I still haven't found what I'm lookin for

It does not matter who, where, what or when, it only matters how. How is most important. How is when we listen to the essence of our Selves and hear what we know is right. How is making the right decision when it's hard. How is being willing to give one hundred percent of ourselves to what we do. Complete presence. This of course means we can't agree to do more than one thing at any one time. Unless there were two of us!

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I spent a couple days in Melbourne with new friends before a 6am flight on Sunday. I found I really enjoyed Melbourne the second time around. I saw the cool singing bridge Ben and I discovered the first time I visited the city. I met Freeman at Melbourne's Luna Park by tram and we spent the afternoon deep in wonderful discussions of life at a friend's house and at the beach where we tossed the disc around. We made an amazing dinner based on a recipe Natalie gave me and enjoyed an incredible lightening storm from the dock of the beach. The following day after exploring the botanical gardens I met up with a new friend (my friend Andrea, who I know from Ashland, has a friend, Marisa, from Houston who is also traveling in Oz, just happened to be in Melbourne at the same time as me!) and we had dinner and gelato and did some people watching in St. Kilda. It was a wonderful connection and I just love how beautifully it wrapped up a wonderful weekend. I even got to Skype with Mimi and Papa when Papa somehow figured out how to use it after uncle Steven downloaded it on their computer again! It was really good to see them.

Flying into Hobart after very little sleep from the past couple nights and with such a very early flight I couldn't comprehend doing much else but sleep. As the plane began its decent we went from flying above a heaven of endless fluffy white clouds to suddenly being above the city of Hobart. I'm guessing many of the other passengers were also seeing Hobart for the first time because it seemed as though everyone had their forehead pressed against the plane's tiny windows. As I walked into the cool air of the morning looking for Richard's car I was reminded of searching for Jon, a man we'd never met, at the Dubbo airport when we first flew out to the farm and I just somehow knew it was him right away.

I recognized Richard from the description of his car and he and Angel, a friend, drove me through town to their house where I promptly gave into my delirium and slept as Richard headed off to give his sermon. I explored their bookshelf after waking up and found a beautiful book called Mister God, This is Anna, and immediately became absorbed in it as I swallowed every little detail this sweet five year old was explaining to me about the ways of life. When Richard got home from church he and I had a chat that eneded up lasting all day!

In the morning Rosie took me to the library where I caught up on a few things while waiting I meet Mark. I wasn't positive it was going to be a good connection and was relieved when we did meet and it was. It was interesting to travel with him (he works in the mines and had just won a few thousand dollars in a pokie machine) because he had no reservations with spending money while I'm on a pretty tight budget. He's been very generous though and I give back and share in what ways I can.

We've met some cool people along the way that I wouldn't have met on my own as I've been feeling pretty introverted lately. We spent a very cold evening with a German girl and Aussie girl chatting about nearly everything from education to politics and travel. We were camping and they had a cabin and offered me their extra bed because it was somewhere between 0-4 degrees outside! As long as I didn't snore or mind sleeping "upstairs," I was welcome, finding myself extremely grateful for the comfort of a warm bunk that night. We were all staying at a pub in Weldborough that offered all of Tasmania's beers and ciders and wonderful meals. Mark attempted to get through most of them, good thing we were staying the night. I spent the afternoon writing postcards in the sunshine and while I waited for my rice to (never) cook, the kitchen was closing so Mark brought me the ginger cake and ice cream with caramel sauce that I'd had my eye on and I decided that life's short and ate my dessert first! It was amazingly delicious. I had to laugh when Mark said "I know you want to lick the bowl, I'll turn around!" Awesome.

We weren't in any rush to leave the camp spot in the morning because it was so gorgeous there and such a beautiful sunny day. I had a lovely chat with a family on holidays with their 3 sons. They were keeping an awesome scrap book with the children's drawings and notes of their adventures with the cover from the book Are We There Yet, an Australian story of a family on a road trip, fittingly. Eventually Mark and I hopped back in the car (after giving it a jump from charging Mark's refrigerator but not running) and we went along down the country road.

I've been amazed at how quickly the scenery has changed from one moment to the next during our drives. We spent the first two days on the east coast and the sky couldn't decide whether it wanted to douse the land or scorch it. We would drive through amazing thunderstorms for ten minutes followed by gorgeously blue skies and 28 degree weather. Tasmania is a fascinating place. The eastern beaches are unbelievable! Our first stop was friendly beach and if it hadn't been for a sense of exposure to the elements, we would have camped there sun baking on the rocks overlooking a stunningly clear, blue ocean. It seemed tropical without being too hot or humid. It was perfect. It was the first of many more times I would hear Mark claim it to be a good place to build a house. Apparently he's looking. Instead we stayed at the next beach up on our way to The Bay of Fires and at 7pm another storm hit and we both retired for the evening, with no where else to spend time but in our "beds." I found I slept pretty well alongside the fridge in the backseat of the outback.

I hiked Mt. Amos the next day until I got nearly to the top and it was too slippery to scale solo mission so I slid back down! That part was all the more fun anyway! The views from the top of the second hike to wine glass bay were stunning but the bush itself was so dry and dull. There are many theories about the title given to the bay but I would agree that the water is crystal clear like a wine glass. I had a little snooze beside the waves and woke up to a tour group of Australian teenagers on holiday screaming and yelling to each other across the beach. Just before I had my shoes on to hike back, a pod of at least ten dolphins danced playfully through the waters really close to the rocks! I've never seen dolphins in the wild, only in marine parks where they're required to jump up and touch suspended balls in the sky. This was quite a treat for me to see, so magical and free and extremely playful and happy.

