The weather today was a little wet and gray, so we headed southwest of Hobart down highway A-6 along the Huon River to Huonville, about 50 miles south of here. The highway is a two-lane road that runs alongside the river through a number of little towns. Our first stop was the town of Franklin, where we saw the "Wooden Boat Center", a stop Pat had suggested instead of the National Park. This was WAY cool. It is a school where they train people to build wooden boats...I didn't know they still did that. They have classes of anywhere from five to 12 people who either take a seven-week "basic" course or a 18-month course that leads to the graduates being certified boat builders. Franklin is a little town along the river and during the 1800's and up to WWII there was an active boat-building industry there. The surrounding area is rich with timber assets, including Blue Gum, which is very heavy and sturdy and is used for the ribs and keel of the boats, Huon Pine, which is used for planking and decking, and many others. This is a shot of the boat docks in Franklin:
We saw wooden sailboats anchored along the river for probably 10 miles south of Franklin on down to Geeveston.
Inside the boat center, they had a little museum with a description of the history of the area and information on how wooden boats are built. One of the highlights of the area is the May Queen, a ketch built in 1867 and actively sailed for over 100 years. The boat is now in the harbor at Hobart and is being refurbished by the Maritime Museum:
Inside the boat center there were several boats under construction by students. Two of these were small skiffs about 12 feet long:
In addition to the smaller boats, there is a 30-foot sailboat under construction by the students. It is constructed with Carvel planking, which means there are no visible seams and the planks are butted against one another and caulked with cotton string. The boat was just beautiful, and the planking was so smooth that, at first glance, I thought it must have been fiberglass or steel:
There was one boat being refurbished by students. It is the Clara, which was first launched over 100 years ago. It was originally a racing yacht but was converted to a cruiser with an engine installed sometime in the past. The Center is rebuilding it back to its original configuration:
Our guide through the facility was Andy, who has been building boats for 40 years. This is Andy beside a wooden figure he and a friend carved. Does she look familiar?:
Andy is building a boat from wood salvaged from a wooden water pipeline that supplied a hydroelectric station in the area for some 80 years. The pipeline was built like a barrel and the salvaged wood is very dense and just beautiful when it is planed down. You can see the wood surface on the inside of the hull of the "Pipe Dream":
This was one interesting place, and we have enrolled our brother-in-law, Charlie, in one of the 18-month courses. Good luck, Chuck!
About 15 miles downriver from Franklin was Geeveston, a former timbering town. This is about the extent of what Geeveston has to offer to tourists, although we did have a nice slice of cake at a local cafe:
After taking in the sights in Geeveston, we headed back to Hobart and I went over to the Maritime Museum of Tasmania. It was pretty interesting, too, and is housed in the former town hall building built around 1900. There apparently are a lot of shipwrecks off the coast of Tasmania because the museum had a lot of relics salvaged from shipwrecks. Here's a shot of the inside of the museum:
This was interesting. There is a bridge across the harbor in Hobart on the A-3 highway. Well, in 1975 the ship Lake Illawarra ran into the bridge and knocked three sections of the span into the river, as well as sinking the ship. Seven of the crew died as well as five motorists who plunged off the bridge into the river. Because of the currents, the ship is still down in the bottom of the river. The missing sections were replaced and the bridge re-opened about 33 months after the disaster. This is a model of the bridge with the ship at the bottom of the channel:
While I was down at the harbor, I took a few more shots of boats in the marina. It was raining and gray, but I think the sight was still interesting:
Pat's Paragraph.... There's not much I can add to the day's adventures so I'll comment on other things. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! It's Thanksgiving here already because your tomorrow is today for us. Got that? All the commercials on TV are selling Christmas items but it's hard to think of Christmas when it is so warm here and all the clothes for sale are what we would call summer clothes. The ads have snow, turkey, reindeer, Santa and decorated trees just like at home. If you think we have a lot of ads and commercials, you should see Aussie TV. Infomercials and ads, one after another, and the programs do not start on the hour or the half hour. It may be 4 after the hour, or 14, before the next program comes on. News is one topic that may last for 7 to 10 minutes or more, with some of the most inane questions you have ever heard. THEN they will go to another topic. The ones discussing the topic may not know anything about it but they will offer you their opinion.
Some things we have noticed here.. the lack of street signs. You could be at an intersection and there will not be a street sign on any of the street poles where the cross buttons are located. And forget about businesses or buildings being numbered. When they do number, even in hotel rooms, they are consecutive with 4 following 5 followed by 6, etc. They also have a 13th floor in the hotels. We also think there is a conspiracy of some sort concerning towel bars. Are they taxed on the number of towel bars? Is there a towel bar shortage? We don't know but Everywhere we have gone, no matter the size of the bathrooms, no matter the number of walls or the amount of wall space, there is Only One 18 inch towel bar. Two bath towels, two washclothes, two hand towels, and one bath mat, at the least, but only One towel bar! And every hotel wants you to help them save the environment by using your towels more than one time. Okay, so where do I hang them????
