Culture and convicts.

A little bit of culture - the Mona Gallery in Hobart - was the order of the day on Sunday, a museum of old and new art.
Never having been an Art Buff, I was not looking forward to it, but it was quite different.As we arrived we came across a car that had been crushed between two walls, well - is it art??
Built by a multi billionaire who made his money from gambling,( he owns casinos), the building itself was quite fascinating. The lower floors were dug from solid rock, with suspended staircases and walkways.


We had heard there was a vagina wall, (but that wasn't of interest to us of course!) but as it turned out it had proved too popular and they had taken it out. Funny?

Anyway, a lot of the art seemed to be about death, or sex, some quite interesting, others over the top, but all unexpected and different.
This one is a pile of gravestones, obviously someone has raided a cemetery, and the one below is a number of dustbins with bubbles coming out of them. This is the least morbid and sexual exhibit in the whole place!


By the time we left there it was lunchtime, and the place was absolutely packed, with dozens queuing to get in, and the car parks overflowing. There must be something about the place I suppose!
Hobart and the surrounding suburbs are built on many sea inlets, almost all the houses overlook water on one or more sides, and there are thousands of boats and marinas. Everywhere there are bridges to join the various suburbs together.

Towering over all of this is Mount Wellington, which protects the city from the westerlies of the roaring forties.
There is a pop festival going on about twenty kms to the east of the city, not far from where we are staying, and a Taste Festival in the city itself. So the place is heaving, not only the locals by many from the mainland too.

 But today we visited Port Arthur, a penal colony on the Tasman Peninsula, almost as far south as you can go in this state. The penal station was established in 1830 as a timber cutting camp, using convict labour to produce sawn logs for government projects.But from 1833 it was used as a punishment station for repeat offenders from all the Australian colonies.
Reformers designed a radical new system to "grind rogues into honest men" which became the model for Port Arthur. This included discipline and punishment, religious and moral instruction, separation, training and education. Many were broken, but some left with trades such as shipbuilders, shoemakers or blacksmiths.
The main building, on the right of the picture, housed over 500 convicts, many in chains, whose individual quarters were about six foot by four, and about six foot high. One side was open to the corridor, where the warders watched over them night and day.
On the left is the commanders house, very plush, and between that and the penitentiary were the officers quarters, the guardhouse and the courthouse.

In a "Separate Prison" were the punishment cells, tiny locked cells with high windows where prisoners lived in total silence, only allowed out for one hour a day when they could exercise on their own under strict surveillance. If they transgressed in there they were thrown into the hole, a room about four foot by six with no light, behind no less than four doors. Many came out of there with their minds gone.

Church was compulsory on a Sunday, but even in there they had individual cubicles, from which the only person they could see was the pastor, not even the head of the man in front. Ingenious! And punishment in the separate prison could mean years, not days, so one could imagine by the time they got out they were completely broken.
The peninsula was reached by a 100mtr wide causeway, but in those days all prisoners, supplies and guards were brought from Hobart by sea.
However as the causeway was almost the only place that any escapees could get off the peninsula it was guarded night and day by fierce digs. Not many prisoners got away, only 12 in 50 years that the prison was in use, and most were recaptured soon after.

But Port Arthur is also infamous for one other matter. On Sunday 28th April 1996 a single gunman killed 35 people and injured dozens more. Twenty people died inside this building, which was a cafe at that time, and now remains roofless as a shrine to those who died. There were many acts of bravery that day as rescuers tended the injured, not knowing where the gunman was.
He was captured close by the next day, and is now serving life elsewhere without parole.

The whole site overlooks a lovely bay which would be the prisoner's first sighting of the colony where they would serve their sentences, many for the whole of the rest of their lives. I could think of worse places, but not of worse conditions!

