The trip seemed to take forever, but was actually not too bad - managed to sleep at the right times so that I had a 6 hour block and woke up at 6 am Australian time. Had an 8 hour layover in Sydney and went downtown, cruised around, listened to some Aborigine music on the waterfront and got some walking exercise.
Launcestone is quite an old town - early 1800's. 60 years older than Boulder! Lots of old houses, businesses, and churches. Ornate wrought iron seems to be the theme. Brick, stone construction. Metal roofs. But the interiors are quite modern in many of the buildings and homes. The house I'm living in is small - the size of one floor in our Boulder house. But recently remodeled. Fancy appliances (cooktop has a touch screen control panel, and touch sensitive burners that turn off automatically when you remove the pots & pans). Nice little backyard. The street runs across the face of a ridge (with 18% grades on the streets running up the ridge! Yeah, 18% really.) and I've got nice views across town, and down towards the harbor.
Lots of funny little things to notice that are just a bit different from the states:
Sports - lots of general news coverage of cycling. Good week for Tasmanian cyclists: at Paris-Nice this week Richie Porte took 3rd in the Time Trial, and Matt Goss won a stage - both Launceston boys. Then there is the high school lawn bowling tournament, lots of horse racing, lots of cricket news, and apparently about 29 different variations of Rugby. Then there's net ball. It got TV coverage and appears to be a hoop and net like basketball but no backboard, played by women, mostly tall, ball a bit smaller than a basketball - here's where it get weird - you can't move once you get the ball, and you can't move if you are guarding the person with the ball, so everybody else runs around, then if you finally get the ball to a player within about 8 inches of the net the player and the guard both stand there doing pretty much nothing until she throws the ball into the net. Anything from more than 8 inches away seems to have near zero chance of going through the hoop! Maybe there is something different that I don't understand.
Lots of betting shops - presumably on sports.
Tiny little mailboxes - with stickers on them that say "No advertising or catalogs accepted." The mailbox appears to have room for about 10 letters and nothing else. I guess the Postal service doesn't deliver the junk mail if you say you don't want it. What would LL Bean do????
Pedestrian walk signals - First, you can't turn (left) after stopping on a red light. Then, people actually obey the green pedestrian "walk" signals - even if there are no cars within sight, people stand there and wait (and rarely do you see someone cross between intersections - maybe never). Then when the light changes, you only get a couple of seconds of green walk, then immediately goes to flashing red - no darting across later. Understandable, since the cars have been waiting to turn and their time to turn coincides with your time to cross the side street. Step lively there, mate.
High heels - lots of them, really high (with short skirts).
I filled up the tank on my little car (about 10 gallons if I did the calculation correctly) for $82 (US and Australian dollars are within a penny of each other right now). I've never put $82 worth of gas in a tank before - not even the bigger tank on my minivan.
it's a 7 minute walk from my house to the downtown mall. Quicker to walk than to drive & look for a parking space. Really nice to be able to walk to stuff. The mall is a bit shorter than the Boulder Mall, but with a shopping area around it that is somewhat bigger than downtown Boulder. Quite a range from really fancy upscale stuff to sports recyclers to Target to a Sports Authority (?same company as in Boulder?) to a pretty upscale bike shop to fancy restaurants to take-aways with the usual Indian, Chinese, and falafel. I feel right at home.
The city is built at the end of a flat, broad, agricultural river valley - big enough for small ships on the river. 2 smaller rivers join here to form the big river. The part of town that I've explored so far is built on the very steep hills around the smaller valley. I haven't been down to the flat part of town yet (except late at night when I was lost.).
I've got some pictures, but having trouble downloading - will load them later.
Very interesting, Tasmania is very different than I expected. Thanks for the great descriptions, I feel like I'm there with you. Will you be doing repeats on that 18% grade?
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