My two full days in the Australian
state of Tasmania I spent touring: one day to see the Port Arthur ruins; the other day out at sea looking for birds and ocean mammals.
During the period when England sent criminals and rebels to Tasmania, Port Arthur was were they sent one if you were considered very bad, or misbehaved as a convict elsewhere. It sits at the end of a remote and rugged peninsula.
Old Port Arthur guard towers |
Port Arthur operated from 1830 to 1877.
Generally, convicts sent there worked and lived under harsher
conditions than elsewhere. Many died there and their bodies (nearly 1000) line on the Isle of the Dead just offshore. A bush fire in the 1880s, destroyed most of the buildings.
The boat tour traveled to Bruny Island
on the southeast side of Tassie. The next land mass south of here is
Antarctica.
Our boat was a so-called rigid inflatable, 12 meters long with three 300-hp engines. It is unsinkable, stable in rough water, and capable of 25 knots loaded.
Our boat was a so-called rigid inflatable, 12 meters long with three 300-hp engines. It is unsinkable, stable in rough water, and capable of 25 knots loaded.
One of the tour boats near one of many caves |
In wind gusts the crew estimated at 80
km and choppy seas, we boated around the south end of South Bruny
National Park. Lots of bouncing and sea spray--imagine the big slide at a water park.
The shore is rugged cliffs with many caves.
The shore is rugged cliffs with many caves.
This day we got a ringside seat to a
forest fire started by some idiot hikers. (To put it out, they kicked
the embers over a cliff.) The day I was there, helicopters were on
their third day of water-bombing.
We came close to a small colony of New Zealand fur seals.
My hotel in Hobart sits on the
waterfront. Part of it goes back to 1846. It lies among a long line
of buildings constructed from the 1820s to 1880s.
This block of trendy Salamanca was built by convict labor in 1828 as a temporary residence for new convicts. |
The city of 200,000 lies on both sides
of a deep inlet where the Derwent River joins the sea. Steep round
hills rise from the water, like San Francisco without the
earthquakes. While the city is about the same distance (42 degrees)
from the equator as northern locations such as Chicago, the area is
relatively warm in winter because of the ocean. It does not go below
freezing in winter and the summers are hot.
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