95% LDS adults.)  We got their itinerary and found that the ship was coming to Hobart and the tour was for Port Arthur.  We arrived about 10:00 and didn't see any sign of a tour group.  We took the bay cruise and looked around a little and then had to meet back at the main building for a walking tour at 12:30.  Well, who should we see when we got there.  We recognized the blue Fun For Less flags and as the walking tour cleared out, we stayed behind on the outskirts of the group.  It was fun to see the expressions on their faces when it began to register that "There are five missionaries standing there."  We were invited to join their group to hear the walking tour.  I think we got them a little distracted as many seemed to wonder over to us, asking questions about our mission, etc.  It was really a fun occasion.

Processing BOOBOO

Elder Rust really thinks this is a funny mistake I made.  (Easy for him to laugh)!  We are now working on immigration files.  There are about 70 boxes full of files which contain letters from people inquiring about immigrating to Tasmania.  We have a 111 page document which lists the files in all the boxes.

Just a few of the boxes we have completed.

 Our supervisor had highlighted those that we did not need to image because the contents range beyond 1960 (privacy laws).  So, it is my job to pull those files.  So, one morning I was preparing the documents and we spent all morning on the box imaging all the letters, etc.  After we image a box, we have to go back and evaluate our work on the computer and change any that we feel didn’t look right.  All that was done.  I was putting the files back into the box when I realized that the first one we imaged (a very large file) was highlighted in yellow.  DO NOT IMAGE!  It was almost 500 images!  You can make sure that I double check all yellow files now.

Symphony in the park:  It had been dry and warm for days and we were looking forward to hearing the Tasmanian Symphony in the park, a free concert.  Luck would have it that it was supposed to rain that evening.  Sure enough, as soon as the concert started, it began to sprinkle and it got increasingly heavier.  After the intermission, the MC decided to call it quits.  He said it was hard to play stringed instruments when they are wet.  The symphony is really good and we enjoyed what we heard.

But this one was a nice evening.  We went to the botanical gardens in Hobart to see A Mid-Summers Night Dream.  Kay had acted in it high school and really wanted to see it.  She had to interpret what was going on to Marvin, but we both enjoyed it.  There was no stage, just three light poles and two ropes laid on the ground to designate seating areas.  Most everyone sat on the ground.  They must be younger than us!!!  The cast used the area in front of us and between the seating areas and the trees.  It was really fun.

Summer IS Here

Summer in Tassie

Where has the time gone?  It’s almost the middle of February and summer has finally come, for sure, to Tassie.  Our coats are put away and only occasionally do we need a sweater.  Yet, the weather is always a mystery as one day we will turn on the air conditioner and the next we may need the heat.  The storms here are ferocious.  Yesterday, the morning was very warm and then a cold front blew through in the afternoon, breaking lots of trees and rattling our little flat.  Heber winds don’t hold a candle to Tassie winds.

Our first big accomplishment.  We finished our first big project which took 5 months to complete.  There were 161 record books of burial records to 2001.  Then we added 26 more books that were for cremations only.  Our current project, Registration of burials, we will finish this week.  They are 9 very large books and we are able to digitize both the left and right pages in one image.  The books register those burials which are in the 161 books.

One warm Saturday afternoon we decided to take a drive to Kingston Beach.  We were delighted to see some lifesaving competitions going on at the beach.  It was fun to watch.  Lots of people and their dogs were enjoying the beach, although it was very windy and a bit cool.

These plastic blow up balls seem to be very popular.

On our way back to Hobart, not far from the city center, we came to a shot tower.  These were built to manufacture shot for guns.  The metal is poured into a very long tube of water (the length of the tower).  As the metal falls through the water, it turns and forms a ball that can be used in old shot guns. 

 

If you look real close you can see the bird sitting

 

up in the tree.

  Just outside the tower, there was an area for picnic tables and there a Kookaburra flew into the tree.  He was quite large.  We had only seen small birds.  As we were leaving, he entertained us with his laugh which really did sound very human.

Our zone leaders invited us to teach the full time missionaries up in Deloraine about Family Search at their district meeting.  So we took the zone leaders with us and drove the 2.5 hours up to northern Tasmania.  They were so excited to get onto Familysearch and find their families. 

  The district meeting was the last one for Elder Atkinson (one of our zone leaders) as he was finishing his mission and returning to Queenland, AU the following week.  It was a hard day for him.  I had never realized how difficult it is for some missionaries to leave their mission.  I have only been on the other side, as a mother who is so excited to get their sons home.  That next week was transfers which really effected Tasmania.  Since we have been here, we have kept all the same missionaries.  Only two out of eight companionships stayed the same (excluding us).  

