Ok, it's thursday night, and I'm just back from the gym and have worked my butt off today, but still couldn't resist a bit of toast and jam for supper.... ooops!
As promised, i'll carry on my little travelog of our trip to Hobart now... We were up to friday night methinks...
Saturday in Hobart is well known for the Salamanca Market, and we decided to head down there to check out what all the fuss was about. Sure enough the whole area was awash with market stalls, hundreds of them in fact, everyone trying to sell you their wares. Probably 20% of all the stalls were selling wood - related products - bowls, key racks, mirrors and so-on. The wood was lovely, there is a type of wood call Sassafras, a lovely dark, fine grained wood. The problem was I just couldn't bring myself to buy something that I'd probably never actually use!
Most other stuff on the market was locally produced food, books and the like, and some stalls were just plain junk - It had a bit of a hippy vibe to the place, but it was good to pass a few hours. During our wanderings around that morning, avoiding the frequent showers, I overheard someone saying that it was snowing up at Mt Wellington. Sure enough, when I looked north, when it decided to show itself fromt he big black clouds, we could see a lashing of snow! Helena nd I got very excited at this prospect, so quickly ate our lunch and headed back to base to get our winter gear on.
You see, being in australia, we have not seen decent snow now for about 18 months, since we were in switzerland. We did venture up to Mount Buller last month, but you could hardly call that snow - more like a giant mud flavoured slurpee. It rained the whole time, it was cold, dark and very miserable. So you can see that didn't really count. So, off we went and headed up the mountain road. Then we saw a most bizarre thing. We kept seeing cars coming down from the mountain, covered in snow, but pretty much all of them had a snowman clinging desprerately to the car bonnets! it seemed to be the 'done thing', so we had to have a go 
We named him Snowy, and the poor little blighter did very well. He made it all the way to about halfway down the mountain, when I took a hairpin bend too fast, and we lost him down a drain. Helen was devastated.
Our time ont he mountain was a cold one. It was -4c and very windy, and I reckon the windchill was in the region of -10c. The wind had actually blown most of the snow away, apart from where it had frozen solid to road signs and fences - where it was stuck in these amazing horizontal icicles all over the place.
Darwin arrived in Hobart in 1836 and promptly decided to climb the mountain, and it is reputed that he made it to the summit in just 8 hours! Amazing considering that at that time, the mountain was densely forested in the lower half with sub-tropical eucalypti and ferns. Most people today can make the summit in 5 hours at a good pace, following the tarmac.
Well, it was a fun up there, but we were shrouded in cloud much of the time so couldn't really appreciate the stunning views - 'I must return', I vowed to myself!
That afternoon, we headed out to a small town call Richmond, about a 40 minute drive from Hobart. First explored in 1803 by Lieutenant Bowen, a few years later when the settlers came, the area was called "Sweetwater". The discovery of coal along its banks caused the river to be named the coal River. In early years Richmond was an important police district and the first part of the Gaol was built in 1825, five years before port Arthur. The bridge, built in 1823, enable easier movement of military, police and convicts between Hobart and Port Arthur, as well as the transport of goods. When Sorell Causeway opened in 1872, this traffic no longer passed through Richmond and that is why the town remains much as it was one hundred years ago, with Australia's oldest Catholic church and bridge. At 180 years old, this is about as historic as Australia gets.
Richmond has a well preserved convict gaol which was our first port of call on arrival. It was quite compact in design, but had a truly brutal vibe about the place. There were seperate solitary cells for men and women, but perhaps the worst thing was walking through an archway into the 'Flogging Yard' It had high sided walls, and was completely enclosed apart from the entrance. In the middle of the yard was a triangular wooden A-frame that still had gouges out of it from the cat-o-nine-tails. It was very chilling.
Helen is pictured below in one of the solitary confinement cells - they were pretty much as long as they were wide, so no place to try and sleep. People would have gone stir carzy in a place like this. But this was to be just a taster of what we were going to see tomorrow at Part Arthur.
The evening was fast approaching, and we hadn't made any plans for dinner, so we decided we wanted either a chinese or an indian meal. Now, I have had something of a bad run with indian food since we came to Oz, and have been very retiscent to try anything new. The thing is the aussies can't really do good indian food. We realised that it's a cultural thing that goes back to the early 20th century. What happens is, when aussies eat chicken in a curry or chinese etc, their expectation is for the worst cuts of meat - I'm told it's called Chicken Maryland here, and basically means all the meat of a chicken, minus the breast meat.
I was told that this comes from tough times, when everyone had to make do with the 'lesser' parts of the chook. In my mind, you may as well be eating rabbit or cat meat. Every time i have tried it, it repulses me. I have tried, I really have, but I just cannot eat the stuff.
