matt and louise's 2010/11 big adventure: NYE (Melbourne), 3-9 Jan 2011 Tasmania (Cockle Bay, Mt Hartz, Mount Field)

Hello Happy Campers,

HAPPY NEW YEAR! - Matt here...

We have just found a place along a beach called the Bay of Fires where we finally have Internet! Yippee!

So thought we should get a blog out while the iron is hot.

Louise and I took a trip to the North Island from Tasmania (i.e mainland Australia) for NYE to attend a party at Ethiad Stadium to see a DJ called Armin Van Buuren, a Dutch Trance DJ, voted No.1 in the world recently, where he held a captive audience of around 5 - 7 thousand fans dancing into the wee hours of NYD (see pics below), our friends Jonathan (flew in from Sydney), Kelly and Alexa also came along for the ride, thanks guys for a fantastic night! We had a blast!

It was loads of fun being in Melbourne, apart from when we arrived in Melbourne on the NYE where the temperature was a mild 38-40C (it was very dry and unbearable) especially when we had just come from Hobart where the temp was 20C. I even went back to the hotel room to change my pants (from long to short pants), on our way to the AVB party, but the night/morning got progressively cooler as it went on.

We stayed in Melbourne for a few days after NYE and walked around the city to find all the alleyways that are famous for its graffiti art (see pics), and for those of you who know who Banksy is, I think we managed to find a stencil of his (see pic of the rat).

We arrived back in Hobart and stayed one more night with our friends Sarah and Dom in Ables Bay (thanks guys) then hit the road again and headed south to a place called Cockle Bay, where the beaches were very pristine and the water was clear blue.

We then headed up to the north east into Mount Hartz, which is the second highest peak in Tassie, we walked to the base of the mountain and visited Lake Osbourne and Lake Esperence, the air is so fresh and clean up there, we had really good dreams and deeeeep sleeeeps!

We then proceeded to travel a little further in the same direction to the north east to a place called Mt Field and walked a circuit walk to Lady Barron falls which was a 9km circuit walk through giant trees and rain forest, you really felt like you were stepping back in time to the Jurassic period.

We have now made our way over to the east coast of Tassie and have just visited Freycinet NPark and we currently camped up beside the beach at the Bay of Fires Cons Park (we will put photos on our next blog of these places).

Hope everyone had a great NYE/NYD and are all well and thanks to you all for looking.

Matt xoxoxoxo

NYE - Armin Van Buuren at Ethiad Stadium, this pic was taken by a professional photographer going around on the night taking photos of people.

We look like we are having a good time, you can see Jonathan in the back ground to the right with his arm in the air (typical)...

Matt and Jonathan getting a snap before we headed out to see Armin, I walked about 100 metres down the street and decided to come back and change into short pants because it was so hot outside. shame as those are my rave pants...