Anna and I sat next to the busy road heading north out of Hobart, each with a big grin behind a sign saying Lake St. Clair. We held our sign out towards the passing cars and observed the smiles and honks of people passing by, yet not one person stopped for us. It was twelve thirty, and today we were hitch-hiking up north to start the Overland Track ( Read more... )

Anna, my dear friend from Sweden is sitting beside me which is one more happy reminder that I'm back 'home'. Last night on the flight in from Melbourne I had a sense of desperate urgency to be back home, to once again be in the warm bed and white walls of 110 Regent Street. The bus dropped me off at the university, empty save for a few cars parked ( Read more... )

My time in New Zealand is almost over, but has soaked me with both rain and a passion for this place. I have come to regard the passing hillsides painted in patches of white with a sort of energetic excitement to see things up close. Once you get to those patches, they turn into thousands of blankly staring sheep, munching away with their rotating ( Read more... )

Well, I'm here in Nelson,south island, New zealdand after a quick sojourn across the Marlborough sound (a 20k hik through rainforest and forest and beaches, quite fantastic) before that was christchurhc and before that brisbane australia. The night before I left for NZ I walked around Brisbane, over the bridge listening to music. It gripped me. ( Read more... )

Well I have 10 mintutes to write. the reef has been amazing, lots of big fish and little clownfish hiding in coral and reefs and oh I don't knpow what all, like snorkeling on the reef and fishes, and a boatload of happy people and oh so beautiful. but tonight I had a few beers as a social occassion and forgot that I'm locked out of my hostel now, I ( Read more... )

Well ( Read more... )

50+ Photos have been added to my photobucket account.

www.photobucket.com/albums/v363/tkisch

New additions are under the folders:
climbing and other outdoor trips, field excvcursions, hobart, midsemester break (most are here).

The past month has been a sort of half conscious blur, much of which has consisted of sleeping on a mattress in the living room while mom inhabited my room. This was a more than welcome tradeoff - each day the sun streams in our harbour window at five a.m., and lets my eyes know they’ve been closed for far too long. My mom’s stay was a quiet, ( Read more... )

Tasmania is warming up, the sun has ceased to be simply an ornament dangling in the sky and is currently providing enough warmth for me to cautiously abandon the multiple layers of thermals hidden beneath my jeans. My pajamas are no longer padded by the two sets of long underwear and wool socks. The days are gone when I waddled into bed like a big ( Read more... )

So here I sit with just under six hours before I will be whisked away from the comforts of Hobart into the vast, unmapped Western forests of Tasmania where it rains 10 feet a year. I feel like an American frontiersman with that indescribable urge to push over the mountains and onto the other side. So ( Read more... )