Tasmania- an Isle of great beauty

An early start took us up the peninsula from Mornington to the city, a whole hour even with little traffic at that time on Dec 27th, another hour to get on the ship, we had to surrender our gas bottles as they are classed as dangerous.
With the city behind us, we made out into Port Phillip Bay. It is a lagoon really, and is huge, and we had to traverse the whole length of it to reach the heads, over two and a half hours to reach the open sea.
But very soon there was little to see, just smooth sea all around us for the next six hours until Devenport arose over the horizon.

We were late into harbour, almost an hour at seven o'clock, then we had to go through quarantine. What a performance! Six rows of queues, which slowly moved forwards into the quarantine bay, where we were asked questions about what we were carrying. We had to tell them that we had fishing gear, which was clean, and that we were carrying no fruit or veges. A brief inspection and we were out, but then we had to collect our gas bottles.
So it was near eight o'clock by the time we were on the road to our digs some twelve miles away at Port Sorrell.

But the apartment we had was good, and I managed to get Fish & Chips down the road, and the host cooked Anne a curry which she appreciated greatly.

A quick trip (some 250k) down towards Hobart, then East along the coast road to Forcett, a village about 30k east of Hobart, then up into the bush to a secluded house at the top of a hill. Lovely, and a view to die for over the forested hills.
Julia and Graham are very lucky people to live here!
With two wings off a central living area, the house occupies a commanding view all around. In the centre of a large bush area of around 550 acres,  I can't think of any other I would prefer to live in.

Today we have been into Hobart, it's Saturday and there is an excellent market in the centre. Also today the Sydney to Hobart race is coming in, in fact the first boat, Wild Oats 11, came in yesterday, breaking all records. 50ft of sheer speed, narrow of beam, single tall mast, obviously built with this race in mind.
As we spent the morning there other boats came in after one of the best races in years, with good weather and fair winds all the way.




But we were really there to see Graham and Julia's son Ray compete in a harbour race of 1200 metres, he is a professional swimmer of great promise, he is hoping to win a series of eight salt water races this season, and this is the second.He won the first, and has another one tomorrow of two kilometres in surf.Around fifty swimmers lined up at the start, and Ray soon took the lead. After the first leg he was about 5mtrs in front, and kept that up right to the finish, despite the stiff competition.





There are a number of tall ships around the harbour, which of course caught my interest, as well as the many competitors from the race that had already arrived. It is a huge harbour, I would say almost as big as Sydney, with a lot of activity going on.

A really super day out with a nice lunch, a walk round the market, and a drive home across the water.

Xmas in Mornington

Party party! Xmas afternoon at Chris Balfour's - a great BBQ and good company. Chris has a large house with a great garden and pool, excellent for hosting parties, and so it was.
The drink flowed of course, the sun shone, quite a different Xmas day from that we are used to, stuck in the house.
We could get used to this!

Boxing day was at Barbara and Dave's son Chris house, Chris and Craig have two and three children of their own now, five grandchildren for Barbara and Dave.
Barbara was "tired and emotional" by the end of the day, Dave helped her home, and as the only teetotaler I had to drive.
But a great time was had by all, and after we arrived back home Paul and Marianne rolled up for an hour or two, so more drink and grub came out.
Nuff said, we had to have an early night as we were on our way early the next morning to Tassie, we'll see them all again in a couple of weeks.

1600k and a welcome at the end

Leaving Streaky Bay and our friends was a wrench, although we knew that we would be with family at the other end and it would be worth it.
Very soon after setting off we were once again in wheat country, acre after acre of wheat fields and huge silos to store the grain before it was taken to the docks by train. And hundreds of them, sometimes as many as 25 in a block. This is the bread basket of Australia, and I think they export as much as they use themselves.
We had a nine hour day that day, the longest we have had since coming here, normally we give up after three or at most four. We did 800k, (500 mls).

