Pics from Day Trips with Bert and Jan

Here are some long-awaited pics from some of the trips we took with our friends Bert & Jan Stam from Chilliwack, British Columbia, Canada. As I put the pictures up, I realized they weren't exactly in order chronologically; however, they are basically in order within each trip.

Here is Bert with his new hat that he got at Salamanca Market in Hobart. Salamanca Market is a Tasmanian craft and produce market held every Saturday down on the waterfront in Hobart. A street is filled with over 300 booths and tents selling just about anything. After careful time and thought, Bert selected a good Ozzie hat for himself. With or without the hat, Bert is always one cool guy- though he would vehemently deny it.

Bert wasn't the only one who was looking at hats. Jan and Martha were trying on a couple. Not exactly their best choice for church hats, but amazingly cute!

Here is our crew just finishing a bratwurst lunch break while shopping and sightseeing at Salamanca Market.

We took a little cruise together out of Strahan, a little town four hours northeast of Launceston. This is our tour boat heading out through historic Hell's Gates. Hell's Gates is the dangerously narrow and shallow entrance to Macquarie Harbor on Tassie's west coast. Inside Macquarie Harbor is the famous Sarah Island penal colony. It was a place of secondary punishment for convicts sent to Tassie who re-offended.

Here is a picture looking back at Hell's Gates from the Southern Ocean.

Sarah Isaland was one of the most notorious penal colonies. It was known for its harsh conditions and corruption. Eventually Sarah Island was closed as it was replaced by Port Arthur near Hobart. Here are some ruins of the soldiers' barracks on the island.

After we toured Macquarie Harbor, Sarah Island, and went up the Gordon River, we went back to the town of Strahan. There we saw an advertisement for a play about the true story of the last convict-built boat on Sarah Island. The convicts stole the ship and sailed to Chile. Some escaped from there to America or Jamaica, but others were deported back to Tassie again. We had thought we would simply watch the play, but folks from the audience were pulled into it. Yours truly got to play the part of a hero of sorts and then die quietly afterward.

We spent the night in Strahan and drove north to Stanley to see the Nut.
The pic is of Bert, Martha, Jan, and I aboard a small, rocking boat for a one-hour "Seal Tour."


Yes, we got to see seals on the Seal Cruise. Quite up-close, in fact. The only challenge was to take a picture that actually caught the object without blurring or totally missing the intended subject due to the rocking of the boat in the waves and the movement of the animals. It didn't help that it was necessary to zoom in quite a lot to get a good photo.

This is the Nut as seen from the seal cruise boat. It is a big piece of rock sticking up out of the ocean. It has a fairly flat top and there is a chair lift to the top for those preferring not to try the steep hike. Many scientists believe it to be a volcanic plug.

This and the following pics were taken from the chair lift on the way up the Nut. For some odd reason, our camera quit working near the top and started working again once we got down. Murphy's law, perhaps? The view from the Nut is spectacular, though, and these pics do not even begin to capture it.

After visiting the Nut, we headed east and then south back to Launceston. On the way, we stopped at the Creative Paper Factory in Burnie. It is a very artsy place with paper artists working in residence and sculptures made from paper on display. They make their own paper from all sorts of things, even kangaroo poo. We almost didn't stop here, but seeing we all had coupons for a free tour, we gave it a go. It was informative and fun.

Check it out! There are larger displays, like two old men playing checkers and a jazz group singing and playing by a paper piano.... but for some *ahem* reason this one stood out as special.

Here are Bert, Jan, and Martha making a piece of paper with a "Creative Paper" water mark. This paper was not made with kangaroo poo, just various types of cloth and fiber.

The day after returning from Stanley, we continued our three-day touring marathon with a cruise of the historic Tamar River that flows all the way down to Launceston. We started with a short excursion into the Gorge, and then turned around and went north halfway up to the ocean.

On the way up we got to see a pair of white-bellied sea eagles! Even better, we managed to get a decent photo of them. :)

On the west side of the Tamar, there are a number of netted vineyards where the grapes are grown that will eventually supply their life juice to make world-famous (right, folks?) Tasmanian wines. (What? You've never heard of any Tassie wines?? No, you know you love the "Ninth Island" Chardonnays and Merlots... you just have a bad memory for names!)


