Tag Archives: History

Watson for today, then?

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Friday 20 September 2024 – Acting on a suggestion from the friends we met last night, we decided that Watsons Bay would be a good destination for an excursion, particularly since the weather outlook was so good – sunshine and temperatures in the mid-20s.

So we headed for the ferry and queued up

to get on to F9 on the B side of Wharf 2. I’ve been pretty impressed with the way the public transport available around Sydney is organised. There’s no need to buy tickets; one can simply “tap on” and “tap off” using a credit card or, in my case, my phone. The trains are double-decker, the ferries seem to be very competently operated and the services have suited us very well on our short stay here. The ferry ride out of Circular Quay offers, unsurprisingly, some great views of the Sydney skyline

North Sydney

and, of course, its iconic structures.

Jane noticed that there were people climbing the bridge,

something that she and I did when we were here last, in 2001. Nice to see it’s still going; and they’ve added the aboriginal flag at the top of the bridge since our last visit, unless I’m mistaken.
Many ships leaving Circular Quay will pass a Martello Tower built on a small island:

Fort Denison, a former military site which is the most complete Martello Tower in the world and has been a museum, tourist attraction, restaurant, and popular location for wedding receptions and corporate events. It’s now closed for conservation work, apparently.
Watsons Bay is an attractive place

with a great view back of the Sydney skyline.

One of Sydney’s great attractions is a restaurant, Doyles, known for its seafood generally and its fish’n’chips specifically. The Watsons Bay location

is the original one, dating from 1885. Another attraction is the heritage trail which starts at Camp Cove (a place, not an over-theatrical chap) and leads up to South Head, the southern jaw of the mouth of Sydney Harbour. It’s a walk. So we went for it. Obviously. It takes you past some of the nice houses there,

and behind a cannon, which is pointing, for some reason, back at Sydney.

The furthest point of the trail, about a kilometre from the start, is Hornby Lighthouse

with the old lighthouse keeper’s cottages beside it.

One can also see how narrow the gap is that leads into Sydney Harbour. North Head – the upper jaw – is really quite close.

The lighthouse is a good, photogenic location. It’s therefore catnip for today’s generations of phone camera wielders (mainly, today, from the far east),

who seem to find it intolerable should a photo not include themselves. In many cases, quite an inordinate amount of time is spent organising poses (e.g. staring (nautically? pretentiously?) into the distance or pointing at the top of the lighthouse as if surprised to see that it has one). This specific posing seems to be a cultural thing among oriental tourists, and I wonder what will become of all of these images. Instagram, I suppose; the idea is that other people should see the photos. I doubt that, once posted online, the images will ever be seen again by their originators.

Grumpy? Me? Bloody right.

We had wanted to continue our walk down the other side of South Head rather than just completing the heritage trail loop. Trouble is, there’s a fucking great military establishment in the way, HMAS Watson,

and they clearly take a dim view of people wandering past their buildings. So, back towards Camp Cove it was,

which at least gave us the chance to take a coffee stop. From there, we cut across to the other side of the head. There’s clearly a military link here, since (as well as the naval base there) the road passed an armoury, an “Officers Quarters” building

and what we think were once gun emplacements.

There was some wildlife action along the way: Jane spotted a kookaburra

which really was sitting in an old gum tree; a couple of remarkable ants nests;

an engaging pair of blue wrens (male and female)

and a bunch of sulphur-crested cockatoos,

who were pretending to be sea birds perching on the cliffs and

inspecting tourists for food value.

We also spotted this dove

which, coincidentally, is a Spotted Dove.

The wrens and the cockatoos were at Gap Bluff, which has a small National Park area and also provides a couple of great cliff views.

There’s a historical memorial there, too;

the anchor belonged to a ship, the Dunbar which was wrecked on nearby rocks

in August 1857. Only one of the 122 aboard survived and the anchor was recovered some 50 years later and placed as a memorial to the others. The wreck was the catalyst for the creation of the Hornby Lighthouse and its survivor, one John James, went on to become the lighthouse keeper there.

