Month: December 2018

From Hobart, we drive north.

We stop for lunch in Tarraleah. In the nearby fountain, a momma duck herds her ducklings.

On our way towards the west coast, we visit the Wall in the Wilderness. This is a project of sculptor Greg Duncan to carve a mural in wood describing life in this part of Tasmania. They have a strict ‘no photos’ policy, but fortunately, Google once again comes to the rescue, as you can see here.

On our way to Strahan, we pass through Queenstown, a former mining area.

Below is Tas, our two-week campervan rental. He – yes, he’s a ‘he’ – is actually an upgrade. Much newer, but lacking in character. And an un-ergonomic configuration that has us banging our heads daily and tut-tutting about the user-unfriendly design.

The approach to Queenstown is a windy steep road – lots of fun.

After a few days in Strahan, we drive to Cradle Mountain.

We never get to see it like this. For the entire time we are in the area, we endure gale-force winds, torrential rain, and temperatures hovering around zero. Fortunately, there’s a comfy lodge to hang around in during the day.

We drive through the mountainous region around Mount Cradle on our way to Launceston.

Unbelievably, we run short of wine. We visit the Josef Chromy winery to stock up. Tasmania produces excellent pinot noirs.

Our caravan park has two horses, Lauren and Greta.

Greta enjoys an apple she mooches off Maria.

In the middle of the country is the historic small town of Ross.

We make our way to the Freycinet Peninsula.

We take a little sea cruise around to Wineglass Bay.

Along the way, a pod of dolphins head for our boat and surround it with their sleek, torpedo-like forms.

They seem to enjoy racing alongside – and in front of – our boat.

We make another wine stop at Devil’s Corner.

This happens to be the first Tasmanian wine we try on arrival. By a happy accident, we come across it unplanned on our drive south.

More mountainous scenery.

We spend some time around Richmond, another historic town. It contains Australia’s oldest bridge, completed in 1825.

Sight or Insight of the Day – Tasmania part two

In the small coastal town of Swansea, we find this seasonal decoration of  Santa’s sleigh being pulled by kangaroos.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas…

A brief report on our first few days in Tasmania.

First thing, we plan to visit the MONA. We discover it’s closed on Mondays. We change tack and head for Port Arthur instead.

On the way, we come across the Unzoo. This turns out to be a fabulous place to see Tasmanian devils close up.

“Hell is empty and all the devils are here.” ― Shakespeare, The Tempest

Poor devils – they’re plagued with DFTD, which threatens to wipe them out. Devil facial tumour disease only appeared in the 90s, but is taking a severe toll on the Tasmanian devil population. It’s rare that a species becomes endangered through nature itself rather than through the shitty behaviour of humans, but this is the case.

They’re cute, but not exactly cuddly. Anyway, they don’t look anything like their Warner Brothers namesake.

Although they do share unspeakably powerful jaw strength. According to Wikipedia:

‘The Tasmanian devil has the most powerful bite relative to body size of any living mammalian carnivore, exerting a force of 553 N (56.4 kgf).’

We carry on to Port Arthur. Originally a dreaded penal colony, it is now a pleasant place to walk around.

Hobart is a pleasant small port city. Very civilized.

Eventually we arrive at the MONA. This place is astounding.

Most of it exists underground, carved out of the living Tasmanian sandstone.

It’s private. It is founded by a local Hobart man, David Walsh. He made a lot of money as a gambler. He has no background in the art world. And he has built an institution – no, that’s too stuffy a word – the man has built a space-where-stuff-happens-that-is-endlessly-fascinating-to-experience. We need a new word for this.

New York, London, Paris, Berlin (and Sydney, and Melbourne) – eat your hearts out. You have nothing like this.

Below is UK artist Richard Wilson’s ’20:50′.

