Tasmania: Part I

Our flight on Wednesday was just over an hour from Melbourne (the mainland) but it feels like a world away. We landed in Launceston, just one gate and two luggage carousels. Launceston is at the north end of the Tasmania; Hobart, the state capitol and population 200,000, is at the southern end.

Our Avis car took us down the center of the state and over to the east coast. We rented a house in Bicheno (Bi-shen’-oh) – population 750 – for the week, thinking we would drive to different parts of Tasmania from that base. We got to Bicheno just in time for dinner and a walk down to the “blowhole” at sunset.

Thursday was the only day forecasted for rain, so we decided to head down to Hobart and see the much talked about MONA (Museum of Old and New Art). The drive was highly reminiscent of New Zealand, both in its scenery and its harrowing narrowness. We saw lots of road kill – possum, wallabies, wombats.

We parked down at the wharf and walked around the shops, along with a couple thousand people from the docked Carnival cruise ship. There we learned that the MONA was actually a bit up the road by car. (It also has its own ferry from the wharf.)

The only thing I knew about MONA before getting there was that it was new – it opened in 2011. I just assumed it was something like the MOMA. It turns out that it’s a huge private collection owned by David Walsh, a millionaire professional gambler who self identifies as having Asperger’s. MONA has been described as an adult Disneyland in a cave (it’s three stories deep and it feels like it). I could count the number of “old” pieces of art on one hand – it’s pretty much just MNA. There was no printed information anywhere in the galleries so you had to use an electronic device and headphones to get more information. The plus side is you get more than an artist name and medium and they send you your personalized tour to your email; the downside is I spent more time navigating the technology and felt distracted from the art. Mind you, sometimes that was probably a good thing. Andy describes the experience as “consciousness altering but not always pleasant.” It was pretty trippy - sometimes a good trip, sometimes a bad trip. Using the technology to learn about the art was pretty challenging for both Andy and me. You can read more about the MONA here.

water droplet words

Interviews with people from Turkey on 40 old school TVs

Me and the technology

We drove the 2.5 hours back to Bicheno partly in the dark. The best part of that dusk timing was the Tasmanian Devil that grinned at us from the side of the road. Both Andy and I knew half way through that drive that we had seen all of Hobart that we were going to see on this trip. Whoever told us we could drive around Tasmania in a day clearly hasn’t done it. Even the A (main) highways were windy and tedious.

Friday was a sunny morning. We headed into town to gather touristy information. I stopped at the local primary school that has a spectacular view of the ocean. I asked to come visit one day next week and was told the principal was unavailable but would email me.

We started with a walk along the foreshore, across spectacularly shaped rocks worn over eons. Incredible views, incredible topography. The path along the land and the rocks was well marked with painted arrows. We spent a long time just checking out all the different types of sea life in the rocks.

After lunch, we drove north a bit up the coast until we essentially four-wheeled down a gravel road to Dennison beach. It was totally worth it.

We ended the day with a night penguin tour. There’s a rookery of about 1000 penguins on the outskirts of town. We stood at the top of the dune and watched as the hungry baby penguins came out of their burrows looking for their parents, and their well-fed parents made their way up the beach to their babies. Andy and I had one baby walk right between us, just inches from our feet. We weren’t allowed to take pictures, but we are supposed to receive some from the company. You can see some at their website. It’s not the height of the penguin season, but we still saw about 50 penguins of all ages and heard hundreds of them from their burrows.