 

Elder Atkinson's last district meeting.

Aussie Animals

On our way home from Deloraine, we caught sight of this echidna off the side of the road.  They move so slowly that we were able to get close to him for a picture before he ducked for cover.  Elder Atkinson, who lives in Australia said he had never seen one before.  We were very blessed to see this one in the wild.

These cockatoos fly freely in our community.  One of our home teaching families feeds these birds, so they are regulars at his home.  They are quite large and noisy birds.  We hear them each day at our bus stop in the mornings.

On one of our “holidays” we decided to go to the Bongarong Wildlife Park just north of us.  The Park takes in animals that have been hurt or found when the parent has been hurt or killed.  When the animals are able to live on their own, they are released back into the wild. 

Notice the baby nursing

The kangaroos know you have food to share.

This emu packs a hard peck!!

  The tour with the park employee was really interesting.  When we were walking through the park on our own, the only animals we saw were some birds and the kangaroos.  She woke up and carried the other animals and gave good information about them. 

 

 This baby wombat was found by a 12 year old boy when the mother had been hit by a car.  He learned in school about marsupials carrying their young in a pouch.  He looked inside and found this youngling. He is about 9 months old in this picture.

 

Cute, sleepy koala

 The poor Tasmanian Devils!  They are so maligned.  These creatures are not the ferocious mean animals as we have been taught.  They move very slowly and their eye sight is very poor.  They only eat dead animals, all of them, bones, meat, etc.  They are great scavengers to clean the roads of roadkill.  Unfortunately, because they don’t move quickly, they are also victims of roadkill and are quickly declining in numbers in AU. 

 

P day means rest, right?  We enjoyed an afternoon at the park and a walk along the river.

Tasmania is nicknamed the “holiday island”.  I thought it was because many people vacation here, but yesterday a friend told me it was because Tassie has so many “public holidays”.  Today was one of them, Regatta Day.  We went down to the river in the city early in the morning, 8:30, and were able to watch the long boat rowing races and the Trans Derwent River swim.  All of the swimmers wore wetsuits.  I’m sure the water was a little bit cold.  There were activities all during the day.  We enjoyed the wood chopping events and the kayak polo games.  The Royal navy also provided a rock band, two types of helicopters and the manpower for a tug-of-war.  The Tassie governor came to present the trophy for the fastest long boat which was won by high school aged girls.  It was another fun “holiday”.

Swimmers getting ready

Wood choppers

One of the navy rescue helicopters

Kayak polo  What fun!

Aussie word fun:

The Australians often use slang and one of the most common uses is to add an “ie” or “ey” to the ends of words, ie:

Bikie = a biker such as a Hell’s Angels member

Sparkie = an electrician

Firey = fire fighter

Selfie = one who does things by himself

Cockie = farmer

Greenie = environmentalist

Postie = mailman

Rellie = family relative

Summer?

We think summer may have arrived, at least for today.  It is supposed to get up to 38 (100) degrees today with thunder storms.  Marvin doesn't believe it one bit!  But we have had some very nice days this week, so we are enjoying it.  Southern Australia (mainland) has had record breaking heat of over 40 (abt 105) for the last 4 days and are suffering greatly.  The Australian Open (tennis) is being played this week and they had to postpone some of the games yesterday because the players were experiencing heat related issues.

Since I usually write about our escapades other than work, I thought I had better say a little about what we are doing at the Archives.  We have been imaging burial records and creating metadata for records previously imaged.  As of this week we have imaged 83,533 images since we started in October.  So we really have been working hard.

Every man needs his BBQ.

I finally said OK when Marvin found a BBQ for $12.00 in an after Christmas sale.  So, here is a picture of our little BBQ which really works quite well. 
We had to refresh our memory about charcoal brickettes and learn how to use Australian firestarters.  They don't sell lighter fluid in the stores.










Our latest trek has been to the most southern part (at least by paved road) of Tasmania to the Hastings Cave.

  It is a dolomite cave filled with stalagmites and stalagtites.  We took about an hour tour through the cave.  The walk to the cave went through a temperate rain forest that was amazingly beautiful.

 We also drove to Southport which is the last southern community in Tasmania.  We enjoyed a leisurely walk on the beach and picked up a few different shells. 

We have come to realize that not far south from Hobart, towns disappear.  There are homes and summer cottages but no real towns.  So much of southern Tas is bush and hills and dirt roads.  I guess that's what makes it so unique.