Further along from Gap Bluff is the Watsons Bay Signal Station,

first established in1790; a permanent guard would watch out for arriving ships, raising a flag both to give them a sign of the new location of the settlement, and to notify the colony of the imminent arrival of the long awaited ships. Amazingly, the station has remained in permanent use from that date and has thus maintained its role for over two centuries, and from the same building for most of that time.

Near it is a lighthouse, the South Head Upper Light, also called the Macquarie Lighthouse.

Its site is the longest serving lighthouse site in Australia, with some kind of navigational aid in place since 1791 (sadly not sufficiently effective to save the Dunbar, though). The lighthouse shown above was completed in 1883 and is still fully operational. Next to it is the lighthouse keeper’s cottage

and in front of it, complementing the formal informational plaque on the lawns, is a much more informal tribute.

One could have carried on walking the cliff path, but we turned back to the bay to catch the ferry

back to Circular Quay, whence we walked towards the Sydney Royal Botanic Garden. On Circular Quay there are some plaques in the ground celebrating well-known Australians; we recognised a couple

and I suppose this one

must be the one originally dedicated to Rolf Harris.

The Botanic Garden is a large, pleasant park

with some remarkable trees

The tallest palm tree I’ve ever seen

and a few quirky sculptures.

My main objective was to get Mrs. Macquarie point and something called Mrs. Macquarie’s Chair. This Macquarie name keeps cropping up. Major General Lachlan Macquarie (born on the island of Ulva off the coast of the Isle of Mull in Scotland’s Inner Hebrides) was a British Army officer and colonial administrator. Macquarie served as the fifth Governor of New South Wales from 1810 to 1821, and had a leading role in the social, economic, and architectural development of the colony. He is considered by historians to have had a crucial influence on the transition of New South Wales from a penal colony to a free settlement and therefore to have played a major role in the shaping of Australian society in the early nineteenth century, hence the ubiquity of the Macquarie name.

He was married, as we can infer from the naming of Mrs Macquarie’s Chair,

an exposed sandstone rock cut (by convicts in 1810) into the shape of a bench. Folklore has it that Elizabeth Macquarie used to sit on the rock and watch for ships from Great Britain sailing into the harbour. She was known to visit the area and sit enjoying the panoramic views of the harbour. Above the chair is a stone inscription referring to Mrs Macquarie’s Road. That road was built, on the instruction of Governor Macquarie, between 1813 and 1818, and ran from the original Government House to Mrs Macquarie’s Point.

By this stage we were getting a trifle foot- and back-sore, so decided to return to the hotel. We diverted for a quick look into The Calyx,

to see if it would sell us some beer. Sadly, the café is just a café, and coffee wasn’t going to cut it for us, so I took a couple of valedictory photos

and we headed back to the hotel, past the Conservatorium of Music, which has the least music-related architecture I think I’ve ever seen.

Thus ended a very pleasant day’s outing; ample justification for a glass of something cold and a bite to eat. Before we retired for the night, for amusement, I set a timelapse going to cover the comings and goings of the ferries at Circular Quay, which we can see from our hotel room. I hope you find it as engaging as I do.

Tomorrow we leave the city proper to spend a few days with friends who live to the north of Sydney. I have no idea what this means in terms of photos and verbiage on these pages; you’ll just have to keep an eye out to see for yourself, won’t you?

Launceston. Not the one in Cornwall.

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Thursday 12 September 2024 – Long post alert! Time to get a drink and settle down, I think.

Our task yesterday was quite simple – get ourselves from our Peppers hotel in Cradle Mountain to one in Launceston, some 150km away. With no excursions booked at the far end, we had the rare luxury of a relaxed schedule; Jane had found a couple of Things To Look At en route, one of which closed at 3pm, but we had plenty of time. Strolling over to breakfast took us past yet another pademelon

(which you can see was soaking wet from the ceaseless rain) but otherwise the morning was unremarkable.