After Port Augustus we made south east to avoid Adelaide and it's traffic, and as we approached the Murray River the terrain changed, becoming more hilly, and the crops became grapes, olives and mangoes. Some of the biggest wineries in the southern hemisphere are around here, and one that we passed had more than 50 huge vats of fermenting wine at the side of the road.
That night we stayed at a good site close to the river, our last night in the roof tent for a while,as after our next day's travel (slightly shorter, only 600k, 7 hours!) to Bendigo we stayed in a bush cabin to sort ourselves out.
It was great- very well appointed, and with a bush pub next door where we ate it was the perfect last travelling night.
We will certainly be visiting Bendigo again, there is a lot to do and see here and we don't have time to do it this time.
So to Melbourne- what a bummer! The traffic was truly awful, even on the motorways, and we got lost once, and had a few cross words when we couldn't understand the directions.
And there are toll roads, no pay stations though, it has to be paid for by telephone after your journey, or they will send you a bill with penalties, as they did last time we passed through, and David and Mildred in Perth had to pay it!
So I got on the phone, and after 15 minutes of pressing buttons I almost lost the will to live. What a way to run a business! Why can they not just have one pay lane where we can pay our money? So simple!
Had a lot of trouble with Skype, nearly lost my temper with it when I tried and tried to get on and couldn't, then realised I was putting a space in where it shouldn't be. This technology will be the death of me!
Anyway, we got here eventually at Babs and Dave's new house. It's like tardis, looks small outside but deceptively spacious inside, two bedrooms, and a huge family room. Small garden, but Dave doesn't have a lot to do now which suits him!
Betty has had a xmas spruce up, thorough wash and wax outside, and a complete clean out inside. That's the first since we were here last in April, so she needed it!
It's great to catch up with family again, cousins Chris and Bev, Paul and Marrianne, as well as Babs and Dave of course. And  they all have grandchildren now, and this is the time for kids.

But it just isn't quite like Xmas, despite the decorations, the Xmas trees, and the greetings all around,just too hot,
but despite that........

All the best for Christmas and the New Year to all our millions of readers worldwide.

Keep watching for the latest revelations!

WA to SA

A night stop on the WA - South Australia border gave us quite a shock- the time changes by two and a half hours! That means if it's 7am here, our normal getting up time while we are travelling, it's 4-30am in WA. Hmmm... no lie in then. But into every life a little sunshine, we get to stay up till 9pm, it's light now till then.
And we had a lovely view from our camping pitch, a mile down to the Great Australian Bight, which is a very big bite out of the bum of Australia.















We took in a view of the Bight from the top of the cliffs too, great to get out of the car to stretch our legs in the middle of a long drive, the sun was warm, the air was fresh, and a lovely view of the waves pounding at the base of the cliffs. Life gets tedious don't it?

We had a few more miles of the Nullarbor to do too, a whole day to our next campsite. A few kms off road too, and as we travelled those we spotted white sand dunes perfectly sculpted by the wind. And the camp site was a surprise too, bush camp but very clean, great free BBQs, sheltered from the wind, right on the beach, with a sunset to die for. Hmmmm....it's tough work this travelling.

Unfortunately we had to move on the next morning, through the Quarantine at Ceduna, where we were inspected to make sure that we were not carrying any fruit of veg into South Australia. The Aussies are fanatic about fruit fly and other pests, even though we buy all our fruit and veg in supermarkets they confiscate it all on border crossings. However we had given all ours away at our last camp site in preparation.

Ceduna,  the first reasonably big town in SA, so we had to stock up again with fresh fruit and Veg, as well as enough provisions to take up the last few hundred miles to Melbourne over the next few days.Also this will be positively the last few days and nights with Lee, Karen and the kids, so we were spending two nights at Streaky Bay. They were hoping to find a good bush camp close to there, but no joy, they were all rubbish, so we just parked ourselves in Streaky Bay Caravan Park.
It was very hot, but as we are right by the beach it's acceptable, straight in the sea for a dip.


