It’s funny, because these guys don’t look anything like Taz from Bugs Bunny.

These are Tazmanian Devils. They are pretty stupid animals, but I guess you don’t have to be too bright when you can crush a bone with one bite. Not to mention being able to digest that bone.

While in Tasmania we got the chance to do some more SCUBA diving. The first dive was pretty rough, but the second dive was great. This picture was taken from the second dive.

This dive was in a new growth kelp forest. A few years ago a storm had come to the area and destroyed all the kelp. It is now growing back.

Diving in the kelp was a lot of fun. It was tall enough to be enjoyable. Even though the shoots were not going up to the surface it was realy easy to get disorientated. I got lost about a minute into the dive. But that was ok, because I was with someone who knew the area.

One of the day trips that we did was Cradle Mountain. This is a mountain in one of Tasmania’s many national parks. We did a circuit hike around Lake Dove, which is situated at the base of the mountain.

Since coming back from Australia I’ve seen Cradle Mountain on TV. The Discovery Channel did a show and used Cradle Mountain as the background for a few of thier scences. I thought it was funny, because the show was about dinosaurs of North America and they were using a Tasmanian background.

The scenery was great and the walk was fun. We joked about cutting down the forest and putting up a parking lot.

The weather at Cradle Mountain was pretty diverse. There were lots of signs warning people that the weather could change from sunny and hot to snow in a matter of hours. We didn’t see such a drastic change, but we did see a change. We started out walking on a nice sunny day. By the time we got to the other side of the lake (a few hours from the car) it had gotten breezy and chilly. We both had jackets which we had purchased earlier that day, so no worries.

Before we left Tasmania we hit a park in Launceston. One of the things we saw there were peacocks. Nice looking creatures.

This peacock was named Hiku. She was a Japanese tourist taking a vacation down in Australia. Unfortunately, the little child in the picture to the right started to harrass Hiku. He pulled on her tail feathers and chased her around a lot.

Eventually Hiku got annoyed at the little boy and started to defend herself. Appartently she is a master of ninjitsu. Lord knows she opend a can of whoop-ass on the little boy. Then she went back for seconds.

I took some shots of the carnage. While we were leaving the park a few rangers came by and took the tapes. They said something about an international nightmare.