The Fifth Capital
Settled in on the 9th (10th American) floor of
our hotel in downtown Hobart, the capital city of Tasmania.
The morning (logically) started off in Swansea (where the previous
night had ended). When I woke up the sun was just coming up and we were pretty
treated to a nice sunrise. After packing
up, we headed down to check out the beach.
I think the last three times I have gone to the beach it has been in the
winter (and always in Oz); I think some would call that poor planning. The
beach was nice, and after snapping a few pictures, we got in the car for our
long drive down to Port Arthur on the Tasman Peninsula (located to the east of
the mainland and Hobart).
After departing Swansea, the road got fairly narrow and the striping
went away again for a bit. The road
followed the coast for a while, on the plains alongside the beach and then up a
bit onto cliffs, before descending back down.
Enroute to Tribunna (a large town – I think around 1000 people), the
road turned inland. Just beyond the
town, we entered a smaller town of Orford sited on a river outlet into a small
bay. We stopped for a takeaway coffee
and turned up the river valley. The road
was perched in the gorge, with the right side dropping off into the river and
the left side (the side that I was driving on) was pressed up against a sheer
rock face. The road broke free of the gorge after a few kilometres and we crossed
a tiny bridge marking the division of the mainland to the peninsula.
Soon after getting onto the peninsula, we encountered extensive (and
fairly inexplicable) roadworks, which necessitated our move to a temporary,
unsealed (dirt / gravel) road for a fair bit. The roadwork carried us all the
way to Eaglehawk Neck, where the peninsula narrows greatly (to the point that
it’s only a couple hundred feet from the shore of the bay to the ocean). Stuart
explained to me that in the early days, when the convicts were housed at Port
Arthur on the southern tip of the peninsula, there was a ‘dog fence’ – dogs chained
up in a line, ready to maul any prisoner attempting to escape north off the
peninsula via land.
From Eaglehawk Neck, it was a short trip to Port Arthur, which recently
attained World Heritage Site status. We arrived just before midday and had some
lunch at the café in the (fairly bustling) visitor centre. As an introduction
to the expansive site, we joined up with a 40 minute guided tour at 12:30 to
get an overview of all there is to see and hear a bit of background. There was
a very contradictory duality of stories which they seem to try to portray – by some
measures the prison at Port Arthur was a place of extreme brutality, and yet
often the guide tried to paint the place as progressive. Stuart and I agreed they need to clarify
their message a bit; while both portrayals may be accurate, it makes the site
seem uneasy about its past.
We had a few minutes to wander around and headed into the old asylum
building. The prison had closed in the
late 1870s and the government, attempting to erase whatever history had existed
there, divided the land and renamed the place to form a new town. When people bought the land, the stipulation
was that they demolish the remnants of the prison. It took a while for the land to be sold, and
a small town did form. While many of the larger buildings were repurposed (the
asylum became the town hall), large bushfires in the 1890s decimated what
remained of the prison. All that was
left standing of the various old buildings were the stone walls.
Contrary to the government’s view that the history of the site needed
to be expunged, tourists began stopping in almost immediately after the prison
closed. The bushfires and dilapidated
state of affairs only served to bolster the lore of the site, and within fifty
years of the closure, the government had changed the name of the area back to
Port Arthur and began buying back what remained of the prison. Tourism hasn’t slowed down since.
At 1:40, we boarded a ferry for a short Harbour cruise, stopping at the
Isle of the Dead (where 1100 people are buried) and Point la Preuer, the land
across the harhour where the young prisoners were kept for rehabilitation. It
was a nice ride with good views, including a view out the passage to the
Pacific Ocean.
One back on land, we wandered to the various sites for two hours,
stopping into the dockyards, the memorial to the 1996 massacre (crazed gunman,
murdered 30-something people, resulted in the banning of firearms in Australia –
what a concept…), the remnants (pretty much crumbling walls) of the hospital,
paupers home, the penitentiary (currently under stabilization works, surrounded
by scaffolding), and the church, as well as a few surviving houses and the
separate prison.
It was a good thing to see, I suppose, but wouldn’t break my top ten
for Australia. Overall, I think it is a bit overhyped (maybe because it is far
from anywhere anyone would want to be), and when you get there it is a bit of a
letdown.
Around 4:00 we got in the car and drove the ninety minutes to Hobart,
retracing most of our drive from yesterday, including the unsealed bit. We got
into the city around peak hour, and crossed the Tasman Bridge into the
city. It’s a pretty terrible bridge,
carry the bulk of the traffic into and out of the city (of about 300,000), on
five lanes between the two directions and no barriers (as the lanes are
reversible).
Downtown isn’t too big, and our hotel was just about the tallest thing
(with 11 storeys in total). We checked in and unwound for a bit before heading
down to Salamanca Wharf, a place along the harbour with old storehouses
converted into restaurants and bars. We had a glass of Tasmanian wine at a wine
bar before going to dinner at Maldini, a good little Italian place.
After dinner, we stopped into the whiskey bar run by a local
distillery, Nant. The whiskey was very good.
Now we’re back in from the cold (this has been the coldest place on the
trip thus far) and are sorting out plans for tomorrow.
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