So, it was with some bravado that we found an indian in hobart, and gave it a go. We walked in, were met by a very young blonde girl wearing a very dodgy saree. Theplace smelled like my grandma's larder, mixed in with boiled cabbage amd josticks. hmmmm appetising.
We move swiftly on from there. We doggedly tried another place on the waterfront call Saffron, and were very pleasantly surprised to be greeted by an Indian chap, with a think indian accent. And the sweet, sweet smell of curry! we gave it a go, and to my uncontained joy, my chicken Chennai was the most sumptuous white, tender breast meat that I have had in a loooong time! I'm easily pleased.
After our meal, we had a wander around the harbour, in the freezing cold, anf headed back to bed - it was going to be a long day tomorrow - our trip to Port Arthur.
Ok, it's now friday night, Helen's gone to bed, but I can't sleep...
We ended up sleeping in somewhat on the sunday morning, and took our time getting ready. We got to Port Arthur around 12 and had lunch in the retaurant there. Pretty boring food, I had the ubiquitous chicken schnitzel. I ended up being rather glad I had a large lunch, as our afternoon tour was actually quite exhausting.
Port Arthur was amazing. It has a feel about the place like nowhere else in oz. I knew there was a dark history to the place before we went, but was amazed by some of the stories we were told. On the face if it, it was a visually beautiful place, lush forests, open green pastures and perhaps the greenest grass I have seen since coming south of the English Channel. The various period houses that were dotted about the place had a genuine historical feel to them. The colony was built around a pretty bay overlooking a large enclosed bay area with a couple of small islands about 2km from the shore. There was a boat tour that left hourly to circle these islands as part of the day's trip.
As it turned out, one of the small islands was called 'the Isle of the Dead' and was where everyone who died at P.A. were buried. If the deceased was a convict, they were put into a mass grave on the east of the island, only 2 metres above sea level, whereas any of the military, staff or their families were buried in indiviual graves on the west of the island, some 6 metres above the sea. We circled the island in a boat, and it was certainly an eerie place. We were told there was over 2000 bodies buried there. You can see it's not a big island by any stretch!
We carried on with the tour and were taken up a long hill to the outer perimeter of the colony, to a place called the 'Seperate Prison' It was a feearsome looking place, huge snadstone blocks, with high walls and the smallest of windows right at the top - barely enough to let much daylight in. It consited of two wings, each with about 20 solitary cells, 10 along each wall. Central to these two wings was the main entrance, and a set of stairs that led to the prison chapel.
I have been in many churches in my time, but nothing like this place. It was perhaps 25m wide by 20m deep, and had 'stalls' for around 80 inmates at a time. It was built as a Catholic chapel, because there was a revolt at some point by a large group of inmates who thoroughly dislike the staunchly protestant minister, who was renowned for having a foul temper and a very sharp tongue. Anyhow, this was no ordinary chapel. And they were no ordinary stalls. You see the prisoners who were incarcerated in this building were the troublesome ones, many of whom were sexual deviants, but some were just there because they were extremely smelly!
When these prisoners were allowed out of their cells, which wasn't often, they had to wear bags over their heads and very heavy shackles ( I tried to lift a set of these shackles, and could barely get them of the ground). Now the stalls of the chapel ware specially designed to keep the convicts in check while they were being given the hell-fire and damnation sermons, so each seat was in effect a cubicle, standing room only, and only allowing the occupant to look straight ahead. 
I really felt for the preacher who used to stand in the pulpit, being watched by 50 convicts, in masks, probably heckling him, abusing and generally being the miscreants that they were. It must have taken nerves of steel to do that, so I decided to see how it felt....
Soon, it was getting dark, so we headed back to the visitors centre and decided to get some tea, before our next tour - the ghost trail - wooooo!
It should be siad here that neither Helen nor I believe in ghosts in the classical sense, but we do know that there are forces outside of our human understanding than we cant understand. I think that the bible is very clear about what happens when we die, and becoming a ghost is not part of that. I don't decry people's supernatural experiences for one minute, I just believe that the source of those experiences are not 'lost souls', but could be better explained in other ways that I don't have the space for here right now...
Suffice to say that the ghost tour was a bit of fun, and a good way to see some of the darker history of the place. Our guide was interesting, even if he thought he was Justin Hawkins from The Darkness. There was a moment during the tour when he was telling a story, and someone made a tapping noise in the blackness of the room we were in, and my heart skipped a beat or two! I reckon the guide had put him up to it for dramatic effect!
So all in all, Part Arthur was a pretty amazing place, we both came away with a new appreciation of the bygone convict days of Australia. I thoroughly recommend anyone to visit, even if you are there only for a couple fo days, make this a priority!
Ok, thats enough for now, it's 2.25 am and I am starting to loll.
My next entry will be for the last day of our trip - lots of cute furry animals, and a trip to a far away war zone for us - how exciting!!!
Chris
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