Thursday, July 26, 2007

Tassie living

Living in Hobart is a bit isolated. The Greater Hobart area may have a population of around 220,000 but it's at the very southern end of Australia and the island itself, about the size of Ireland, has a little less than half a million people all up. This does make it open to accusations of in-breeding, etc. but in fact it's a fairly cosmopolitan place to live.

There are some advantages to living in a small-ish city like Hobart. I work about 5 minutes from the city centre, and strolling back from a meeting the other day I passed two Triumphs (admittedly one of them was our car - Ella must have parked it there) and the "City CV and Driveshaft" workshop... surely every city should have such a shop in the CBD? It would make a nice change from coffee shops.

I've noticed so many Triumph saloons around it's not funny. One guy has at least 7 in various states parked in his yard, and I've been told there's another bloke with the same "gardening" interest somewhere near Hobart.
Running home from work last night (I have to run off the local brewery's rented calories) I saw two green Triumphs - the first was a convertible Vitesse I've seen around a bit, I've yet to speak to the owner, but I noticed the dented door has been restored (still bare metal at the moment though). Then a little further along I saw a fairly tired looking Mk3 Spitfire. I've seen this car a few times now, too, and I'm intrigued as to the reason for its large bonnet scoop.

Now I've got the car garaged I'll have no excuse to getting things done on BOB. I'm currently trying to negotiate the purchase of some black BMW E46 front seats ... should help keep my arse of the floor and my back off the rail.

BOB has now done about 20,000km since we bought it two years ago - a paltry mileage really, but that's ok I guess, it means there aren't too many things to fix!

Thursday, July 19, 2007

End of an era

After eight months in Hobart living on the side of a hill with no garage and precious little flat areas anywhere near our house, we're upping sticks this weekend ... to a place with a garage. It even has an electronically operated door - wow! It's been a real pain not being able to even jack the car up, or do anything on it after dark (4.45pm at the moment) so now I can get on with some tinkering and check out oil levels, etc.