Advertisement
Published: June 19th 2012
Edit Blog Post
Depressing Queenstown
In avalley, cold and surrounded by slag heaps We had a big day the day we left Hobart. Firstly, we went to MONA, the Museum of Old and New Art. They prefer visitors to come by boat or bus from downtown Hobart, and we suspect that is to control the numbers better. Anyway, there is some carparking so we got there at opening time, 10am and had no trouble getting a park. It was Monday, and in Australia it was their Queens Birthday holiday.
There is another good reason to come by boat and that is to appreciate the architecture. The building is 3 storeys, built into a cliff above the Derwent River, upstream from Hobart. It has no windows, seems to be made from rusty slabs of iron and lots of angles. The entrance is at the top. Inside they make great use of the original cliff, which has been cut away to the clean sandstone and is a major feature. The rest of the inside is built around or is part of the various items on display. They give you an ipod type of device which knows where you are and what you are looking at, and delivers a commentary both onscreen and via an earpiece
Macquarie Harbour
Our cruise boat at Strahan depending on what you are looking at or experiencing. It suggested I enter my email address, which I did, and later a summary, including pictures, of what I saw was emailed to me! Also the items on display that I didn’t see! All this for only a $20 entry fee.
The old consisted mostly of ancient Egyptian and Greek vases and sculptures, while the new was (to me) very avant garde. Lots of video, audio, unusual materials and amazing concepts. Not much that would hang easily on our living room wall, much that is very hard to describe, but all very memorable. There is not a theme that we could discern, but it is one man’s collection spending his own money, not put together by a collection of experts spending the public’s money, so there are no holds barred. Really, really worth the trip to see it.
In the cafeteria the pies were $9 so we tore ourselves away just after midday and headed north and east toward Strahan on the west coast. (Had lunch in New Norfolk, the last town on the road for a while.) Up the Derwent Valley which is mostly farm land at first,
Hells Gate
Narrow entrance to Port Macquarie slowly turning to bush and forest. The TomTom worked really hard to show us all the twists and turns in the mountains. We passed several hydro dams which made impressive lakes. At Derwent Bridge on the way we visited a studio where this carver is building "The Wall in the Wilderness". It is a relief sculpture of the early white settlers and their animals developing the land. When finished it will be about 100m long and 3m high. He started in 2001 and will finish in about three more years. He works over 40 hours a week on it. We couldn’t take pictures of it, unfortunately, but his website has some good shots.
Then on through Queenstown, a small mining town in a steep valley. As it was nearly dark, it was a most depressing town with small low houses and feeling very damp. Happy to keep going. Finally, after dark and after about 300km, arrived in Strahan on the Macquarie Harbour on the west coast.
The next day we went n a harbour/river cruise and got all the history. The harbour was first used by Europeans as a penal colony for those who were too tough for
Port Arthur, which in turn was for those too tough for Hobart. The prisoners were used for timber felling and later boat building. They were held on Sarah Island in the middle of the harbour, and if they escaped the guards didn’t look very hard. Only one prisoner got away by land, and one lot stole a boat and escaped to Chile, but the rest were recaptured, gave themselves up or died. Pretty tough.
The area was famous for its Huon Pine, a light strong oily timber, similar properties to our kauri, but waterproof and therefore in great demand for boatbuilding. As with the kauri overharvested, and its now only legal to harvest fallen timber. The Huon Pine is very slow growing, taking about 100 years to reach 10m high. The harbour is huge, but shallow near the entrance which was called “Hell’s Gates” by the prisoners. It’s only 100m wide. The narrow entrance means that the harbour has no discernable tide; the level is more controlled by the wind direction. Interesting in that the views are great, but you miss the high mountains at the back which are always there in NZ.
Strahan is a nice little
Salmon Farm
There are 5 of them in the harbour holiday town, very quiet at the moment, but probably busy in the summer. Next day we drove to Burnie on the north coast and Lonely Planet describes its best feature as the pile of woodchips on the wharf waiting to be exported. The cheese factory has moved its tasting centre, so the tasting of Mersey Valley cheese wasn’t as special as it might have been. Then, along the coast, onto the “Spirit of Tasmania”, sailing overnight and back to our caravan at the Ashley Grove campground in Melbourne.
Scroll down past the ads, etc for more photos.
P+D
18 June 2012
Advertisement
Tot: 0.093s; Tpl: 0.016s; cc: 13; qc: 49; dbt: 0.0522s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Ron
non-member comment
Back to Melbourne
Thanks once again for an excellent travel doco. Methinks you might have experienced the Melbourne quake?