One week has gone quickly and its time for a short roundup.

Establishing the base-camp

First of all, I have settled and finally managed to put my cloth into the wardrobe. As shown above, we have also set up in the lab and lined out what we will do the next weeks.

So far …

On Wednesday we went on the first field trip to Mt. Field national park with the laserscanner (->LIDAR) mounted on the Skyjib UAV (-> platforms -> skyjib) to collect a small strip of topographic data.

SkyJib flying at Mt. Field national park

Since we had some time left we went on a short walk to see pandani plants. Apparently, these plants, endemic to Tasmania, did already exist on the super-continent Gondwana (containing South-America, Africa, India, Antarctica and Australia) somewhat 300 million years before today.

Pandani plant, survivors of Gondwana

In general, the landscape is stunning and I will try to come back for some bushwalking.

Food

As I mentioned earlier, I life with a family with three kids. I think, that they all (or at least the kids) believe that German man life on sandwiches „are you eating sandwiches agaaaiiinnn?“ (since I have mostly eaten sandwiches here), while all German woman are super healthy (since Juliane is a vegan and mostly eats fruits or vegetables).

On my second day I was invited to try some of the food the family prepared after a daytrip to the ocean. So I tried what I thought was some kind of mussels. They really tasted good … some days after Arko mentioned these expensive and rare abalones, a delicacies found here in Tasmanian waters … which I had eaten without knowing. But still, they tasted very good 😉

Abalone- Tasmanian delicacies

In general people here eat breakfast, small lunch and big dinner as they do in Scandinavian countries, so I think I have to change my eating habits :/

Every Saturday the Salamanca Market is on in Hobart. You can buy lots of local products. Besides, they offer specialties from around the world. Of course, additionally to the „Taste of Persia“ and „Gypsy Rolls“ you can find „Bratwurst – German Sausages“ 😉

Salamanca Market – German sausages

On the marked I also bought my first souvenir, which I will not reveal yet … and you may have to wait until next winter to see it.

Transportation

Thanks to the super friendly people here, we managed to improve our transportation situation. We improved from „per pedes“ to bicycle (with helmet, which are mandatory here), and from bicycle to car(!).

At least car drivers will notice me with this helmet … I hope

Toyota Carolla – adventures travel utility

We borrowed the latter from a very kind geography P.h.D. student for our weekend trip …

Coming up

Since this weekend is a long one (Monday is public holiday) we will go on a trip to the Tasman Peninsula. Since the landscape is supposed to be very nice we will stay there for two days and do some bushwalking (…hiking, see last post). Besides the car we could borrow equipment from several people … I’m quite exited about the first trip into Tasmanian nature 😉

Another thing which I’m quite exited about is a field trip we will do on next Wednesday. Together with Arko we will visit the Warra research site in southern Tasmania. At the site long term forest research is taking place at the same time as they monitor carbon and other fluxes from a 80m tall tower above the canopy of the forest. A researcher from Forestry Tasmania will take us on a tour through the forest … EXCITING 😉

Thats it for now, more is coming up for sure. I will leave you with an impression from Salamanca Marked, have a good weekend 😉