Since kangaroos, wallaroos, wallabies, pademelons and quokkas are so similar in overall appearance, Jane did a bit of research to try to understand how to tell them apart. It turns out that the only obvious criterion is size. There is a bewildering variety of subspecies of each animal, but the only way to tell many of them apart is by examining their DNA, which is complex. So: size, it is, then. Consider the whole macropod phenomenon to be several varieties of quopadewallaroo.

As we set out, we passed through a landscape that could have come from the blasted heaths which make up the army-controlled areas near Aldershot.

Otherwise the landscape continued to be wet and marshy, and occasionally mountainous

as it had for what seemed like several days now. We stopped to admire the scenery caused by the Cethana hydro electric works

and also to look at a couple of murals plastered on the outside of a hydro-electric facility.

I’d have got better photos, but the layby was being actively used by some very large lorries which were attaching and/or detaching huge bits of plant machinery on trailers, so our freedom of movement was not what it might have been. But the point of the murals is important; they are part of an expanding project started in the nearest town, Sheffield.

During the 1980s, Sheffield was going through hard times. At a public meeting in 1985, the idea of painting murals around the town was proposed, with the hope of emulating a similar program’s success in the Canadian town of Chemainus. From this idea, a mural by John Lendis was commissioned, becoming the first of now several dozen murals in the town. There is even an annual Mural Fest, with a mural painting competition that gives nine new installations an airing.

Street art such as this is catnip to us on our travels, so we stopped there and went for a walk. Obviously. The town is a pleasant enough place anyway,

but it’s unique because everywhere you look, there are murals, and it makes for a splendid sight.

By the visitor centre is an area – Mural Park – with lots and lots all set up together.

I don’t want to bore you with all of the photos I took, but you’re welcome to overdose on them in my Flickr album if you’d like. But one of those in the Visitor Centre area display is worth pulling out.

It’s a picture of Greg Duncan in front of a section of The Wall, the astonishing installation he has created that I wrote about a couple of days ago. If you didn’t read about it then, shame on you – go and take a look. NOW!

By the time we’d reached Sheffield, the countryside had changed; we were driving through farmland. It hadn’t quite stopped raining, but the landscape was more open and bucolic and a lot less wild.

We had planned to stop at a steam engine museum in Westbury, but we had spent so much time in Sheffield that it had closed by the time we got there. However, seeing Sheffield was a delight and I’m glad we did spend time there.

Our destination, Launceston, was not much further on. We arrived at the Peppers Seaport Hotel in mid-afternoon and were awarded a splendid apartment, with kettle, mugs, Earl Grey, milk in the fridge and – praise be! – laundry facilities! “These things are important, you know”*.

The Seaport in the hotel’s name is a nicely gentrified area

which features many eateries, among them the rather oddly-named but very decent Rupert & Hound, where we availed ourselves of such local produce as Gummy Shark, which goes nicely as part of a fish’n’chip meal, and then retired for the night.

That was yesterday, Wednesday 11th. Today, we had a full day in Launceston with no activities or excursions formally booked. So when we woke up to find that

the sun was shining brightly, we sprang out of bed with a song on our collective lips and went for a walk. Obviously. In fact, we went for two walks, because Launceston (pronounced “lawn cess ton”, by the way, not like what they do in Cornwall) has a variety of attractive things for walkers to walk around.

To start with, we headed for Cataract Gorge, through which the River Esk flows. There are very well-organised and clearly marked trails along each side of the river, and we headed for the one that started on the far side of the Esk, the Cataract Gorge trail. To get there, we crossed King’s Bridge,

passing a sort of adventure centre with accommodation, created and run by Penny Royal.

There’s a water mill there

and various other entertainments

including a cliff walk which requires you to get a safety harness so you can navigate the cliff face. We didn’t do this. We just went for a walk beside the river,

which one can now do free of charge, but for which there used to be a toll, payable at the toll house.

