More Boats, Markets and MONA

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It has been a full day. This morning, in wild wind, we caught the bus to the city where we walked once more to the Boat Show and nearby Salamanca Markets. The markets are very big, we walked up and down, up and down. I did buy some leather belts and that’s about all. I also caught up with friend Jill,who is in Hobart on a tour.

When we’d had our fill of the markets, we went back towards the Boat Show, going through a big shed we hadn’t been in yesterday. This was the most interesting of all. Inside they had lots of building of small boats, chandellery, books etc. I thought how much Jason and Nicholas would enjoy it.

After lunch, where we talked awhile to some interesting people we met at our table, sharing travel tales, we walked on and then saw where the ferry to MONA left from. We decided that's where we'd go next.

MONA is the Museum of Old and New Art. It is a very large building, in the middle of a vineyard on the banks of the Derwent River. We found that besides wine, they also make the Moo beer that Dougs been enjoying here.

We got talking to an Australian man on the ferry who has lived many years in the US, actually in Michigan. (US ladies, I told him my friends were meeting at Cape Cod this weekend and he said ‘who goes to the Cape in February?’ .. and he hadn’t heard about the big storm that was expected there). When I sounded surprised and a bit worried that there would be a walk from the ferry of 92 steps to the entrance, he took over and arranged for them to stop further around where we were taken up to the gallery via a golf cart. He was a nice and interesting man.

MONA was amazing, magnificent, confronting, weird. The building looks wonderful from the river, large and imposing. We caught a lift down to B3, three floors into the basement where the stone had been blasted out to make the rooms. We were given a technical arrangement to hang around our necks and headsets but we couldn’t get it working for us. We did see a little boy about five who had figured it out though and was following the art via the audio. There were interesting art works, some very strange, our favourite was a waterfall which dropped 'words' of water. We couldn't figure out how it was done but it was so clever.

So it’s been a full day. We caught a cab back rather than the bus back to the city as we found that the gallery wasn't too far from the Showground. The wind still blows, the smoke is still around. We had six spits of rain today but that's about all.

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Photos

How is it done?
This word is a waterfall - just the drops forming the word fall down

From the coffee shop
smoke over the mountains - still