In the morning I decided to go visit the gorge that people were speaking about. I did some small hikes along the pathways of the gorge, saw another wallaby!, and found the scenery ok. Definitely not the top of the list of memorable scenes from Tassie, but nonetheless, another nice area to do some hiking. I then went around town for a little more, and stopped for a great lunch at a cafe. Parking meters were so cheap! $.80 for 1 hour! That’s about 4x less than Sydney! I wanted to make sure that I got back to the airport down in Hobart in time for my flight at 7, so I headed out of Launceston at about 2pm. Along my journey down the Heritage Highway, I stopped in some areas such as Oatlands, just small colonial towns with some interesting houses. I then heard on the radio that the Australian icon, Steve Irwin had been killed :( As odd as it was, it seemed quite devastating. I guess being in Australia, and getting to know him as such an icon, I felt quite sad to hear the news. By the time I made it to the airport, I was 3 hours early, and hoping there was another flight I could take. However, to no avail. When I turned my car back into Avis, they told me that Steve’s wife was in Tasmania at the moment, driving an Avis car, and doing a hike on Cradle Mountain. I only hoped she wouldn’t hear the news on the radio. I then settled in and did some of my research for school while watching the MTV awards. The flight was delayed a little bit, but still made it home at 10pm. All in all, this adventure proved to be a very good time for reflection on my time in Australia in the South Pacific, and as the slogan says, I went and ‘Rejuvinated Myself’.
ben. you rock. i had no idea you were so ballerific-like-it’s-all- terrific. but you are. please don’t sell my email address to a direct marketing agency.