It’s not called Cascade Gorge for nothing,

but the cascades are not the only attraction along the walk. The views are quite nice, as one might expect,

and after a kilometre or so, one reaches a suspension bridge which allows one to cross to the other side.

Careful examination of the photo above will reveal that there appears to be someone suspended in the middle of the bridge. This is an illusion caused by the presence of the slowest chairlift in the world, in which one can ride in a very leisurely fashion, from one bank to the other. To get to the lift station on our bank (in pleasant gardens, with a bandstand and a cafe, albeit not open today as this side of the river was suffering a power outage!), we passed a peacock and several wallabies

and gravely allowed the attendant to explain how to get on the lift for the ride without mentioning the several hundred chair lifts I have ridden during my skiing years. The chair may be slow, but it does have the distinction of having, at 308 metres, the largest single span of any chairlift in the world. The ride down gives a nice view of the suspension bridge and the park on the other bank.

The park features a café, which we stopped at for a coffee, before exploring the suspension bridge further,

Looks just like Bristol, don’t you think?

and then heading back towards Launceston along the Zig Zag Trail, which is clearly signposted as being “steep – hikers only”. And with good cause, too;

the trail climbs a good 80m before descending 100m to King’s Bridge. En route, we got a good look at a Tasmanian Nativehen (called a “turbochook” by the locals, apparently)

and a curious crystal formation on the rockface.

This is zeolite, a hydrated alumino-silicate mineral, rarely seen in such an accessible site, probably derived from molten magma associated with the cooling rock.

We also got a nice view over Launceston,

at around the same place as we passed a group of climbers who were, erm, climbing the rock.

As we headed back to the hotel, we noticed that the mural virus had spread to Launceston; the wall surrounding the King’s Park beside the hotel was decorated

on both sides,

although the picture above does seem to be of more informal decorative work.

By this stage we’d covered about five miles, but we still hadn’t explored the city of Launceston itself. So we went for another walk. Obviously.

Heading into the city, we passed the Custom House

and could see a huge brewery.

This is James Boag, which produces beer that’s very popular in Tasmania, although it’s not a major player in the overall Australian beer market. As we passed it, a chap sat on a bench recommended a visit, which seemed a good idea. But first we thought we’d explore the Tramway Museum (Launceston had a tram system between 1911 and 1952, apparently). We headed off to where Google told us it was and pretty much failed to find it. We eventually realised that we’d actually walked past it at about 3pm

but it was closed, despite a notice telling us it was open until 4pm. We did find an old tram station, though – Inveresk Launceston.

By this stage, the brewery seemed an attractive idea, so we walked past the vast array of buildings that it is comprised of and went into

The Brewery, where we were able to sample various of Boag’s beers,

and visit the Brewery Museum. This had pretty much normal brewery museum-type stuff

with a couple of exceptions. One was a photo of the vermin elimination machine

which was always called Oscar, whichever gender it happened to be, and whose vets bills were passed off in the books as repair costs for the machine. The other was a mystery object.

It’s called a Meteorphonium. It’s a musical instrument. No, really. Please spend a minute watching a very charming video about it. (Sorry, for technical reasons, I can’t embed it here. Grrrr.)

After this refreshing interlude, we walked around Launceston in order to take a look at the old buildings for which is well-known. We started by going past the Albert Hall

towards the City Park

(note how the brewery dominates the skyline). The park gave us an opportunity to get a closer look at Masked Lapwings

which have really spooky faces

but very cute chicks.

Then we walked along Cameron Street, where most of these old – and very attractive – buildings are.

The Post Office stands out particularly

and one can go in; but although they’ve kept a lot of the fabric of the original building, they’ve filled it with a modern post office in a box, which I think rather ruins its interior charm.

Of course, not all the buildings are old or attractive,

but we enjoyed looking around the parts of the city that we saw. And the beer was quite good, too.

We ended our walk with a meal back at Rupert & Hound, a choice of staggering unoriginality but one which gave some confidence of a decent meal.

