First time touching the ocean

Post from Angil: I traveled three-quarters of a way around the world to touch the ocean at Shearwater, Tasmania, on Freer Beach. Beautiful day enjoying an afternoon at the ocean with my GSE team.

Latrobe and Cradle Mountain

The team is in Latrobe still, a small town surrounded by farm land. I am staying with Malcom and Mavis who have their own farm. I have attached a view from their front patio. If you look closely you can see the Ocean. 

Today the team drove to Cradle Mountain for a 7.5km hike around Dove Lake. It was beautiful. It was great to get out and get some excursive after all the food we had yesterday! The hike was definitely one of the many highlights so far. Believe it or not it was too cold to go swimming...even for our team's standards. 

Can you find us in the photo below? 

Update from Kathryn

After a full day of food adventures, I came home to the 3500 sq ft farmhouse I am staying in at present, to enjoy snacks in the "pub"- just one of the many rooms in this sprawling residence- followed by spaghetti bologonese with the most delicious Boundary Shiraz from Clare Valley region in Southern AUS. What a lovely way to wrap up a day! My host parents are spoiling me (as all host parents do) and my host dad drove me home in the TAS police cruiser (he is a policeman).  He is taking me golfing in Davenport on Thursday with another officer and the sargent, so I will be sure to be on my best behaviour!!
I will be rising at 7 am to help tend to the cattle and sheep on the farm before heading up Cradle Mountain with the girls (and Gary!) and our local friends/ guides.
The good news is we all have plenty of "reserve"nutrients after today, so should we enjoy the view and wish to camp out for a few days, or weeks, on the mountain top, we will be just fine...
Earlier today we also got to cuddle with a friendly and sleepy wombat- that was great.
The tasmanian devils feeding on some roadkill was a memorable experience- the audio was more disturbing than the visual, but again, we shall spare you the video footage for now, but it will surely be coming to a screen near you very soon!

An Eventful Day in Northern Tasmania

Today we went to Sheffield and saw some beautiful murals that the town copied from a Canadian town to enhance the tourism in the area.  Our Canadian teammates were proud of that :)

We also went to a wildlife park and got to see the wallabies in prime mating season.  I'll spare the x-rated wallaby pictures and video, but trust me, they're HILARIOUS!  bow-chica-bow-wow! I'm not sure if we have any underaged blog viewers, but we'll email them to you if you ask.  I (Ashley) also got a leech stuck onto both my ankles and now have an authentic leech bite souvenir to take back home with me.  I thought leeches only lived in and near lakes, but was horribly mistaken.

We went to this WONDERFUL raspberry farm/restaurant where they grown heaps (as the Australians would say) of raspberries and had lunch there.  We all tried something different, but most of their food and drinks have some sort of raspberry component.  We couldn't go to a raspberry place and not have dessert, so we shared a raspberry crepe with homemade raspberry ice cream and a chocolate raspberry mud pie.

We also went to Ashgrove Cheese where they are similar in that they milk their own cows, make milk and cheese.  Apparently their cheese is even exported to Wisconsin and if it's good enough for the cheese-heads, it's certainly good enough for us!  We had some samples and they was delicious!  There has already been talk of stocking up on it prior to our mid-term break.

Next, we went to Anvers Chocolates where they make everything you could ever imagine out of chocolate.  They claim to make the best hot chocolate in the world and i think we all agree that they are telling the truth there!  Fabulous hot chocolate!  They have cinnamon, Aztec spice, vanilla and traditional hot chocolates.

What a wonderful day!  Although with all that food and sampling, our walk at Cradle Mountain tomorrow is something we're looking forward to.

District 9830 Conference begins!

The team with District Governor Peter Murfett.

Gary with DG Peter Murfett and wife Colleen.

Official conference opening by the Honorable Peter Underwood, Governor of Tasmania

More conference activities tomorrow and the team's presentation!

Bonorong Wildlife Park

                      Ashley and Siobhan feeding some very enthusiastic wallabies

                              Wombat - who knew they were such quick little guys.

                                         Tasmanian devil ... Tamoo's Mother??

