Days 10 and 11 Hobart, Tasmania

Days 10 and 11 Hobart, Tasmania

Yesterday was a travel day – and a very long one at that…. We left our Perth hotel at 8:30am and didn’t get to Hobart until well after midnight – even with the 3 hour time difference, it was a long day - - and one of those travel adventures that had it all….very chatty travelling companions (talking Rob’s ear off for over three hours), flight delays (They had to fly in an engineer in from somewhere else to sign off that they could shut down whatever was causing the warning light to flash…(?).), a freebie meal to compensate for the delay….(but run – because even the burger bars close in Melbourne airport at 8pm)…..a hotel where the owner goes home to bed and leaves your key in a little locked box that needs both mental and manual dexterity in short supply at 1am….and a LOT of coffee (In the local lingo - -long black for me and flat white with one for Rob, please….)

So..we allowed ourselves a bit of a lie in this morning and didn’t struggle down to breakfast until 9:00.

We spent the first part of the morning walking around Battery Point and Salamanca….in and out of bookshops and galleries, reading the bronze historical plaques in the pavements.  We also walked along the harbour, admiring the historical boats and trying to glimpse the top of Mt Wellington through the mist.

We spent a couple of hours at the museum – first learning about the local wildlife….(Has anyone heard of a quoll? – good Scrabble word!)….and then on a guided tour of the Governor’s secretary’s cottage where we learned about the colonial and convict history of the area.

In the afternoon, we took the Hobart Rivulet Track that follows the river for several miles out of the city centre to the Women’s Convict Factory at the foot of Mt Wellington - where the convict women and very young children were incarcerated.  Our guide at the museum told us that duck-billed platypuses are seen in the area….but the only one we saw was stuffed and in the museum, along with the Tasmanian devil (a large rat-like animal), the quolls and a few other small kangaroo-like animals whose names I have already forgotten.  We did see some ducks in the river that made us smile - -we only needed a big cat to come along and we might at least have seen a ‘duck-filled fatty pus’!

There is only one building from the Women’s Convict Factory left standing – the matron’s cottage – but the cells and yards have been marked out and some of the women’s stories are told very sympathetically in the tour.  It is easy to imagine the hard life they led in overcrowded conditions….even behind the beautiful gardens planted as a memorial. 

There is also a memorial garden to Australians who fought in the 1950-53 Korean conflict overlooking the river…it is a beautiful and peaceful place, overlooked by tall Eucalyptus trees and many types of flowering plants.
It actually has a feel of England here. It is quite easy to understand why the early English settlers chose this place – it must have felt a bit like home.