And that has been it for our time in Launceston. It has been a delight to walk around in sunshine, after what seems like an age of cold and wet weather. The forecast for tomorrow seems to return to some degree of moistness, but we move on towards the north-east corner of the island, near a town called Scottsdale. Some wildlife adventures are promised there, as well as some impressive-sounding landscapes, but, to be frank, we’re not quite sure how things have been organised for us. So, please join us over the coming days as we find out.
* © Chris Walker

Diversion: The Henry Jones Art Hotel, Hobart

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Sunday 8 September 2024 – I promised earlier (and earlier) that I would write about the hotel we stayed at in Hobart, the Henry Jones Art Hotel, because it made such an impression on us as we arrived a couple of days ago. For a first impression, the only place to have exceeded it was the Singular Hotel in Patagonia, and for a similar reason – the elegant reuse of a historic space as a hotel. The Singular saw the transformation of an old lamb canning factory; the Henry Jones was a redevelopment of a waterfront warehouse that was once used in the whaling industry and then repurposed for making jam. Henry’s story is a remarkable one; he started in the jam factory, sticking labels on tins, rose through becoming foreman to buying a controlling interest in the business and reconstructing it in his own name, with the “IXL” (“I Excel”) brand name.

Like so many waterfront properties the jam factory fell into disrepair and was practically on the point of collapse when the current owners rescued it a quarter of a century ago and reimagined it as the hotel it is today. The construction of the hotel preserved as much of the surviving jam factory as possible, with only four beams being replaced for safety.  So the fabric of the building exudes the history of its links to its jam-making past.

And the connection with the art world? From the 1970s through to the 1990s, art students from the adjacent Tasmanian School of Creative Arts partied (and maybe lived) in the dilapidated building – and photos we saw of that time show that it looked more like a multi-storey carpark that had been destroyed by fire than anything else. The once-students were subsequently invited to walk through the new building and create art based on what they saw. This art became the first art displayed in the hallways upon opening. Ever since then, the hotel has been a living, breathing art gallery. So its charisma comes from the combination of its historic fabric and its unique art displays.

Its fabric: the corridors are redolent of its warehouse origins.

Its walls betray some of its origins: in the mortar, one can see traces of possum hair (compare the use of horsehair in old European buildings)

and fragments of shells, originally taken from an indigenous midden and ground up to use the calcium in the mortar.

There is a great open area, under a uniquely-designed roof, available for conventions and other gatherings

and the hotel’s other spaces have wonderful decor.

Some of the original equipment is used for decor touches

or just pictured

and some places betray its history, such as this leakage of ancient jam down a wall as it was released when the room was warmed up.

What adds to the impact of this fabric is the art on display. We went on an official Art Tour of the hotel (led, it has to be said, by a very irritating lady, but revealing some great stories). Everything in the hotel is available for sale, which means that the pieces around the place do change over time; and there are specific areas which are dedicated as galleries.

I’m not a great one for spending time wringing the meaning or significance out of artworks, but some were very impressive pieces of work.  This one, for example, a photo-realistic depiction of an indigenous woven basket

is not, as you might think, a photograph; it is done in, of all things, crayon on sheets of black paper.

This picture of woodland after a forest fire

was created from its actual ashes, individually selected, mixed and dropped in specific patterns – nine months’ work.

Many of the other pieces have political or historical significance; some are winners of the John Glover Art Prize, a competition sponsored by the hotel.

As well as all that intellectual and historical stuff, it does other good hotel things. There is a good bar

where chief cocktail wrangler Jenn will give some good cocktail theatre;

and, in the room, some good attention to detail in little extras provided: a trawl through the historical records to see if there were family connections to the convicts who were transported here; and I draw your attention to the bottom left of this drawer, which was next to the thoughtfully-provided kettle and fridge.

We enjoyed our time in Hobart immensely, and the unique nature of the Henry Jones Art Hotel added unique memories for our time in the city.

OK, then.

Back to the mainstream of our Australian travels in the next post, as we travel across Tasmania to the west coast. Do come back and read about that, won’t you?