             Heather & "Bert" the Koala, we all crossed this one off of our bucket list today

                                          Kathryn and her Wallaby friends

Gary getting a close up  

                               
                                                          Angil and "Bert"

Wallabies, Koalas and Tasmanian Devils-oh my!

Yesterday we changed over to the Glorcy Rotary Club.  We visited the Salmon Ponds and had lunch there on site.  It was absolutely wonderful!  They specialize in savoury pancakes, which are really more like crepes and I think almost all of us tried variations of the salmon pancakes.  Last night we made our presentation to the Glenorcy Rotary Club.  The club members are all very nice and seemed to enjoy our presentation.

Today we went to the Bonorang Wildlife Park.  We fed the wallabies, petted a koala and saw some Tasmanian devils!  It was a fabulous experience!!!  The wiildlife park was one of the things we were all looking forward to and it definitely exceeded our expectations.  We'll try to get some pictures uploaded within the next day or so so you can see how much fun we had there.

Then we went to a restaurant called Salt for lunch and had a fabulous meal!  A few Rotarians from the Glenorcy club joined us and enjoyed themselves as well. 

Next, we're off to the Grand Chancelor Hotel for a rehearsal before the big District Conference.  Tomorrow is the conference and we present at about 2pm.  Then there is a dinner later that evening.  We're hoping some member of the outbound Team Tasmania will be able to join us for a little bit to catch up and see how they've been doing since they've been back in Tassie.  It should be an eventful couple days. 

Tamoo on the way to the Salmon pond

Update to follow post district conference rehearsal.

If you didn't notice Tamoo picked up a nice jumper for District Conference. He certainly looks sharp!

Tamoo had made many new friends within the Salamanca club in Hobart. His favourite stop was with Siobhan and her host family. As you can see he got in some much needed cuddling with Oscar & Joe, and coincidently met his long lost cousin.

Photos from the Hobart area

Kathryn did a great job summarizing our first full GSE day today.  The team did a great job getting through our first presentation.  Nice to get that under our belts.  Here are some pictures from our great first couple of days....Gary

Update from Kathryn

Greetings blog followers!
Wish you could all be here with us:)

Yesterday Gary, Heather, and I went on the AirWalk in the rainforest (with local Rotarian hosts Gerry and Anne). Tasmania has what is called a temperate (vs. tropical) rainforest- just like Chile. We got great pictures and explored a number of new trees such as the ancient Huon Pine and the Eucalypt/ Gum Tree. This was a great experience and the forest smelled so good!! I was breathing in the fresh air so deeply (to clean my lungs of course) I was almost making myself dizzy!

Today was another fantastic day. We had our first presentation at a waterfront breakfast meeting for the Rotary Club of Salamanca- I even won a coin toss and the prize was a bottle of red wine! So as you can imagine, I did do my best to predict heads or tails...
We then went on a very informative historic walk around the Hobart harbour with one of the Rotarians- Rosanne.
Then we hopped in a van and headed to the Female Convict Factory which had a great deal of interesting history related to Tasmania being previously utilized as a penal colony. Gary tried to trap us all in the convict, but the walls weren't high enough to keep us out:) Don't worry Gary- you'll have another chance I'm sure when we visit Port Arthur!
After everyone safely escaped from the Convict Factory, we hopped back in the van and went to a cheese shop that was very pleasant. Most of us got cheese to share with our host families.
We enjoyed a lovely lunch hosted by one of the Rotarians who used to teach home economics/ cooking at a local private school- that was a treat. They had a real fire on in the front room and we all enjoyed some local wine as well.
After this we headed to Richmond to do some shopping (and grab a coffee). They make the best coffee in Tasmania- almost all is espresso based. My favourite is a "Flat White" which is espresso and steamed milk- similar to a latte but different- perhaps just a different ratio... because they make lattes too.
Then off to a winery! Yes- the organizers were brave enough to take Team Tasmania into a winery- and even arranged a proper tasting! We enjoyed local champagne, white, red, and dessert wine and bought a few souvenirs.
After this we returned back home for a quiet evening.
Tomorrow is our first vocational day and we are all very much looking forward to it. After that it is our first Farewell Dinner as it is our last day of our first leg of the adventure hosted by Salamanca Club.

