Christmas Holidays in Southeastern Australia

Christmas and New Year is Summer in Australia, and it is perhaps not the ideal vacation spot at this time of year if one wants to get away from the permanent equatorial heat and humidity of Singapore. But Southeastern Australia can be relatively cool even in the Summer and my bet was that a few days in Melbourne followed by a week in Tasmania would be a welcome and salutary break from Singapore. It turned out to be a good bet.

After two rainy days in Melbourne, a break in the weather allowed us to go for a hike along the coast of the Mornington Peninsula on the Southern Ocean side. It reminded us of the Northern California Coast. Very similar rocky cliffs and rolling pastures can be seen North of San Francisco at Point Reyes for instance. This walk would have been idyllic if it had not been for the clinging flies that surrounded us. The woman at the counter of the cabin where tickets for a lighthouse tour were sold told us that, thankfully, the air was cool and they were not too numerous on that day, but that, on a very hot day, they entirely cover the beam of the cabin above the counter and she has to wear a hat with a net to protect her face.

A white sand beach on the Mornington Peninsula ...

A sand stone cliff with the most interesting colors.






Bruny Island in Tasmania ... a penguin rookery ... without the penguins, but still a gorgeous beach.




Satellite Island, a small island off Bruny Island, a bigger island off Tasmania, itself an even bigger island off the coast of Australia ... a very big island. Ah ... the clouds ...

En route towards Cradle Mountain-Lake Saint Clair National Park, Russell Falls in Mount Fields National Park.

Tasmania. Cradle Mountain-Lake Saint Clair National Park.

A hike in a rain forest along Lake Saint Clair. In the back of us stands Mount Olympus. In front of us, across the lake, Mount Ida. On the boat that took us to Echo Point, from which the Overland Track starts, the driver told us that the explorers who discovered this area had been inspired by the Homeric epics in naming the landmarks of this beautiful country. In the Iliad, Mount Ida is the mountain from which the gods watched the Trojan War. But here, nothing but calm and beauty.



A hike to Mount Rufus.



A stop for lunch on Shadow Lake at the foot of Little Hugel. One can drink the pure cool water of this lake.



Indifferent to our presence, an echidna is going about its business, foraging for ants in the dirt with its narrow snout.





Back in Hobart, festivities abound on the waterfront around the Taste of Tasmania. These bagpipers remind us of the hardy Scots who settled this land, as rough as their own, while Wild Oats rests majestically after having won the Sydney to Hobart race in less than two days, a thing of beauty ... a 98 foot long sailboat built for speed.