500 Posts!

Woohoo! The website just cracked 500 posts!

Thanks everyone for showing some interest in my life!

Ben

Duck Reach

Headed down to Duck Reach power station the other day to get some happy snaps of the river flowing. Unfortunately the river had gone down from the raging torrent it was a few days to barely a trickle. I'm hoping we get some more impressive rain so I can get some equally impressive pics.



This is the outlet of the old power station. Its amazing where they'll let you climb these days...



The river in slow motion...



Same spot but in fast motion... I love the difference a filter and long exposure makes to running water.



Here's looking at you baby, I like this one...

Second Model Boat 12 metre Pilot Boat

The model boat is almost finished. From this...



To this...

Pretty cool hey? Once the paint dries i'll flip her over and show you the framing and joining. This has all been designed on computer using Maxsurf, AutoCad and then fed into a CNC machine which is essentially a computer controlled milling machine which cuts all the frames and plates out to perfect accuracy with no human intervention. The frames are all 3mm MDF and the plates are 1.5mm aircraft grade 3 ply plywood. The frames are fitted onto a specially designed building block (also designed in AutoCad and CNC'ed out) and then the plates are glued and bent over the frames. A little bog and some sanding and this is the result.

I've got another one i've done too but I wont get it back until Wednesday so i'll put it up then.

Riviresco Field Trip

Well the other day we headed out for Ocean Engineering to do a field trip aboard the mighty (yeah right) Riviresco. We were planning to do some depth, current and salinity measurements.

10 points to whoever can tell me what this does and how much its worth? (Matt your not allowed to answer)



Configuring the devices, there were some serious technical issues involved with this mostly regarding lack of software. Oh well, better luck next time. At least we weren't trying to configure them on the deck of a research vessel holding posistion in rough weather.



Out on the Riviresco. This is the little sister to the Bluefin which, with any luck, i'll be spending a week on next semester.



The Safe Astoria from the seaward side. This gives a much bigger impression of the size of the platform.

Cradle Mountain

On the second day of our 1000km round trip of Tassie we hit up Cradle Mountain with the obligatory stop off at the raspberry farm for supplies. The game is to eat as many of the complimetary chocolate coated raspberries without the person behind the counter noticing. I reckon I got about 7-8 down before we left, mmm...

The view from Marions lookout over Dove Lake. This was beautiful when we were coming back down in low light but we were both so buggered and in a hurry to beat nightfall that we didnt stop for photo's...



More from Marions, the carpark where we started is down on the right of the photo. The first carpark where we started last time is up in the middle left...



CONGRATS!!! You made it! So *sniff* proud! If only we had more time to dine at the top. I could see clouds moving in and the time was becoming a concerning issue but we still did it. I was nervous as hell coming back down off the rough stuff though. Felt much better when we hit the path again...



I cant remember the name of this peak but we'll have to climb it some day. Should be an early start to get it done in a day!



And of course what would a visit to cradle be like without a photo of the boathouse, Dove lake and Cradle all combined into one?

Hobart Road Trip Part 2

After Port Arthur we headed up the coast towards Swansea via the blowhole and the tesselated tiles.

The East coast of Tassie...



The tesselated tiles. Kind of a let down though.



Swansea...



Freycinet National Park in the background, it would have been cool if we had the time to get up Mt Amos. Awesome sunset too...