Julie and Mark Down Under: Tasmanian Devils Do Exist

The week before Easter was a period of firsts for us:
1. Mark completed his first triathalon on the continent of Australia, the Geelong Triathalon. Not only did he finish 19th in the individual race, he also gets major props for swimming in the stinky Geelong Eastern Beach Bay!

2. We visited Tasmania for the first time. As many of you know, Tasmania is an Australian state southeast of the mainland. Roughly the same size as West Virginia, Tasmania only has a population of 480,000. Aside from the Aborigines 140,000 years ago and a Dutch explorer from the 1600's, Abel Tasman, for which the island was named, the largest settlement was of European convicts in the early 1800's.

* Of course we were compelled to find the wine route along the Tamar River just north of Launceston where wineries produce cool-climate wines like chardonnays, pinot noirs, and sparkling wines particularly from 2005. With the goal of visiting the smaller guys, we made our way through about four wineries and were lucky enough to be the only folks at most of the Cellar Doors. The small, family winery is an intriguing story, as many of their Cellar Doors are small rooms in their homes or sheds out back. The proprietors have colorful stories about their beginnings and certain vintages. We were even privy to the owner's Easter lamb recipe at the Dalyrimple Winery. Not to be upstaged were the winery dogs, Chili (Jack Russell Terrier) at the Brook Eden Winery and a name-unknown boxer at Ninth Island Winery. What a great life to live in such beautiful scenery and have a dog that has his run of the place. Poor Cash would never make a good ambassador, and we would go out of business quickly if he was the sole member of our greeting committee!

* Mikey will eat it, and Mark did as well. Pickled wallaby. Enough said.

* Already in agreement that Tasmania is the most beautiful place that we have visited, the Freycinet National Park on Tasmania's eastern coast only augmented the argument. Deciding on a 4.5 hour hiking route through the park, our first stop was one of the world's top 10 beaches, Wineglass Bay. The sand was fabulously white, the water was crystal clear, and we enjoyed our snack on the beach while being entertained by a school of six dolphins swimming just 30 to 40 feet off the beach.

3. Tasmanian Devils do exist outside of a Bugs Bunny cartoon, and we think we actually saw our first one as we drove back to our cottage one night. The population has drastically decreased due to an ailment called the "devil facial tumour disease". Good thing we didn't come too close to one, for they can be mean little suckers. The locals say that they do not release their bite once they have hold.

4. We saw our first, live wallaby. This was in addition to the wallabies previously seen dead on the side of the road and on Mark's plate at lunch (yuck). Admittedly, we believed these were just a breed of small kangaroos until Wikipedia (and good friend Jodie) proved us wrong. You would never think that wallabies were scary creatures, but the sudden rustling of bushes during our hike through Freycinet almost sent me into coronary arrest. Mark screamed like a little girl too. Luckily it was only a wallaby feeding on some brush. That encounter then gave us the courage to go directly up to a wallaby in the car park. He became much less interested in us when he sniffed our hands and found that we had no food to offer him.