South Tasmania

Port Arthur

We drove there again.  People told us we should.  Once a granary converted into a prison exclusively for men and boys the grounds occupy 334 acres on a circle of land connected to mainland Tasmania via a narrow and short neck of land, Eaglehawk Neck.  Prison guards and dogs positioned on the neck once prevented convicts’ escape attempts via land. 

The early Australian convict system consisted of eleven sites across the country including Port Arthur and Cascades Women’s Factory which became the world’s first attempt to colonize a new territory with convicts. 

Only the walls of the penitentiary are left today as after the prison closed, many people wanted to sweep the prison system’s dark history under the rug.  Buildings were sold and bricks from the penitentiary building were sold or pilfered for other uses.  Only ruins are left of the once forty buildings that made up the prison. The Commandant’s House, the Church, the Guard Tower, and cottages for superintendents, clergymen, and priests are intact today and restored to their former beauty.  The sweeping park-like grounds were green and beautiful and evoked a feeling of melancholy.

In the prison’s 50-year operation, one commandant in particular, Charles O’Hara Booth, the first commandant of Port Arthur Penal Settlement, made significant progress in instituting prison reform.  Men were taught to read and write.  A small library was there for their use.  In their assigned hard-labor tasks, men learned skills and trades like shipbuilding, ship repair, farming, carpentry, blacksmith, and more.  This not only prepared the men for outside life but also made Port Arthur island almost self-sufficient and profitable.

Yet prison life was hard.  Inmates were assigned one to a cell barely big enough to lie down.  And any indiscretions were punished swiftly, fairly, and harshly.  It was a prison after all.  Boy children as young as 9 were sent to this penal settlement as convicts.  In the 1800s, the age of consent was seven in England.  An “artful dodger” snatching a bun was sentenced to prison just as any man might be.  Again Commandant Booth stepped up. He recognized the need to separate boys from men and built a penitentiary just for juvenile boys on a nearby island in the bay.

It seems that Australia and Georgia, Maryland, and Virginia have a bit in common.

The site also marks the beginning of Australia’s gun control.  In 1996 a twenty-six-year-old used to Colt AR-15 to kill 35 people and wounded 23 more—most of whom were simply tourists visiting Port Arthur.  It was the worst mass murder in Australia’s history and triggered immediate gun reform.  In just two weeks after the massacre, a national gun registry program, a waiting period for gun purchases, heavy restrictions on automatic and semi-automatic rifles as well as pump-action shotguns, and a national buy-back program were put in place.  Over 640,000 weapons were turned-in in a massive buyback program.  Martin Bryant is now serving 35 consecutive life sentences without parole in a psychiatric prison in Hobart.

Bruny Islands

We were excited to visit this remote, largely unoccupied island just off the western shore.  We hoped we might see wildlife.  Except for poor animals killed in the night along the road,  So far we have found no wallabies, no roos, no Tasmanian Devils, no pademelons, and no wombats    Just a 20-minute ferry ride away, Bruny Island is a very pretty place with few houses, a cheese making family, a raspberry farm, a couple of caravan parks, and a handful of restaurants.  We found and hiked walks we had read about and climbed the 2nearly 300 steps to the top of the lookout on the Neck between the north and south Burny Islands. The lookout is dedicated to Truganini, the woman known as the last individual solely of Aborginal Tasmanian descent. While the panoramic views of the coastline were beautiful as all seashore sights are, we saw no wildlife.  In the sands below the tall windblown lookout were hundreds of burrows for the Great Shearwater or muttonbirds and tiny penguins but they were all out to sea – just as their natural instinct commands them.

A few miles farther on, the mystical tract in the Mavista Rainforest made our day.  The hike was quiet and solitary with tinkling flowing streams, ferns forests as tall as trees, and magnificent mosses, thick, velvety, and green as only mosses can be growing on the ground, on trees, and deadwood.  Surely elves live here.

Cascades Brewery

At the foot of Mount Wellington is Australia’s oldest and largest brewery.  Our hour-long tour through the Cascades Brewery was on Saturday so no work was in progress.  Our 15-person tour group had the place to ourselves.  It was interesting and fun to taste malted barley grains, and grains of roasted barley and to sniff hops—very stinky, by the way, and to learn the steps necessary to make and flavor a good brewsky.  But the real fun began after our tour where we all returned to the Cascades tour pub and were given a flight of beers for a tasting.  I’m not a beer drinker although I will have one if the beer is icy cold on a very hot day.  We tasted four different beers: a light, pale ale, something else, and a stout.  I never got to the stout and gave mine away – so did several others.  By the time I finished my first of the 2-ounce samples on the flight, I had made friends with folks on my end of the table.   During the factory tour, these men were quiet as mice but in the tasting, they came alive.  I learned that the six Aussies I was sitting with were long-time friends who met in high school and every year since have made a multi-day trip together.  By the time we all finished our tastings, it was time to say goodbye and pass well wishes with great handshakes and hugs.

Farm Gate Market

Hobart has classy outdoor markets!  This especially groovy one is on Bathurst Street.  Ordinarily a quiet commercial street, three city blocks are blocked from traffic to host the Sunday morning event.  I delight in and rarely miss outdoor markets and this one is a good one with homemade cheeses, glorious oversized berries, just-picked apples, and on and on.  Sadly the weather was cold and windy which hardly put a damper on the crowd but we didn’t linger.  I bought a huge head of red lettuce for our salad that night and we shared a Vietnamese brisket sandwich which was unbelievably delicious!  We also snagged two big doughnuts – said to be very expensive but worth it.  Yep, they were $6 each but indescribably good!  We shared one and saved the other for later.

Before I close I have to mention “our home” for the past two weeks.  It is larger than a tiny house but just as efficient.  Not an inch is wasted; concise is my word to describe it.  Immaculately kept with modern fixtures and furnishings, it has a brand-new feel and appearance but the guest book tells me it has been an Airbnb property for a good while now.    The apartment is attached to the owner’s house and we both are just steps from the River Derwent.  We are greeted with a lovely view of the river, the mountains, and the Hobart cityscape every morning as we leave the house.  The very best thing about the apartment is the owner, or I should say the owner’s longtime partner, Dragan or D as he prefers to be called.  Out of the country tending to an elderly parent, the owner, Simone entrusted our stay to D who met us as we arrived at the house to ensure we had everything we need for a comfortable stay.  He had stocked the house with milk, cereal, butter and jam, juices, croissants, snacks, and a bottle of champagne.  I can say for certain that we seldom get that kind of welcome in other Airbnb rentals.  During the next two weeks here we crossed paths with D several times; we always stopped to have a good chat with each other.  Last night he joined us for drinks and stayed for spaghetti dinner.  The conversation was lively and super interesting.  He said he’s never had tenants who made dinner for him.  Originally from Serbia, D moved to Hobart from Sydney to begin a life with Simone 18 years ago.  This young gentleman was a pleasure to get to know, a super host, and an amazing ambassador to Tasmania!

Tomorrow we leave Hobart driving north.  I will miss this sweet little city but look forward to seeing the rural more rustic parts of this Australian state.  The next few weeks promise to be grueling though with a lot of driving and living out of a suitcase in a different apartment or hotel every 3 or four nights.  This is not my style of traveling at all but we must get the full flavor of this huge island.  I have three things on my list of things to see:  Tasmanian wildlife, starry night skies, and the Aurora Australis, the southern hemisphere’s answer to the Northern Lights.

Adios amigos!