Our next stop was stunning Cradle Mountain and the weather was unusually clear (according to Mark) and the water and view of the peak were unbelievably beautiful. The brilliant blue of the sky contrasting with every shade of green and grey on the land an the brilliant white snow. There were strange patches of red and orange on rocks and in bushes like button grass and bush pines. I love gum trees, they're so beautifully smooth like naked limbs reaching into the sky. I saw occasional spring wild flowers as well as red leaves of autumn. It's very confused here! Because it was so cold we decided to camp in the cabins and spent the evening chatting with a few Canadian girls celebrating their graduation from university. We all crashed early to be refreshed for the hike.

The skies slowly warmed up through the morning with a bit of cloud cover so we didn't melt! The hike up Cradle starts by walking around and up towards Crater Lake (I'm still partial to Oregon's) and over the hills to view an amazing landscape of trees, lakes and waterfalls. We connected with a couple from America and ended up spending the rest of the day with them and their pet Dino Roarnaldo! They proved to be wonderful companions especially when Mark decided he'd sit out the summit trek and I had Ashley and Justin to climb with. There was a whole lot of steep boulder scrambling, hopping and climbing as we went further up. Justin has a fear of heights but did really well mastering the mountain. It was an amazing confidence building experience and completely exhilarating to have absolute trust in the strength of my body and the sturdy rocks on which each step up was determined. Feeling the solid engagement of muscles as my legs pushed and arms pulled me up onto massive thousand year old boulders, I felt amazing confidence and strength radiate through my being. I wasn't sure if I could be concerned when there were people around me feeling incredibly apprehensive, some turning back, while I may as well have been dancing up the cliff face. I mean, physically it was definitely a struggle, but mentally I felt peaceful control. Not once did I look down thinking, woah! Only appreciation for the beauty of the nature I was immersed in.

The way down was certainly more difficult as I was no longer scaling up like Spider Man but negotiating with gravity and my sore muscles to find the right spot to place all my weight safely. Justin had me channel my inner Tom Cruise of Mission Impossible. Our mission at one point seemed quite impossible when Mark led the three of us "the quick way around the lake." We took the Face Track which I decided meant cliff "face" as we were really bush bashing our way through a rugged trail heading up the mountain again and not feeling positive it would meet up with the lakeside track we could see which was seemingly further and further below us. We all felt extremely relieved when it did only to discover we literally had to hold a heavy chain and lower ourselves slowly down the track backwards. The other compilation was that the rubber bottom sole of my shoes was basically hanging by the threads and attempting to trip me with every step. Once we got to basically flat ground I decided to run the rest of the track but stopped beneath a gorgeous gum beside a boat docking house and waited for the others. It was an amazing day and the exhaustion felt wonderful!

Our next camp spot was in a "town" with a pub and ferry crossing and accommodation...and that's it! Sitting beneath the covering under the rain with the fire going we saw little rat kangaroo things (paddy melon? Oh: pademelon) come out of the bush. The one that hung around most had a little Joey in her pouch and it was too cute! She was quite frightened by the umbrella on the ground being caught up in the wind though! I think my favorite Aussie animal is an echidna. The penguins at adventure bay were certainly adorable though!!

While we were having dinner next to the Pieman River in Corinna Mark was telling me about his allergy to egg. "The worst thing that happens, he said casually is when someone cracks an egg on my head and it gets in my eye or mouth, then I'd need to go to the hospital." "Why!?" I wondered, "would that happen!?" "You know, at school there's always egg fights," again, quite matter of factly. "No." I replied. "There are not always egg fights at school." "At the end of the year?" "No," I laughed. "Ah, we always had egg fights at school. They had to get an epi pen for me." He then demonstrated how someone might crack an egg on my head by holding it at the crown and smacking it down with a flat hand.

Our road trip definitely had our peaceful quiet car moments when the stupid stereo decided to stop playing the music on our phones and the only radio available was more boring than silence. At one point I was reminded that at the end of our road trip on the west coast the boys and I were all tired of the music on our collective iPods. We were driving through the city looking for a car wash and I just started singing quietly and John said this is better than the iPods, we should have done this before! When we were playing music, it was mostly Mark's because my iPod wouldn't stay charged and I found that I really enjoyed his hard rock. I had fun pretending to play drums, keeping several rhythms with my feet and invisible drumsticks.

Driving across Tasmania's "wild west" we slipped in and out of several small towns, Waratah with gorgeous Mt. Bischoff Falls in the center of it, Corinna, Strahan, and the "capital of the west," Queenstown. I couldn't imagine that any of these towns could be home to more than 20 people, especially Waratah! There could have only been about 13 residents! I was fascinated by how old the buildings were and the mirrored lifestyle with people actually maintaining a lifestyle there. It should have been a movie. The old hotel in Queenstown was amazingly old fashioned and beautifully appealing. Every town had its little pub and tiny "grocery store" with the absolute basics. Fascinating to be in such a deserted place that's actually functioning!

This is too long.. I will publish the rest soon!