Introduction to Tasmania and Hobart

When we decided to return to New Zealand, of course our thoughts turned to where else we could visit in that part of the world. Shana immediately thought of Tasmania ("Tassie" to the Aussies, who our regular readers will remember love to shorten everything).

Tasmania is the smallest Australian state with a population of about 550,000, of whom almost half live in the greater Hobart area. The island itself is larger than Sicily, but smaller than Ireland, two other islands that we have driven around on vacation. As usual, we are doing things fairly slowly. We are taking three weeks to do a full clockwise lap, arriving and leaving from Hobart, which is in the south center of the island.

After arriving on Christmas night, we spent the next few nights near Hobart in a lovely area called Acton. Our place was a cute studio cottage, and we saw many wallabies and bunnies on the propery along with the owner's two King Charles Spaniels, Molly and Morris. Sadly, we never saw the resident bandicoots, a small marsupial, but we were just happy to see live marsupials (unfortunately, we have seen too many dead ones on the roads of Tasmania).

Our first full day in Hobart was beautiful and we took the opportunity, along with many others, to drive to the top of Mount Wellington, which overlooks the entire area.

In addition to stopping at the top, we took the opportunity to do a hike along the side of the mountain, including a beautiful view of the formation known as the Organ Pipes. We even saw someone climbing them!

Later, we grabbed lunch at the Cascade Brewery, which was established in 1824.

The next day, we went into Hobart itself and visited the local museum, which is a combination history/art museum. Although not very exciting, we did start to learn a bit about Tasmanian history: not a big surprise, it started as a penal colony. The city itself is a combination of cool old buildings mixed with newer construction. This building, across from the museum may be the oldest hotel in Australia (or maybe not, there seems to be a lot of controversy about these "oldest in Australia" claims).

We also found a winery right in Hobart, and did a fantastic tasting with the winemaker. We liked the wines so much that we took a bottle with us to enjoy along the road.

On our final day in Hobart, we started the day by driving to the end of the penninsula where we were staying, hiking through a reserve to end up on a beautiful isolated beach.

Next we headed into the Coal River Valley, which is the wine region nearest Hobart. Lunch and wine tasting at Frogmore Winery was delicious and the setting was beautiful.

We ended our day in Richmond, a small town that boast the oldest surviving stone bridge in Australia, built by convict labor and opened in 1825.

We were interested to learn that the location of this bridge had been a shallow spot where the local aboriginal tribes had crossed for thousands of years. Unfortunately, the creation of a permanent structure there signaled that the white settlers had no intention of leaving. More about the history of the Tasmanian aboriginals in later posts.

Richmond itself was only worthy of a brief stop, but it has one of the more unique museums we have every seen: The Pooseum. Yes, this museum is all about poo. No, we did not go. But, you can tell just from the outside it would have been an amusing place (note the penguin on the billboard).

That was our time in and around Hobart. The following day we started our circuit by heading south, but more about that in our next post.

G'day.

Jeff and Shana