Matt Down Under

Ruby developer, founder of choc media, bushwalker, MacGyver fan and hobby photographer, German citizen and Australian Permanent Resident.

In 2008 I moved from Germany to Australia, the best decision of my life. On this blog you can find stories and photos about hiking in Tasmania and on the mainland, travelling, and life in Australia — my journey from Working Holiday to Permanent Residency.

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    31 posts tagged hobart

    I made it!

    Yesterday my new visa was granted.

    Suddenly everything went so fast. I few weeks ago I finalised the required medial documents and since I hadn’t heard anything from the Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC) I already started to be worried. It would have been a nightmare if the documents would have gone lost in transit.

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    Amanda Palmer is coming to Hobart

    One of the very few things I really miss in Tasmania is the live music scene I always enjoyed in Germany. Whenever a band goes on tour they play some concerts in Germany, that’s almost guaranteed. And even if they skip Germany then you can easily drive to Austria, Switzerland, or spend the weekend in London to go to the concert (something I never did, but well… I could have done).

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    Wellington Park Daywalking

    One thing I particularly like about Hobart is Wellington Park. It’s a forest reserve around the iconic Mt Wellington with quite a number of walking tracks and trails, perfect for daywalks alone, with family or friends. Last year in February I already climbed on top of Mt Wellington and it was a great day, even though I climbed down too late and missed the last bus from Fern Tree back to the city, so I needed to walk.

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    I’m really excited

    Wow, it’s past midnight here, this means today’s the day when I will catch the bus to Launceston after work. There I will do some late-night supermarket shopping, spend the night at the Arthouse and early on Saturday morning I will take the bus to Cradle Mountain for 5-10 days of (hopefully) exciting wilderness adventure on the Overland Track.

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    Knocklofty Reserve

    The first weekend after I received my new camera I went for a walk to Knocklofty Reserve, a nice park only about 3km from my place in the city. It’s not really a park, it’s more like a bushland reserve with a few walking tracks, lookouts and even wild animals.

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    Overland Track Preparations

    Last Friday we had our annual office christmas party. First we went bowling, then we had dinner at a pretty crowded mexican restaurant and when certain people became too drunk for any further activities, most of us decided to go home. Nice evening with excellent food though.

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    Playing with the new camera

    Yesterday I got my new camera, a Panasonic FZ28, I was really looking forward to it, 18x optical zoom, HD video recording and nice picture quality. Today after work I decided to go for a short walk around the waterfront in Hobart to take some test pictures and try to find the perfect settings. I’m actually more some sort of snapshot guy, I always liked cameras where I can simply use the automatic mode for everything without spending several minutes to adjust the camera settings before I take a picture, simple point-and-shoot. That’s totally different to one of my friends in Germany who seems to carry about 20kg of camera lenses with him, crazy! But his pictures are absolutely stunning, so it’s maybe worth it.

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    Breakfast in Salamanca

    I love to have breakfast in Salamanca, a lovely part of Hobart famous for it’s weekly market, art galleries and lots of nice restaurants and cafes. I especially like the banana bread at ZUM’s at Salamanca Place.

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    Change is coming

    Not only to the United States, to this website as well! Since August I’ve been working on a complete rework of this blog and a launch this weekend seems possible. I made huge progress in the last 3 weeks and the changes will be massive. You can look forward to a new design and new functionality, some parts like the picture gallery will get a complete rework. The new website will allow me to post more pictures, posting will be easier for me especially from my iPhone (the current design has some limitations), so you can expect a lot more posts with a lot more pictures, simply because it will be less complicated and thus more fun to me. I also plan to buy a new camera soon and bought a wonderful book titled ‘100 walks in Tasmania’ today. I hope I can do as many of these walks as possible, but I don’t want to head off without a proper camera, I need to get a new one this month, definitly.

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    Good old German quality

    Ever heard of Hollandia vacuum cleaners? Neither have I. I must have missed that during the last 27 years in Germany.

    But it makes me happy to see that Germany is still like a synonym for quality. I noticed that several times, companies like to use slogans like ‘German quality’ or ‘European design’ for their advertisements.

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