March 3-6, 2026 - Our final walk with the Tasmanian Walking Company is the highlights of the 12 Apostles Walk, considered one of the great walks of Australia. This is a subset of the Great Ocean Walk, along the rugged shipwreck coast, by the Otway lighthouse to the 12 Apostles sea stacks. Tas Walking Co cut out some of the inland sections of the track which would have made things a few days longer. My thoughts about this walk: Views: Some beautiful and dangerous coastline.

February 23-March 1, 2026 Here is the day-by-day itinerary overview Summary video of the trip for those too lazy to read all the words below. Sorry it's so long. In summary: hiking - best so far. It was also wonderful that most days we were left to "guide ourselves". We were given a landmark and allowed to get there on our own and wait for the rest of the group. Very rocky paths - I wish I had my heavy Scarpa boots because my the bottom of my feet were sore the first few n

A note about videos - I'll try to use YouTube when I can to make them easier to view... the smaller ones may still be an issue since they have to be streamed from dropbox:( February 20-23, 2026 - take the bus Hobart to Launceston (pronounced Lawn-ces-ton) and stay in an AirBnB until we meet for our next hike. February 20 - Today was our bus ride to Launceston. To give Americans an idea, this bus was similar to a Greyhound bus. Let's just say the clientele was "interesting".

February 16-19, 2026 with the TasWalkingCo. Day 1 is Hobart to the Crescent Lodge (cruise and short walk). Day 2 - Crescent Lodge to Pillar Lodge - about 7 miles. Day 3 - Cape Pillar lodge, return - about 11 miles. Final day - Cape Pillar to Fortescue Bay - about 11 miles. The 3 Capes are Raoul, Pillar, and Hauy. We won't go to hike on Cape Raoul - see footnotes, below. February 15/16 - Yesterday we came back from Bruny Island to Hobart and stayed at the Doubletree a

February 12-15, 2026. We will walk on a guided walk with the Tas Walking Company for a "long weekend". The weekend starts with a trip to the Huon Valley and a "feast" at the Fat Pig Farm - an almost self contained farm in the Tasmanian countryside. The next few days will start with a boat ride down the Derwent River to Bruny Island. Once on the island we walk down to the Long Weekend Camp. It looks like glamping - e.g. permanent tents. Day 2 is a 14km walk to Cloudy Bay

We have a week in Hobart. I'll be blogging about anything remotely interesting that has happened and posting it at the end of our stay. 2/5/26 - The big news is that Chris and I made it to Hobart, but my luggage went to Brisbane. More on that in a bit. The flight was unexceptional, but delayed. Our night in the Mantra Motel was unexceptional. It was the Travelodge which was supposed to have a shuttle service and a bunch of things included. Unbeknownst to Chris, it was so

January 31 - February 4, 2026 This is our route over the next 5 days. As you can see, we are now re-crossing the Australian continent back to Sydney. The Crowne Plaza was great because they had a free guest laundry and a pretty well kitted out fitness center. They also had a nice pool, but we ran out of time. We had a couple of hours to waste and found ourselves at the Perth Mint which happened to be open on a saturday, so we decided to take the tour. Amongst other thing,

January 28-30, 2026 from the Itinerary - a 2 night stay at the Hampton Inn in Sandton (suburb of Johannesburg) and take Quantas QF64 to Sydney, transferring to Quantas QF655 to Perth where we pick up the train. I'll skip over the 28th and 29th, only saying that this Hampton Inn was absolutely one of the best in terms of value for money of just about any hotel I've been in. The room was huge (upgraded because Chris is a lifetime Platinum member), the breakfast buffet was very