Down under down under

Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Tasmania, Australia
We flew to Hobart from Melbourne and rented a car for a week. Given that we don't want to spend too much of each day driving, and that the winter days are rather short, we should have given ourselves an extra day or two, which would have allowed us to complete a circuit of the island. However, we enjoyed some nice walks and had a good visit. Hobart was chilly and damp at the time, but we made a day-trip to Mt Field, where we bought a Tasmania parks pass for $60, and we viewed the three-tiered Russell Falls and walked the Tall Trees circuit. The eucalyptus is the tallest hardwood tree in the world as well as the tallest flowering plant, up to 100 metres, and these are some of the tallest examples of the species. A pademelon hopped into the brush. This is not a melon, like you were thinking, it's a kind of wallaby.

On the way back we went to the recently-opened Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), mostly large modernist works and installations, imaginatively displayed in interesting spaces . I haven't seen anything quite like this museum, and I think it is destined to make its mark. If it were in a more populated part of the world, I daresay it would already be a sensation.

The best walk we did in Tasmania was a circuit on a windy day at Wineglass Bay on the east coast, passing two beaches with white sand and clear water, but high waves on the west side of the peninsula.  I could hardly keep up to Frances, and she attributed her sustained speed to the expectation of coffee. Also on the east coast, we had a wet walk at Bivouac Bay. From St Helen's it's worthwhile to drive 10 km east to Bay of Fires or Binalong Bay, which has beautiful beaches with clean sand and red boulders resembling Homer Simpson's head. Detouring onto a gravel road west of St Helen's brought us to short trails leading to St Columba Falls and Ralph's Falls. Another nice short walk with a surprising payoff was at Alum Cliffs west of Westbury.

Port Arthur in the southeast was originally a penal colony, a very interesting place to spend half a day .    Some buildings survive, with period furniture, including the commandant's house.  Others are in ruins, including the flour mill, later used as a penitentiary. In its time, the methods used were considered enlightened, inspired partly by the ideas of Jeremy Bentham. The $30 admission included an impressive 40-minute introductory tour and a 25-minute tour of the harbour, "one of the finest in the southern hemisphere." 

(In Australia and NZ you are always being shown things that are the best (or second best) in the southern hemisphere. For example, that ordinary-looking structure was, in the 1930s, the second-tallest building in the southern hemishpere. "Yes, Ted, but this man has notched up the second-greatest number of runner-up finishes in a major tournament of any left-hander in the history of the sport.")

Brickenden Gardens and farm at Longford also improved our understanding of Australian history.

The only real mountain scenery we saw was at Cradle Mountain, on a day with a lot of slushy snow on the ground. We had planned to walk around one of the small lakes, but it was too wet. I did go alone on a short walk, and as a result missed seeing a wild wombat that Frances saw. Interestingly, it was strictly against the rules for anyone to ride standing on the shuttle buses, requiring some long waits to get back to the visitor centre, but people (some of whom hadn't seen ice before) were slip-sliding dangerously on the little asphalt paths beside the bus shelter, which two minutes with a snow shovel or chipping tool could have fixed.

We saw several more kangaroos and wallabies in Tasmania. I had thought they lived only in flat open places like the outback, but they can hop up a steep slope in thick forest.

Comments

2025-02-14

Comment code: Ask author if the code is blank