The last post from Tasmania

We visited the world famous Museum of Old and New Art (http://www.mona.net.au/) yesterday, and it was provocative to say the least. We had been warned. There are plenty of signs saying that patrons may find certain exhibits offensive. Well, I can't say I was offended...just mightily uncomfortable in many of the spaces. Physically uncomfortable in the Cloaca exhibit...a massive machine that is fed twice a day and poops once a day so the smell is atrocious...worse than a badly maintained outhouse! Mentally uncomfortable in others! One fascinating installation was a waterfall of random words, depicting bombardment of information and how ephemeral it is. Ironically one artist statement was about how accessible his art was..."the cleaning lady likes it!"  And I struggled to understand it. So, art is meant to evoke feelings, and this sure did. We were happy to have gone, and happy to leave! Saw this car outside the museum entrance...

One fabulous display in Tasmania is "The Wall" in Derwent Bridge, a very small community about halfway between Queenstown and Hobart. A wood sculptor is creating many panels in bas relief using salvaged  Huon pine. His work reminded us of the lifelike marbles in Rome where the textiles and skin appear to be alive. http://www.thewalltasmania.com/

We've enjoyed the wildlife here, but what is dismaying is seeing the carnage on the roads. Wallabies, pademelons, wombats and others. We have tried to travel in daylight so as not to add to the roadkill. We have seen the echidna a couple of times...

...and the elusive platypus!

(You have to use your imagination to see the duckbill in the centre, but know that we were very excited!)

Both of these are "monotremes", creatures that lay soft shelled eggs and express a milk-like substance onto their fur for the young to lap up. (Handy travelling with a biologist who says this is another environmental experiment.)

A white parrot--these are very noisy!

And the more colourful variety!

We are off back to the mainland tomorrow, Saturday, and will be picking up yet another rental car to drive between Melbourne and Adelaide and eventually Sydney by February 24. My next post will be from the Great Ocean Road in a few days.

The diversity of Tasmania

We are on our last few days in Tasmania and I thought I would post some favourite images showing the diversity of the landscape, from the east to the west. 

On the north-east coast...The Bay of Fire, not named this because of these gorgeous lichen covered rocks, but because early explorers saw fires lit by aboriginal people.

The beautiful sandy beaches and the huge waves...

Some of the temperate rain forest...

A big Myrtle tree, another ancient species now protected from logging...

A canopy of Black Acacia trees on the west coast...

In a forest of big eucalyptus trees in Mt. Field National Park...

Some industrial debris left from the days of tin mining in the north-east.  This is a stamp mill.

In my next post, I will tell you how we spent Australia Day, Tuesday January 26.

More Delightful Tasmanian Encounters

Since I last wrote, we have travelled into the western rainforest to the old mining town of Queenstown where the usual annual rainfall is 2 to 3 metres, but not this last year. Lake levels are low (these are lakes created from damming rivers years ago) and the bush is burning to the north east of us. We stopped in Deloraine to check on road closures, and one of the routes here was in fact closed. The stop in Deloraine was fabulous because we got to see a community art project done twenty years ago called "Yarns". How could we not stay for a while? This exhibit is four enormous panels depicting the four seasons in Deloraine and the surrounding area, the Great Western Tiers (mountains). It was three years in the making from 1992 - 1995, and seems to have involved everyone in the community. The fabric is predominantly silk and techniques are hand, machine and ribbon embroidery along with hand and machine appliqué. The panels hang in a small purpose-built theatre, and for the first ten minutes we sat and listened to a commentary as various sections were spot lit, accompanied by (of course) Vivaldi's Four Seasons. Then we had fifteen minutes to closely inspect the work. I am so impressed with how this all came together. The coordinator must have had a strong vision and a strong personality to bring it all together so well. See the website for more info: http://www.yarnsartworkinsilk.com/

We've had some more fabulous encounters, from hilarious misunderstandings due to thick accents and idiosyncratic phrases to in-depth conversations with small business folk. Regarding the former...we booked the Mountain View Motel in Queenstown on-line for three nights. When we arrived, Lloyd said to the owner, "The name is Davies". The owner went away and came back, saying "What did you say your name is?" So Lloyd repeated it, then spelled it. "Oh, Dye-vies", the man said. And we all laughed! (I was reminded of My Fair Lady, and since then my ear worm has been, "The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain...") And then the owner said, "Shall we fix you up then?" As we stared at him blankly, another woman waiting to check in said "he means pay the bill now!" And more laughter ensued. It's lovely to laugh together.