And finally, we made it up to the Batman Bridge. It's a fascinating piece of construction and the only bridge across the Tamar. It's also the place we'll leave you for now... hope you enjoyed the ride!

Dear friend's and family,

Martha and I have returned home from a busy week of traveling and Bible studies.

We have been all over the island with some friends of ours who have been visiting from Chilliwack, BC. We had a marvelous time with them getting to know more about the history and scenic beauty of Tassie. Lord willing, you guys will be able to see some of the pictures in the coming days- sorry about the delay for those who have been waiting with belated breath for said pics.

Our friends Bert and Jan Stam arrived in Tas on Saturday March 8 and they flew back to BC Thursday the 20th. We had an opportunity to spend the weekends with them and toured Tassie with them the 17th-20th. There fellowship was a blessing ans was catching up about things in Chilliwack HRC.

The Lord help held for the Bible studies and sermons in the midst of this blessed but busy time. In the Tuesday night Bible study we continued working our way through Colossinas. We had our 19th Bible study on Colossinas and we covered 4:2-6. The Wednesday night monthly "Puritan Bible Study" with the friend in Low Head (almost an hour North of Launceston) we began considering the doctrine of the church. The study was a quick serve survey of some historic issues with the doctrine of the church and the puritans, the relevance of those issues for us today, and a consideration of some of the Bible's pictures of the church and extreme value of the church to Christ and thus it should be to us as well.

Well this is all for now.

The Lord's blessings to all.

This post's pictures were put together on February 19th. However, one particularly stubborn picture resisted being put up on the web, so the whole post was postponed for much longer than we intended!

After that week, we did some traveling and visiting in Hobart, Terry preached there and took chapels, we went to the SPC church camp, we crashed at home, we got visitors from Canada, Martha had a happy 21st birthday with friends, and we are now back into life here in full swing. That's the short version of the last few weeks' goings-on, anyhow. 

This coming weekend and the first half of next week will be also be spent with our Canadian visitors as we join them for some sightseeing around the island. It's wonderful to have Bert and Jan Stam here in Tasmania.

These first pictures are from an outing to the beach at Bridport that Terry and I took on the 14th. Why on the 14th of February, one might ask? It seemed like a good day for it. :D Here is an old pier extending into the surreal blue of the ocean... too picturesque to pass up!

I am happy to be out in the sunshine with the fresh salt air around me and my beloved there with me.

Terry was quick to settle in on our blanket with a good book. A cat curled up by the fire couldn't be more comfortable, I think. I love how the vivid scrub contrasts boldly with the muted colors of rock and sand and the pervasive blues of sky and sea.

The view to the right includes a haze of mountains under a low horizon of faraway clouds.

No, Terry's not working on a sand castle. He's gathering some sand for me to use in house decor, specifically for filling two vases into which I put some artificial greenery. What a sweetheart!

On the left-hand side, a scrubby tree shelters a shady spread of sand enclosed by rock.

Terry is looking at... some unknown treasure discovered on the beach. It wasn't gold, though, or I would have remembered it.

Another view of the scrub. Olive-green is predominant in the Australian landscape overall, we find, where greens are to be seen. And that's all for the sea shore.... it was a lovely spot and we look forward to returning some time.

In further culinary adventures...

We found that the amount of tomatoes in the garden was becoming overwhelming. Dennis Miller had kindly donated bottles with lids, rubber rings and clasps to store fruit in. So I thought about stewing the tomatoes and bottling them, or just preserving the fresh fruit itself. But I have not yet been able to screw up the courage to attempt the complicated-looking processes outlined in various cookbooks... not by myself. Visions of shattered glass and tomatoes all over the kitchen float morbidly through my mind. No, maybe next year. So instead, the tomatoes got cut up for tomato soup! The flavor is really as good as the color.

Butter, onions, and herbs simmer in the pot. No more pictures were taken, but when the soup had been combined and processed and returned to the pot with heavy cream, the whole pot was full almost to the brim. After one supper of tomato soup, we thought about the evils of not having a chest freezer and the blessings of having friends with whom we might share our abundance. Accordingly, dinner on Sunday with a family of six resulted in a much reduced pot of soup coming home, the contents of which took just one more delicious meal to finish off. Terry now firmly believes in the virtues of homegrown tomatoes and declares that homemade tomato soup has no comparison with the canned stuff.

