Wednesday, February 22, 2017

 

Old Hobart Town

































Hobart is the capital of Tasmania. It was founded in 1803 as a penal settlement and, because of its superb harbour, quickly became a centre of whaling, sealing and shipbuilding. Actually, today the fastest ships in the world are built in Hobart by Incat engineering. Hobart is the second oldest Australian state capital, after Sydney. Just north-east of Hobart is the town of Richmond, and here you can see a model of just how Hobart was in the 1820s. The model village, Old Hobart Town, is historically accurate. It has all the buildings to scale and also has small people doing their daily chores. Visitors are given a map of both old and new Hobart so that you can check out how the parts of the city you know have changed. One big change is right where we stayed. The bottom photos show the dock area. The model shows Hunter Island, connected to the town by a causeway. The "now" photo is of the same area, looking along the causeway from the town (out of our hotel window). You can see that the area near the causeway has been filled in. Some of the old buildings are still there to the left of the roadway, but all of the area to the right of the road is reclaimed land. Our hotel is just where the old causeway joined the mainland. If you are interested in history, a visit to Old Hobart Town in Richmond is a must.

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Tuesday, February 14, 2017

 

Back From Travels in Tasmania

I am just back from an exciting fortnight traveling in Tasmania. Dad and I had never been to Tassie, so Mum organized our travels around Australia's island state. We drove over 2,500 kilometers and I have to say that some of the roads that Tasmania calls highways are not what the rest of the world would; frankly, some of them are really third-class roads. Anyhow, here I am in the first picture waiting for our aircraft to be readied for the flight from Melbourne across Bass Strait to Hobart, the capital of Tasmania. We made Hobart our base for exploring, with a couple of nights in other places, but most days we came back to this view over the Hobart docks. There is always something happening in docklands and I spent hours at the window watching boats of all sizes from cruise ships to fishing boats. The bottom images show me helping with navigating the car on one of our longer drives, and relaxing on a cruise in a World Heritage area. Dad has the photos all downloaded, so over the next few weeks I will show you some of the best parts of Tassie (that Aussie-speak for Tasmania).

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