When I last hit “Publish” we were airborne out of Auckland headed for Tasmania. Most of a day late, and indirectly, via an overnight at the Sydney airport. Short story is that the good folks at New Zealand Air did right by us, booking us into the posh airport hotel and throwing in – I kid you not – $180NZ in meal vouchers for dinner and drinks that night. We did not stop by the bar for dinner and drinks. We proceeded directly to our room – do not pass “Go”, etc. – and got the snooze on for the 5:30 wake up we’d need for our flight to Hobart the next morning.
So, Hobart. I’ve written before about the City’s improbably delightful, and delightfully improbable charms. The serendipitometer wasn’t hitting on all cylinders this time, but it was chugging along well enough to give me pause.
Recall that we’d picked these dates in Tasmania rather arbitrarily, based on how we would split our time between NZ and Oz, and when we needed to be back in the States.
Well, during the ride into town, I was doing my best not to overwhelm Devon with my running narration of “Oh – and you see that hill over there? That’s where I…”, and she was doing her best to nod appreciatively while just taking in the scenery. As we rolled off the Tasman Bridge, our driver apologized for the traffic we were about to encounter.
You see, there was this Wooden Boat Festival going on. A wooden boat festival? The wooden boat festival. Locals back home will recall that Port Townsend advertises itself as hosting “The Second Largest Wooden Boat Festival in the World,” or alternately, as “The Largest Wooden Boat Festival in the Northern Hemisphere.” That’s because of Hobart.
I won’t go on and on about the festival, because I’m not entirely sure how I’d structure that bit of narrative. But here are a bunch of pictures. Mostly, once we’d dropped our bags at the hotel and tromped the two blocks down to the waterfront, we just wandered, gawking at tall ships (marked as “TS” at the Brooke St Pier) and very tall ships (marked as “VTS” along the Franklin Wharf). Admired plenty of not-at-all-but-still-quite-pretty sloops, schooners, ketches and yawls arranged around the Constitution Dock, watched ropemaking demonstrations, listened to to bagpipes, a shanty chorus and a haka performed by a contingent who had come over from New Zealand. We stopped and ate Tassie scallops. Then wandered a little more and stopped and ate more Tassie scallops. Grilled scallops, scallops on a stick (with little slices of sweet potato in between), crumbed scallops with chips.
Okay, apparently I will go on and on about the festival. But we’d arrived on the last day, so as the sun headed for the hills and the big ships began raising anchor and heading out to the sound of pipers, we wended our way out into the backstreets to sample other bits of Hobart’s unique and plentiful charm.
Day Two. Whew. We’d originally planned on spending our first day in town up at MONA (which I wrote about here), so figured we’d do that on Day Two. Except, dang it, the museum is closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays, which meant we’d either have to leave town before it was next open, or completely abandon the crazy overpacked trajectory I’d planned for our week on the island.
So Plan…D? E? Whatever. We caught a ride back out to where we were to pick up the campervan we’d reserved. You remember my complaints about the dilapidated, shuddering jellybean of a vehicle we’d rented from Jucy in NZ? Well, let me put in a plug for the fine folks at LeisureRent in Hobart. Our new ride was beautifully equipped and laid-out, nearly brand new (less than 15k miles) and substantially less expensive than the Jucy van. On top of it all Tracy, who runs the operation checked in with us about anything we needed – cooking oil? Salt and pepper? Extra toilet paper? Some emergency ramen to go? Full marks.
Our first stop was Bonorong, a wildlife sanctuary north of the city that takes in, rehabilitates and releases endangered native species, or hangs onto them if they are deemed unable to survive in the wild. Among their “keepers” are a blind Tasmanian devil, three-legged echidna and albino yellow-tailed black cockatoo. They’ve also got a kangaroo feeding lawn because…well, I don’t actually know why, but I think it’s because Forester kangaroos are smallish, adorable, and friendly enough that they’re not as likely to maul you as their larger mainland cousins.
Then back to the hotel for a last night in Hobart (and more Tassie scallops) in preparation for our sally out into the great big world in our shiny new ride.
David Pablo Cohn 