We left Melbourne this morning and flew to Hobart, Tasmania. Tasmania is about 150 miles south of the southern coast of Australia and about 300 air miles from Melbourne. Hobart was founded in 1804 as a penal colony and is Australia's second-oldest city, after Sydney. It has a population of about 215,000 and it sits on the South Pacific Ocean. We arrived around 12:30 and got to our hotel by around 1:30 and got checked in. We're located right off the harbor and the city's botanic gardens. The terrain is pretty hilly with Mt. Wellington standing over the city at about 4100 feet above sea level.
We got out and did a little sightseeing in the immediate area. There was a cruise ship in the harbor and apparently they get one about once a week, so there shouldn't be one here the rest of our stay. In this area of the city, at least, there are a lot of old, interesting buildings, including St. James Mission, a tiny little church built in 1905:
Along the waterfront we came across the Rope and Anchor Tavern, which apparently has been in business since 1807:
Here you can see some of the old buildings along the wharf, now reconstructed and in active use:
We spent a couple hours at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. The museum is housed in the former commissary built in the 1820's with convict labor and used to support the prison colony in Hobart until the early 1900's. You can see a wall for the commissary courtyard to Pat's right in this pic:
The museum chronicaled the relatively short history of Tasmania from a British penal colony to it becoming a part of an independent Australia. There were many artifacts from colonial times of the early 1800's through to the present day. As we've seen in other Australian museums, there was an extensive history (at least what is known) of the aboriginal peoples who were pretty much treated the way we treated the American Indians. Not pretty.
At the museum entrance, there was a fossilized skelaton of a plant-eating dinosaur found by a Queensland farmer about 20 years ago:
You can get some idea of how rustic the museum was, with the original floors, walls and beams, from this picture displaying items used by early settlers:
Unfortunately, right after I took this pic, I was wrestled to the floor by one of the docents and told I couldn't take pictures inside the museum. After a brutal battle with a 98-pound woman, I conceded and had to give up the fight. Needless to say, though, we did see a lot of interesting stuff.
We took a few more pics of the Harbor area to give you some idea of what the city looks like:
This was shot down Liverpool Street, which runs parallel with the harbor area:
And we saw this sculpture of a Sea Horse on the Wharf as we headed back to the room:
Nice stay in Hobart so far. Tomorrow we're headed out of town and down the Tasman Peninsula to the southeast to see some of the sights along the shore. More pics!
Pat's Paragraph...... I thought Tasmania would be very cold since it so far South, close to Antarctica. They don't even get snow here! It snows on the mountain tops, but rarely here in the city. Some of the trees on the hills are badly deformed from the winds that sweep in off the ocean. There is nothing between here and the Antarctic except ocean so when the storms start, there is nothing to stop them. The entire huge bay is surrounded by towns and as it was everywhere else we've been, there is construction everywhere. The bay must be very deep because the huge cruise ship left while we were watching, and literally just made a huge U turn in the bay and sailed out to sea.
As we were exploring the museum about all the history of the area, there was one main fact that was evident in everything you saw and read. The Dutch actually started settlements here but after the British moved in, everything was done in a ruthless, greedy and cruel manner, plundering all the natural resources. Any Aborigine was considered vermin and needed to be eradicated. The massacres were repeated again and again, using cannons with shrapnel. Any children that might have lived were turned into servants. After an agreement was finally made between the local leaders and the British in the 1800's, the tribal warriors and chiefs came into town to complete the final treaty. The men were all decked out in their finest, with their best spears and weapons. They were allowed into the fort area, and were never seen again. It is believed they were secretly shipped out at night and then were left, stranded, on some remote islands in the Strait between here and Australia. And this wasn't the worst of it.
