1-25-09

Tasmana

First day

When I got down to my bike on the ferry to leave the Honda guy was there and said we could ride together out to Stanley and have some breakfast. I thought that would be OK and off we went. It turned out that he likes to ride a lot faster than I do and I rode along with him for about a half hour at 120+km/hr. The Ozdog did it ok but I told him I was going my own way the first chance I got. I like to stop and take a few photos and look around a little and not just charge off in a bee line and go over the speed limit. I really don’t want to have a ticket here. I am not sure what that would do for the chances of coming back for another visit. A nice little park along the road offered some flower photos for my flower friends.

The sign said it was a flower grower here.

I waited to talk with this guy. He is dragging out the irrigation gun with the tractor in this green bean/string bean field. He was really nice and filled me in on the different crops that are grown around here.

This crop was one I asked him about. It turns out it is perythem, an insecticide. They cut and windrow it and then come in with a combine and harvest the base of the flower head.

Guess what this field is…….

That is right. These are fields of Opium poppies. He said they can grow these here on Tasmania and no place else in Australia. They have good control of them here evidently. There were lot of fields and some were huge fields that were irrigated with pivots. Evidently this is where the drugs that the doctors prescribe come from.

A field of onions curing in the sun.

The farm sign said it was tulips. The farm was closed because it is Sunday.

I stopped at this light house and came across this interesting fact about the last Black War.

I am not sure what all is growing here but is all seems to like it.

F friends…

I just got an email from Lowell down in Arizona wanting some photos of birds. Lowell is a bird nut and this is the best I think I will be able to do for you Lowell. Looks sort of like a huge seagull.

I asked this little Tasmanian Devil to bite my finger. He didn’t like the looks of it. I should havew washed my hands first.

I cast a pebble myself.

Finally the back roads in Tasmania.

I had to take the ferry across the river.

All along this road there were these bee hives. It seems like they were every quarter mile or so and I had to keep my helmet face shield down as I sure didn’t want to scoop one into my helmet. I could see that a lot of the trees were in bloom here.