theparkerfamily

AUSTRALIA (DAY TWO) — I woke up this morning, and the world was on its head. I’m 12,000 miles from home. People drive on the wrong side of the road. The land is impossibly beautiful. People are nice. Water flows around the drain the other way. Internet access costs $26 for 2 hours. Tottenham Hotspur actually won something. The sky is down, and the ground is up. the lady sparkler doesn’t mind if I wear the same clothes day after day. 

About that: I should have mentioned that while we made landfall yesterday, our luggage didn’t. the lady sparkler being a smart girl has two changes of clothes and four pair of underwear in her carry-on. I have 10 pounds of camera equipment. The most beguiling thing about this parallel universe we find ourselves in is that neither of us seem to care about the state of our baggage.

 

About that: Tasmania is just devastatingly beautiful. Since Australia is the original continent — and there hasn’t been much in the way of earthquakes, volcanoes or glaciers to stir up the ground — much of what you see has been that way for the last billion or so years (give or take).

 

The place we stayed last night was at the entrance to Cradle Mountain National Park, and so we began the morning hiking through the temperate rainforest at the mountain’s base. The youngest trees looked 500-years old, and there was a *thick* carpet of moss on anything that wasn’t moving.

 

After our morning in Eden, we bustled ourselves off to Strahan (the ‘ha’ is silent) on the western coast of Tasmania. The last quarter of the pictures are from the city’s “park,” which seems a mild understatement as it is big enough to house a 40-minute walk through rainforest to a trio of stunning waterfalls.

 

It’s a mad, mad world.

Explore the Photo Set:
Travel: Cradle Mountain National Park, Tasmania