‘… a room flooded with engine oil. A waist-high barrier extends into the room allowing viewers to walk into it without touching the still, black mass. Museum staff repeatedly tells viewers not to touch it. ‘ – Marcus Teague, BROADSHEET Melbourne

I saw this at the Saatchi Gallery in London decades ago. </End of art brag>

This is an interesting experiment.

The MONA combines bleeding-edge modernism and the shatteringly unconventional with a total and utter lack of pretension. (This last is a very Australian aspect.)

It’s kind of like Louisiana north of Copenhagen or the Kröller-Müller Museum in the Netherlands – if you’re never in the area, you may never know they exist. Then you stumble across it and think ‘Holy shit! Why have I never heard of this place?’ Assuming you’re the artsy-fartsy type, of course.

The irreverence carries on in the signs asking people not to trespass in the vineyards surrounding the MONA.

and another…

Also in Hobart, we visit a replica of Mawson’s huts. Douglas Mawson was an Antarctic explorer and geologist from South Australia.

A fascinating man. He goes to the Antarctic with Shackleton, leads several other expeditions filled with derring-do, traipses around the outback doing  pioneer geological surveys, then continues on in a career as a respected academic. Like Indiana Jones with an Australian accent.

A landmark of Hobart is the Tasman Bridge.

This was the site of a catastrophic accident in 1975.

Sight or Insight of the Day – Tasmania

This work at the MONA blows us away:

It’s by a German artist, Julius Popp.

A science gallery website describes it like this:

‘In BIT.FALL, information is represented by words generated by a computer program, based on a statistical algorithm. The program filters relevant terms from the current stream of news on the internet, and transmits the values to the control unit of BIT.FALL. In a split second, BIT. FALL releases hundreds of drops at specific intervals, creating a ‘waterfall’ of words. Each drop of water thus becomes a liquid and transient ‘pixel’ or ‘bit’, the smallest unit of information. ‘

So the words that appear are based on whatever’s trending on the web.

The words are crystal clear, but immediately dissolve into a mist, leaving you waiting for the next one. We stand watching this for ten minutes.

From the Australian Alps, we travel from Gippsland to Melbourne to Tasmania.

We spend a few days at Cape Conran, in East Gippsland. The beach is deserted.

We create a shelter against the sun from whatever we can scavenge in Matilda, in addition to driftwood, because we leave most of her awning materials – pegs, guy-lines, etc – back at the campground.

On the way back, a wallaby crosses our path.

It would be interesting to see an Eadweard Muybridge-style study of macropeds in motion. They’re so graceful.

We drive across Gippsland – basically the south of the state of Victoria – on our way to Wilsons Promontory.

It’s very scenic.

The wildlife around Tidal River, where we camp, is famously tame.

The next morning, this bird follows Maria around, waiting for a handout.

Back in Melbourne, I reconnect with Philip, an old Melbournian friend. He’s also a worker in words.

It’s rainy and cold, as it often seems to be here.

At Flinders Station is a mural by Mirka Mora, another Heide habitué.

Melbourne has a lot of wedding-cake-style Victorian office buildings, besides a skyline full of 21st-century architecture.

While in town, we visit the Australian Centre for the Moving Image. Among its old Skippy the Bush Kangaroo clips and Mad Max memorabilia is the piano from Jane Campion’ s The Piano. Still one of our favourite films. (Has it really been 25 years?) It is in fact an early-19th-century, made-in-London antique.

It’s with great sadness we drop off Matilda at the rental depot. She kept us safe and mobile for over 24,000 kilometres around Australia, in all conditions. Goodbye, old friend.

Our flight arrives late in Hobart. We like this sculpture in the arrivals hall.

Sight or Insight of the Day – Melbourne to Tasmania

We pick up our new camper-van the next day. This is the license plate:

We like the stylized Tasmanian tiger drinking from a stream. We download and re-watch a good Willem Dafoe movie from 2011, The Hunter. Check it out.

Also, notice the dearth of letters and numbers in the plates of sparsely-populated Tassie. Like Prince Edward Island. Or Luxembourg.