Hobart

It was a bit grey and wet in Hobart after we arrived, but improved over the weekend.  We found Hobart nice, but perhaps not particularly memorable.  There is a waterfront area with many eateries and with tourist and craft shops, which is quite interesting and provided us with several coffees and meals.  The more interesting times were the ones we spent on outings into the hinterland.

One of our first outings was an outing to "MONA" - the Museum of Old and New Art.  It's about 13 km north of the city centre, so the way to get there is on the special MONA ferry.  MONA is a privately funded art museum and opened in 2011, and is mostly below ground level, cut into the rock.  It is full of interesting, puzzling, and downright weird stuff.

Disembarking from MR1 ferry at MONA.

These sheep (not real!) stayed aboard.

A water text display (explained below).

 This display is three-storey high installation comprising a gantry holding hundreds of little computer-operated water nozzles in a row.  Every few seconds it drops a curtain of droplets which form a word, and those droplets are lit up by the row of spotlights so you can see the word as it falls to the floor and disappears.  Here you can also see the rock walls formed when the space for MONA was carved out of the earth.

A bloated car in MONA.

 MONA has all sorts of traditional and avant-garde exhibits, many of which are in dark locations, so don't photograph very well.

Our (Ibis) hotel in Hobart, during a false fire alarm evacuation.

Butterflies at the (more conventional) Museum of Tasmania in Hobart.

 Our last outing with the car was an ascent of Mount Wellington, which rises 1200 metres above Hobart providing spectacular views (on a nice day).  It snows up here in winter.

Sue showing off (not really).

Mount Wellington lookout, with Hobart below.

The lookout / shelter on Mount Wellington.

Hobart and the River Derwent below.

Mount Wellington is a long way up, leaving us very impressed by those half-marathon runners who had run up that morning!

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Port Huon, Tasmania

Port Huon and the Huon Valley are south of Hobart.  Our second day with the car we set off in that direction, also planning to ascend Mount Wellington which is just west of the city.  The day turned into one of those where not much worked out as we'd planned.  We first discovered we had picked the day of the "Point to Pinnacle" half marathon, when hundreds of people run up Mount Wellington from the city.  This meant the road was closed, and we spent about half an hour sitting in stationary traffic waiting for the police to let us through.

So we set of instead for the famous Willie's Apple Shed in the Huon Valley, which promised an interesting visit to an apple-growing operation, and of course coffee!  We should have checked their website - when we arrived half an hour later we found it we were still an hour too early for opening time.  Instead we carried on south.

This road goes deep into the south of Tasmania, and up into the forests, but we really only had time to go to Greeveston.  There it was actually very hot in the sun, so after a short wander through the town we headed north again.

A striking wooden statue in Greeveston of a respected local doctor - Doctor Kyle.

The Huon River near Port Huon.

Perhaps the most interesting stop of the day was at the Wooden Boat Centre in Franklin, where they practise traditional methods of wooden boat manufacture and refurbishment, with a little modern technology thrown in.  The Huon River provides fairly extensive and sheltered waters for boating, and on this day there was a regatta of traditional boats on the river.

The Wooden Boat Centre sits beside the Huon River, in Franklin.

Huon Pine is a unique and excellent material for boatbuilding.

A kayak from light timber covered in a fibreglass shell.

The Wooden Boat Centre.

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Port Arthur, Tasmania

Port Arthur is 100 km to the east of Hobart city, out on the end of a peninsular which is almost an island, connected only by a narrow strip of land at Eaglehawk Neck.  The remoteness of Port Arthur served it well as a convict settlement (about 1830 to 1870) as the location made escape all but impossible.  One prisoner tried to escape by wrapping himself in a kangaroo hide as a disguise and hopping away, but when guards saw him they thought he would make a good meal and tried to shoot him.  He gave himself up.

We hired a car and drove to Port Arthur on a sunny but windy day.  We learnt that much of the Tasmanian countryside here looks like the rest of Australia, with a predominance of eucalypt trees.  I think we had expected wetter, more rain-forest conditions.

The "Tesselated Pavement" reserve near Eaglehawk Neck.

The rock is naturally splitting into fairly neat rows of "tiles".

On the way we stopped near Eaglehawk Neck to look at the "tesselated pavement" (above) and the blowhole, Tasman's Arch, and the Devil's Kitchen.  Those last three are related caves and arches formed where the sea has eroded deep slots into the cliffs.

The high cliffs near the blow hole.

Tasman Arch (see man at top right for the scale).

Looking south down the coast towards Port Arthur.

The coast around Hobart is deeply indented with many inlets and islands, resulting in hundreds of kilometers of coastline.  The road is never too far from the ocean.

Port Arthur itself now operates as a tourist attraction, with a large new visitor's centre nearing completion, and ticket office extracting money from your wallet as you enter.  Apparently it has been a popular destination ever since the prison closed back in 1877.  It is now a very pleasant estate with mature trees and extensive lawns and gardens.  The lunatic asylum is now a cafe, and there is a modern catamaran running cruises from the jetty out to nearby islands connected to the prison.

In the grounds of the Port Arthur historic site.

Our cruise stopped off on the Island of the Dead - the prison cemetery.

The headstones on the island are almost exclusively for prison staff and their families.

Leaving the (little) Island of the Dead.

The ruins of the penitentiary.

Our guide giving as a shady break.

The roofless church.

No services today.

We found Port Arthur more interesting than we anticipated, and run as an efficient tourism operation rather than the abandoned site we expected.  The 200 km drive there and back took us through past countryside and coastlines, so it was a satisfying day out.

However I can't recommend the fish and chips from the "Dunalley Fish Market", unfortunately!

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