Hobart

---

It is a rainy day. We took the car into Hobart intending to have a look around the city but the rain put us off that idea. We thought taking the ferry up the river to the MONA (Museum of Old and New Art) art museum would be a good idea but it was booked out. Instead, we drove to the museum which had had a lot of publicity regarding the art and the architecture. We soon understood why it is popular and a huge attraction. It opened last year and is owned by a man called David Walsh who owned the land, the vineyard, some art and the $40M art gallery. By all accounts he had made his money from gambling. It is certainly different. It goes down 3 levels underground and is hewn out of the sandstone bedrock. The levels all blend into each other and have many segments with many themes. As for the art, well, as usual with contemporary art it was mostly controversial, sometimes excellent, sometimes thought provoking and sometimes just plain rubbish. Many of the artists seemed to have a fetish for sexual themes, body parts or weird orifices. Their state of mind is sometimes in question, even more so when you read their description of the art and what it’s meaning is. What utter bunkum. Interestly, the gadgets given for descriptions and locations calls the written text "Wank Art". Despite all of our thoughts, it was a wonderful experience and well worth the visit. The visit requires many hours so it pays to have at least a half a day to spare.

From there we drove through the City of Hobart which is very nice indeed. They have done an excellent job of preserving the old buildings so that there is still a feel of the past history. The setting is lovely and roads and motorways excellent. I was slightly amazed at the similarity of the housing – mostly brick and tile of similar colour, uniform windows, and same style roof lines such as we would associate with the 70's. Only in the most very recent subdivisions did there appear to be a breakout into a much more modern design but even new houses opted for the older designs.

The rest of the day was spent driving the Huron Scenic route around a peninsula south of the city. All around the city are ranges covered with mostly gum, acacias banksias, tea trees etc – very typically Australian. However once we got to the Huron valley and town it opened up into grassland and orchards. From there we followed the river and eventually to the coastal highway along the rocky coast of the main harbour inlet. It is a very attractive route looking out over the water to the islands. During the afternoon the weather had cleared and had now warmed up to 24 degrees so hopefully it will be the last of the rain for a while.

The day was completed with a wonderful meal prepared for us, much chatting and laughter, followed by a new game of cards called Phase10 which is a very frustrating but not hard game. It’ll likely take 10 days to finish the 10 phases!

---