2014 retrospective Part 1

A year away in Tasmania - what a year of being blessed in so many ways! The downer is of course being apart from Penny (quite a big downer too!) but overall the year has been a good one - which I hope to recap for posterity in the next few blog posts.

Melbourne skyline from the Spirit of Tasmania












Hobart - have nothing but good things to say about the town, the food, the church, the people at work, my housemates...could go on and on...

Royal Hobart Hospital - where I started my journey into Renal medicine, poking kidneys, tweaking dialysis machines and eating countless chicken parma sandwiches 


















Scallop pie in the small town of Ross...my first meal in Tasmania

Walking down from the hospital on Argyle Street, with the flyover on top of Pilgrim Coffee (best coffee in Hobart for my money!), I could get to Constitution Dock in ten minutes, with its array of fish-n-chip shops and countless places to eat, while fending off over-inquisitive seagulls.


My housemates and I spent most of the year in a huge townhouse bordering some community housing, which made our days (and nights) interesting - the time we each thought someone had left a cloak on our front porch, which turned out to be a really thin boy stoned out of his mind....or the times we called the police to break up fights that occurred outside on the street, or the night someone ran into my housemate's car and drove off in some hurry...

One of the great things about Hobart was how one could get to amazing scenery within an hour's drive or less! Mount Wellington, the beachside cliffs of the Tasman Peninsula, or the forests of the Central Highlands are all within reach...

The view from the top of Mount Wellington on a clear day - blustery winds are worth it!

 Walking around Salamanca Market on a Saturday morning..arts and crafts, secondhand books, plants in weirdly shaped pots and the smell of roasting sausages in the air..

 The chef himself, from Masaaki's in Geeveston at Farmgate Market (on Sundays in Hobart). The queue was crazily long, so it took an early start to be able to get (finally) the finished product!

Also, the best peanut butter I've had so far is found in this market! About the only thing I carted home in bulk from Tassie..

An early morning's fishing trip with Mr Flathead - where we ended up with way too much flathead and ended up cooking them three ways!

 The weird and wonderful came together at the MONA (Museum of Old and New Art) - we had fun playing table tennis underground, rolling around in the room of joy(Which sounds dubious but is really a pink plush-lined room with los of little bumps to sit on and roll around on) and smelling the poo from the poo machine seen above.











Next up: how we severely depleted the oyster population and enjoyed the moonlit nights at the East Coast!