In article <b07pla$p7j@dispatch.concentric.net>,
Nathan Hoover <nathan@movaris.com> wrote:
)As many of you know, there is a fantastic ride taking place right now in
)Tasmania, Australia. It’s a 3 week Coker tour - see http://www.unitours.org/
)for more info. This website that is supposed to have an on-line diary, but
)there are no entries yet from the ride which started last weekend. Check it
)out at http://www.worldpeace.org.au/
)
)It sounds like they are not easily finding internet access which is not that
)surprising I guess. Here’s what Bronson had to say (“changing” the cranks
)refers to adjusting the length on the ride - 120 to 180mm):
I just got back from a week-long two-wheel tour of western Tasmania.
Internet access is indeed limited; most of the towns have at least an
“online access center”, but many of the hotels don’t have phones in the
rooms, and in a lot of places there isn’t really a town other than the
lodge.
It’s an amazing place, but a lot of it is a wilderness in a sense you
don’t see here in the States. As in, “if you walk in that direction
for 100K, you will see no man-made structures, power lines, roads or
trails”. Eastern Tassie isn’t quite as remote, but it’s still got less
civilization than, say, Glacier National Park in Montana. (If you include
Kalispell).
It was partially hearing about the Coker tour that got me down there
on my bike; I don’t really have much interest in unicycle touring, but
a trip around Tasmania sounded like an excellent idea.
-Tom
Thanks for the updates! I’ve done that route via bus pass and it was very nice. We camped on the West Coast and hiked some; and also did the Overland Track. Southwestern Tasmania is a World Heritage area but we didn’t make it there. Tasmanian devils really exist and they sound at night like a woman screaming as she is being murdered - very, very creepy. There a very cool old prison complex near Hobart that we visited. A US warship pulled up and there was a big to-do about the anticipated treatment of women. Sure enough, a woman was raped by a sailor during their visit. You get a different view of the US when you’re overseas… In Tasmania, a huge island south of main Australia, they call the mainland “The North Island” which I really enjoyed. The whites’ treatment of aborigines in Tasmania was actually than the whites’ of the Native Americans here - they wiped them out completely, like the Tasmanian Tiger, which is an illustration on one of their beers, I forget which, which are really excellent.
MMM Tasmania. I must admit our beers are good but here is what is currently happening to our devils.
and as for the world heritage, our old growth forests are being logged to the point of non-existance. I used to be able to get on my bike and ride for 10 miutes and be in a rainforest, but now there is just loggin plantations as far as the eye can see. They leave about 2 metres of original foliage and then logg back behind that. All you have to is look through the trees to see the damage. here is the best example i could find. scroll down about halfway on this page.
i was searching for Tassie riders and saw it. Just thought i would bring people up to date on the fact Tasmanias enviroment is slowly being exchanged so some rich corporate boss can have an extra porshe
Yeah, that’s really bad. I always feel that something is fundamentally wrong with the world and I can do absolutely nothing about it when I read about or see things like that. It disturbs me.
that is the problem, there is these problems and people feel to overwhelmed to help out because it is such a terribely(sp?) big feat, so they dont bother. Then those who do spend time protesting and camping in trees. Also there is such organisations such as the make poverty history one that is making it easier to help them then trying to eridicate a problem closer to home