A box of potatoes was also garnered from the garden this year. No need to buy for a good while; these taters will keep for a good while in the cupboard.

Finally, an exciting development at the Klaver household in February was the visit of an amiable praying mantis. Of course, our guest was first invited into a glass room so that our interaction would not be hindered by the restlessness sometimes caused in six-legged creatures by too much freedom. However, our fair friend was not quite comfortable in his new accommodations. We think he's not used to sitting this way.

So we let him out by our back door to allow him to exhibit more fully his purpose in showing up so unexpectedly there.

Before long, it became clear that he really just wanted to enjoy the challenge of a steep vertical climb in the warmth of artificial light. We were happy to oblige, seeing we were able to provide the coveted equipment for that exciting exercise.

He got a foot or two stuck in the web and we saw him valiantly working on this problematic obstacle with his mandibles, but Terry helped him to speedily overcome it by tearing away some webbery with a camellia bush leaf that was handy. Before long, hurrah! He made it to the top!

And having reached the summit after such peril, he gravely resumed his habitual praying position.

That's it for now, folks. We look forward to putting up some Hobart pictures in the near future. God bless you all.

Dear friends & family,

Sorry we have not been posting as schedule over the last couple of weeks. Martha spent a lot of time organizing pictures for a post and then faced some technical difficulties. She would've finished the post last week but we have been in Hobart.

We stayed with Pastor Ian Smith and his wife Mary. I had a wonderful opportunity Friday to take a chapel at the Seabrook Christian school. I also took the Communion preparatory service Saturday night, the Communion, the services, and a Youth Group meeting. We drove back Monday in time to visit some families from another church and a family visiting them from Grand Rapids. It was a blessed time.

Today, Tuesday, has been a good but busy day-and it is barely half over. Chatting with family, four loads of laundry, cooking a few dishes for various activities, several phone calls, e-mails, internet searches, and a little bit of everything talking with the US consulate in Melbourne in regards to Martha's immigration and name change, and baby's birth certificate, social security number, and passport. All we have left is for Martha to finish with family, continue some cooking, watching a pregnancy exercise video, pack for the drive down to Hobart, and go to the library. I will finish this post, cook dinner, review for the Bible study, and then we're off to the Bible study.

Wednesday we hope to visit Port Arthur. Thursday a few families from the congregation in Hobart, and then Friday through Sunday the SPC church camp.

Lord willing their will be more posts coming next week and their should be plenty of pictures.

Thanks for your patience.

Love through Christ,

terry & Martha

Hello all. Please forgive the lack of a post last week. A few things prevented: I was out visiting on the day I usually post, I became fascinated with the time-consuming joy of enhancing photos on the computer, and then Blogger was wretchedly slow on several occasions when I began uploading these photos and finally gave up for the day in sheer frustration. Now that they're up I hope you'll enjoy the parade of pictures and excuse all the experimentation with matting, blurring, and cropping.

And for all who commented on the last post with kind and thoughtful words of advice and encouragement - thank you very much! I had meant to reply to the comments earlier but did not get to it. Please be assured that I read and appreciate each one. I'll try to be more on top of keeping up with comments in the future. 

What's like a picnic with a friend? My friend Jeannette invited me a while ago to trek out with her to the two-mile train tunnel near Lilydale and have a picnic there together. We had a lovely time, and I appreciated the break with normal routine very much. Though the day's schedule ended up being stretched a bit (we left after 2pm rather than the planned 10am), the whole adventure was filled with fun fellowship.

Here is the feast set before us... bread and ham, mortadella and salami, tomatoes and cucumbers, crackers and cheeses, mocha brownies and pineapple... it was truly lovely. And with artistic flair, Jeanette whipped out the candlesticks from the back of the car. No, they were not lit; they were just there for the effect. A meal that is beautifully presented accents the pleasure of its taste with the pleasure of its sight. This was a double feast! 