But during the night it blew a gale, so much so that we had to get up to put the awning away for fear of it tearing. And it blew all the following day too, and was much cooler.
However that didn't stop young Ben from decorating Betty for Christmas, I think when we take off for Melbourne tomorrow we will be scattering tinsel bits all the way, and might get done for littering!

A Stump Tailed Lizard on our camp site.

A long hard slog.....

The Eyre highway, 1250 miles of two lane road between Norseman and Ceduna- with virtually nothing in between.
But we first had to get to Norseman, around 300k north, named after a horse in 1898 I believe. Don't know the significance!
But camels seem to be the big thing around here, as we enter the town there is a roundabout with aload of them going round and round!
It seems at one time it was the only way to get around the area, and to get supplies in to Norseman, 8 afghans could drive up to 70 camels from the coast some 220 miles up to here, and they would often go without water for up to eight days. A big bull camel could carry up to 12 hundredweight (600kg) so they were very cost effective.

Here in Oz we can't believe it is almost Christmas, the weather is all wrong for it. However in Norseman we see a Santa sleigh and we are reminded of all the hard work that my fellow Rotarians are doing at this time, and indeed that we did this time last year. Sorry- I would rather be here!

Lunch there, and then onto the Eyre Highway and the Nullabor. Nullabor- nul arbor- no trees. Well not quite, there are a few areas where all there is is low scrub, but there are a few trees around. However one can see what they mean...
For a long distance the ground is solid rock, with only a thin covering of sand and gravel, so very little can grow here. It is also notable that there is very little roadkill, which inevitably means that there are very few animals around.
This road is surprisingly busy with road trains, but perhaps less surprisingly when we realised that there are only two routes into Western Australia, and this is the only route between the capitals Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth. There is a rail connection, which runs some 200k north of the road, and that must also take a lot of freight across the desert.

There are points of interest - we travelled the 90 mile straight, we could have tied the steering wheel down and slept all the way in cruise control if it wasn't for the road trains!
Also from time to time we would come across a dual purpose patch of road, the Royal Flying Doctor Service uses the road as a landing strip when they have an emergency in the area, how they stop the traffic I'm not sure, but it must work.
We camped for the night by the roadside, as many in Oz do when they are travelling. Not a very nice campsite, the toilets were not inviting, no showers, no water even, so we were glad to move on in the morning.

The Nullabor boasts the longest golf course in the world, with a hole in each roadhouse and small town for 1365 kms from Kalgourlie to Ceduna. Some holes are 200 kms apart! It's an 18 hole course, par 72, and it takes over a week to complete. Quite a different way to take a golfing holiday!
Tonight we are on a decent campsite with decent showers, the first one for days, so we are taking advantage as we don't know when or where the next one will be!

Mixed Fortunes

Lucky Bay, a beautiful pristine white beach, overlooked by the caravan site we are on. Isn’t there always a downside though, the weather hasn’t improved. It’s been overcast since we got here, although the sun is trying hard to break through it isn’t succeeding. Not cold though, but windy, except for our pitch, which is so sheltered it couldn’t be better.

We had decided to erect the ground tent to give us flexibility with the car, it took us an hour and a half, during which we almost committed murder on each other. It is a right sod, made worse by the fact that the ground is rock hard. I had to borrow a spike from a neighbour to make a hole for the pegs! In the meantime the caravaners around us were watching our efforts, which didn’t make us any the happier!

But once finally sorted Lee and Karen arrived, so we settled down for a catch-up, we hadn’t seen them for a couple of weeks so there was a lot to talk about.

The first night it poured down almost all night, we were ok in our little ground tent, except that it kept Anne awake. Not me though, I was happy in my little dream world.

Next day we went along to Hellfire Beach, about 10kms away, where Lee and I did a bit of fishing. I caught one with my first cast, but no one would believe me as it got away before I could reel it in. Eventually I lost all my tackle in the weeds, so I gave up defeated once again.

Anne, Karen and the kids were having a great time in the surf, lots of great waves, but too wet for me.