On our way out of St Helen's we stopped at the Priory Ridge Winery, (www.prioryridgewines.com) and within minutes were engrossed in a conversation with the owners who lived and worked in Banff and Canmore in the late 60s, and still keep in touch with friends in BC and AB. Julie and David have been growing grapes on her family's property for the past 9 years or so. The tasting room is an old shearing shed built 80 years ago and on the walls are old family photos and memorabilia. We bought a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc and opened it a few miles down the road to have a glass with our picnic lunch, thanks to the plastic wine glasses that she gave us...

Yesterday in the small community of Strahan we visited Tasmanian Special Timbers, and what a great showroom of slabs of wood! http://www.tasmanianspecialtimbers.com.au/index.php 

I was most taken with the statements on each one. 

I felt as though I was in a gallery enjoying carefully crafted artist statements. I commented on this to Dianne behind the desk, and she is the author. We had a delightful and wide ranging conversation about the art of story telling over the ages, aboriginal issues, colonialism, environmental protests, and so on...as I said, it was wide ranging!

First few days in Tasmania

We left Melbourne Sunday morning for an hourlong flight to Hobart, Tasmania, and after a wait of almost two hours finally got our rental car. For accommodation, we had booked two nights with ATC (Affordable Travel Club) hosts Kevin and Heather near Hobart. They had other commitments Sunday, and it was most convenient for us to show up later in the day. In the meantime, Kevin had suggested we visit Richmond, a Georgian village not too far from the airport. This is also the Coal River Valley wine region with about 30 vineyards, and we stopped at one of the first in the area, Coal Valley Vineyard for a most welcome lunch after that long wait at the airport. Richmond is indeed most picturesque wth many stone buildings intact from the early 19th C. The village was once strategically located between Hobart and the Port Arthur penal settlement, and was bypassed when a causeway was built in 1872...the town remains much as it was 150 years ago. 

Port Arthur was our destination on Monday...we arrived at 11:45 and didn't leave until after 6 pm and could have stayed longer. This World Heritage Site is a significant part of the British settlement story of Australia. It was first established in 1830 as a timber camp with convict labour. Shortly thereafter it became the prison for repeat offenders from all of the Australian colonies. The iconic Penitentiary...

...was originally built as a granary and converted into a prison with 136 cells for "prisoners of bad character" on the lower two floors and space for 480 "better behaved" convicts on the upper floors who also had hot and cold running water.

We joined a very informative 40 minute walking tour at the outset, and learned that this place was on the cusp of prison reform in the British empire. In the early to mid 1800s, British society was undergoing a huge upheaval due to the industrial revolution. Unemployment was rampant, and living conditions in the slums of London, Manchester and Birmingham was intolerable. People were desperate. There was an attempt at reform, education and training, as well as discipline and punishment, "a machine for grinding rogues into honest men". Port Arthur was a prison for men (the women convicts--about one in four were female--were housed elsewhere such as at the "Female Factory" in Hobart which we have yet to visit.) Medical care and treatment was top notch for the times, and there was a hospital for treating respiratory ailments and an asylum for the mentally ill. The hospital was destroyed in a bushfire in the late 1890s...

...as was the church...

Convict transportation ended in 1853 because authorities realized that people were committing crimes in order to gain free transportation to the gold fields! The penal settlement served out its final days as an asylum and finally closed in 1877. Many of the buildings were dismantled or destroyed in bushfires in the late 19th C, but tourists started coming in the early 20th C; this has been an important destination since then. Having convict ancestry used to be undesirable but in the last several years public sentiment has swung the other way. 

We also visited the Isle of the Dead where around 1100 people are buried. On our tour were three cute little 8 year old girls from Sydney who asked very smart questions such as " Is the headstone actually on his head?" And the guide replied very appropriately, suggesting they think of a headstone as similar to a headboard of a bed. We were told about a convict who learned about stone masonry while incarcerated and developed his signature style, that of a rope decoration around the edges of the headstone. 

Other stonemasons were not quite as adept and obviously ran out of room, didn't put spaces between words and made spelling mistakes.

After leaving Port Arthur we visited the Remarkable Caves just 15 minutes south, where some foolish young women gave me the heeby-jeebies as they balanced precariously on the edges, taking selfies...

The cave is quite remarkable...looking like the map of Tasmania...

On Tuesday we drove north-west to Bicheno for the next two nights. Nearby is a colony of fairy penguins (aka Blue penguins) and we were lucky to see them returning to their burrows that night just after dark. These were photographed in a beam of red light.