Jeannette also had a few leis in the back of her car for a rainy day - or in this case for a sunny day. When she brought them out, the festivities began! Unfortunately, I only have a few goofy pictures of her which I would not put online without express permission, so that's it for the picnic expedition. In the background, though, you can see the train track that we followed into the tunnel. While in there, we enjoyed experimenting with the special acoustic qualities of the structure. It's a great place to warble.

"Back at the ranch," the harvest has been continuing, though it is now nearly at an end. The long-awaited day came last week when Terry decided the sweet corn was ready to be picked. Look at those kernels! Hurrah! It's ripe!

Here's a pile of the green-sheathed golden corn heaped on our back porch. Half the stack went to friends from church, and the rest was packed away into the freezer... except for a few ears ready for supper.

Terry couldn't wait till it was cooked to sink his teeth into it. There's nothing like sweet corn fresh from the garden!

Peter Rabbit would be delighted with all the carrots that grew. Some got longer than others, but they all have a lovely, sweet crisp taste that size doesn't change.

The cherry tomatoes have thrived and produced beautifully as well as the big tomatoes. It is amazing to taste the difference in home-grown tomatoes; they are so sweet that it is not hard to believe that they are a fruit after all. 

And now for the next installment of the Klaver home and furnishings for faraway family who want to see what it looks like in our wonderful wee house in Tasmania.

Here's a view of our bed with the quilt Terry's mom made for us. She even let me pick out the pattern and fabrics with her. It turned out to be absolutely gorgeous, as you can see. And above it, the canopy Ava helped me with is installed, thanks to our friend and elder Pat Connors. It consists of some sheer midnight chiffon draped over a bar above the bed and then through two rings on either side. It's high enough that it certainly won't ever get in the way when sitting up, and still adds a bit of soft elegance to the bedroom. I'm so happy with how it turned out. Sorry that a full view of the canopy and the bed is practically impossible to capture... but hopefully you get the idea. 

Here's the print that Terry and I got in Maui just before we left. We had been amazed by all the art in local galleries; Maui is apparently an art center on the scale of Paris and New York due to the volume of rich tourists and entranced artists who spend time there. However, we almost despaired of finding anything we liked that would be affordable. But God directed us just before we left to an amazing deal on this print which the artist retouched personally. It is opposite our bed and a wonderful reminder of our island honeymoon. The idea of having two sconces for candles had long been a dream of mind which also seemed impossible to fulfill, but a few weeks ago I was delighted to find these two - and at a reasonable price, too!  My skillful husband spray painted them black, and Pat kindly helped install them amid warnings of house fires and smoke alarm problems. So far, though, they have served beautifully and caused no problems at all.

Here's an ingenious twist on the wreath idea (haha - get the pun?)... and it was only $3 on a post-Christmas sale at Jenerick. The candle was the same price, and altogether the idea of a vibrant dry wreath really struck my fancy. It is currently resting atop a toy box / window seat that we have in the living room. It will likely be useful to have something on hand for the young one to occupy himself with when we are spending family time or having visitors in the living room.

Here's the lovely fountain Terry and I found after hunting high and low for something small, splashy, and affordable. Most fountains on the market seem to be made for rich men's gardens. But God graciously allowed us to find something suitable, and I was delighted. I love fountains. The shells are all native to Tasmania, except for the spiny ones in the back which we bought in Maui.

The theme of shells continues with the little glass candle-holders we found in Ross one day. And this beautiful verse is a good reminder of the essence of our identity - the beloved of God as evidenced in Christ's payment for our sins, and those who seek to live in that love for Him and for our neighbors.

Here is the organ our friend Lorraine gave us. It is now in the living room so I can play on occasion as Terry reads. I'm not trained in classical music, and when I was younger I learned to play on a piano, but on the organ I can manage my way through most Psalters and hymns given enough time. I enjoy doing that.

Here's the book case where my books and our cd's are kept. The study's shelving was too full to accommodate more than Terry's library. My collection was rather haphazard, and includes some Bible study books, baby books, recipe books, and mostly literature books from school days. 

Here is the table where our meals are had; it can be expanded to seat six when we have guests.

 And finally, a gorgeous summer rose, tinted with the irresistible warmth of sunrise. This photo was not touched up at all; God's coloring of this piece of art is perfect, isn't it?