It was the evening for the roast again, this time a lovely piece of pork, which Lee did in his baby Q. I have to say that it cooks a joint perfectly, along with roast potatoes, both of which we miss over here while we are camping. It was beautiful, and we ended the evening well stuffed!

However, earlier the ranger had been round to warn us to batten down ready for a big storm. He reckoned it would be with us in a couple of hours, big squall, hailstones and thunder & lightning. Mad panic all around us- everyone put awnings away, chairs and tables mysteriously disappeared in seconds, tents braced ready for the onslaught. It never transpired, only two drops of rain all night so all that for nothing.

To get a mobile signal here we have to drive ten kms to the top of a hill which overlooks Esperance, some forty Kms away. It is a great view, but this morning as we got there it started to pour down, completely obscuring it. Story of our lives at the moment!

But then things started improving a little, an hour or so later, the sun tried hard once again, the wind dropped, it turned out to be a good afternoon  again. 

Next day was again overcast, so we decided to go for a walk up Frenchman Peak, a hill some 10k away, around 600ft high, but very steep in places. At one point we were almost rock climbing- 45 degrees. The breath was coming in short pants....

But once up there the views were amazing- we could see all the way to Esperance some forty miles away, and a similar distance the other way. Anne made it most of the way to the top, I made it all the way, but as the kids made it too I couldn't claim any glory!

Our site has dozens of very tame Kangaroos, they become a nuisance at times, particularly when we are cooking or eating. we have to chase them away. Also the audience which inevitably hangs around taking photos when the roos are about, one morning we had to chase them as well to get our breakfast!

Tomorrow we move on again to tackle the Nullabor, three days of hard driving, 1500 kms to do before we get to the other side.

Its been a quiet few days....

Leaving Albany we travelled east along the coastal highway, although they call it that it actually runs many miles inland at some points. We had decided to spend the night in a little town called Hopetoun, (a Scottish influence there?) on the coast and about 50kms away from the highway. We had a grotty little cabin for the night in the caravan park there, where the owner was so laid back he was horizontal, but we survived.

We had hoped to go into Fitzgerald River national park from there, but found most of it closed, either for repairs or because of a fire. But we did manage to see a few of the glorious beaches along Hammersley Drive, I know I have said this before but the beaches around here are among the best in the world, and most are totally uninhabited. The only problem is that they are also among the most windswept in the world! The wind comes off the Southern Ocean, next stop Antarctica several thousand miles away, maybe that's why they are totally uninhabited!

Next stop Esperance, where we managed to get into a delightful apartment where we stayed when we were here three years ago with David and Mildred. The town is really lovely, with an esplanade lined with pine trees, the town itself is very clean and tidy with many small shops lining the main street.

It has an excellent museum. We have seen many museums in the past few months, all of them good in their own ways, but this is one of the best. They have an exhibit about the first Skylab that fell to earth here in 1979 after circumnavigating the earth 24.000 times in the six years it was in orbit.
Hundreds of other exhibits are in an old railway shed, including a steam railway engine that brought gold and passengers down to Esperance from the Kalgourlie goldfields for many years.









We are waiting here for two reasons, one good and one not so good. The good reason is that Lee and Karen and the children will join us here before we go into the Cape Le Grande national park tomorrow, and then onwards across the Nullarbor. The not so good one is that I have to visit a dentist this afternoon, I have lost part of a tooth and the next opportunity I will have to get it seen to will be after the New year.
Pray for me.....
This evening I have been to Esperance Rotary club, a single gender club, where I met a member who had recently been to Kirkby Sephen, where he stayed with a member of Upper Eden club, Fred Hayler. Fred is over here at the moment, and will no doubt visit the club in the next few weeks.
They are a very busy club, fifty years old, who have recently published a book on their achievements in that period which makes very interesting reading. I enjoyed excellent fellowship with them and enjoyed an interesting presentation from the headmaster of a local private school.