Another Amazing day in Tasmania! Here is my host family Bill and Rosanne out in front of the Runnymede mansion that was build in 1840 by a Scottish born lawyer. There is alot of facinating history with the mariners of whaling to the convict history as well. We spent the day driving about the country side looking at quaint little towns with lots of character.

This is the oldest wind mill in the southern hemisphere that still grinds grain into flour. It has two large stones that grind the grain and all the local bakeries use it to make fresh bread. It is like nothing you have every tasted. Delicious!

Here is the mill again in the English inspired town called Oatland with it's lovely gardens that surround each cottage home.

My team and I visited the local cheese factory named Wicked Cheese. Love their logo! :) Tamoo enjoyed it as well.

Day 2

I woke up this morning after a solid 10 hour sleep. The morning was beautiful. It was fairy warm and sunny and I had a nice breakfast with my host Anne as well as her mother, Claire. Their house is on a nice hill in Kingston, just outside of Hobart. Looking out the window there is a lemon tree surrounded by wild roses everywhere. Everything was perfect until the worst thing happened to me….I plugged in my hair straightener and it sizzled and smoked until the red light went out on it! Anyone who knows me well knows that this is my worst nightmare! The voltage converter that I picked up from Canadian Tire prior to leaving failed on me. Oh well, on the flip side Gary got a nice a lesson on hair appliances  while we had to shop for a new one. The sales lady at Cyber Hair got a real kick out of us as Anne took many photos of Gary and I with all the hair products (photos to follow). 

After breakfast Kathryn, Gary and I along with Anne and Kathryn's host Gerry spent the morning at a local newspaper 'Huon News' for a quick tour and photo op for the paper next week. It was very nice to see. Later we ventured an hour south to the Temperate Rain Forest. Some of the Huon Pine trees here are 2500 years old!

For lunch we ate pie at a small cafe and then met up with the Montana GSE team that are also touring here. Surprisingly one of them works as a ski hill equipment supplier that supplies quite a bit of the machinery to Loch Lomand where I ski back home…small world!

I look forward to seeing the rest of the girls tomorrow to hear about their day with host families. Everything is amazing here and everyone is very friendly. The local Rotary clubs have been wonderful with making such a great itinerary for us. Tomorrow morning we do our first presentation to the breakfast club at Salamanica Rotary Club. Wish us well!

  

In Australia!!!

The team has safely arrived in Australia. We are sitting in Sydney airport enjoying coffee after a long but pleasant flight. We board our flight to Hobart in less than a half hour. We are so excited!!

Canadian Mountie

While leaving Canada we ran into a Canadian Mountie. We think we will bring him along in the overhead bin to keep us out of trouble.

Winnipeg, Manitoba

Sioban, Kathryn and I have 1 flight down and 4 to go (1 hour down 30 to go) We have landed in Winnipeg (Who Winnie the Pooh was named after). Next we are off to Minneapolis to pick up the American half of our team.

2 weeks to go!!!

We are currently at the 2 week mark until we take off!  Which also happens to be the birthday of our team member, Heather!  Happy Birthday Heather!

Tamoo has been with me (Ashley) in Detroit Lakes since our last meeting and I wanted to give an update on what he's been up to.

We've had fun "monkeying around" Detroit Lakes! 

And causing mischief at a local sporting goods store.  Tamoo is itching to go out kayaking!

And we had to stop at the Minnesota Famous Zorbaz Mexican and Pizza Joint for a ride in the Beach Buggy!

We even got to hang out with inbound GSE Team Tasmania when they were in Detroit Lakes on May 1st. (Tamoo is hidden in this picture, but definitely there)

We stopped at the famous Detroit Lakes Sailboat for some fun.

 

After a long day, we stopped off at a local park and did some swinging.

Tamoo has had a great time and is meeting friends wherever he goes.
We look forward to May 18th when we reunite and head off on our destination to Tasmania!  Keep checking our blog for updates while we're in Tassie!