Tag Archives: History

Escape from Melbourne, and Day 1 on Tasmania

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Friday 6 September 2024 – Our entry to Melbourne was not entirely straightforward. Neither was our exit, which laid bare the sheer opacity of the airline ticketing process. We had been booked on a Virgin Australia flight yesterday morning from Melbourne to Hobart, a relatively short flight of an hour and a quarter or so. When we came to check in online, we found we were not allowed to do so; seats had not been allocated, there were no free seats except extra cost options (extra legroom seats, basically), and when I tried to pay the extra, all my various credit or debit cards were declined on the incomprehensible basis that I was trying to pay in a currency different from that of the original booking. I think it was something to do with it having been a travel agent booking, a suspicion which was reinforced later.

Some moments after failing to check in online, we received an e-mail from VA apologising for changing our flights. Instead of a direct flight at 10.40am, we were now on a 3.30pm flight. Closer examination of the e-mail revealed that the flight was to Sydney, and would be followed by a 5.50pm flight from Sydney to Hobart. None of the options we could explore online revealed that there were any direct flights available from Melbourne to Hobart. So we checked in for our multi-stage flight thinking that VA must have cancelled the original one.

We took a small amount of comfort from the later departure time, were able to have a relaxed morning exiting our apartment, and got ourselves to the airport for about 2pm. At this point, Jane’s caution about the whole thing paid off, as she was concerned about whether our bags would be checked through all the way to Hobart. So we looked around for an operative to help us and, as luck would have it, he, Irwan, was brilliant. He took us to a manned bag drop and started chatting with the lady there; between them, they figured out that there was a 1720 direct flight from Melbourne to Hobart. Irwan then spent quite a lot of screen time basically, we think, getting around all the objections that the system was throwing up against us being allowed on this flight. Again, the fact that this was a travel agent booking was mentioned as a complication. To cut what is already a long story short, he managed to cudgel his computer into allocating us extra legroom seats on this direct flight for no extra charge, proving that he was a Good Man. We had some time to kill before our flight, but would still arrive earlier than VA’s rather eccentric re-routing.

My suspicion is that VA had overbooked all the Hobart flights that day which is why it was rerouting us via Sydney; and further that we were lucky to find in Irwan someone who could get round the technological barriers put in place to make our lives more miserable.

So, we had three hours to kill before our flight. This could mean only one thing.

As it happens, our departure was delayed a further 30 minutes by the late arrival of air crew, but we still got to Hobart

earlier than we would have done had we gone via Sydney.

Awaiting us to transfer us to our hotel was a young Taiwanese chap called Stephen who was very proactive in helping us with bags and so forth, and so we were soon enough at the frankly quite amazing Henry Jones Art Hotel on Hobart waterfront. Only once before had we walked into a hotel which made such a striking impression – the Singular Hotel in Patagonia. The Henry Jones has a unique vibe and quite a history to it and I shall write about it in more detail in due course. For now, suffice it to say that we have a very large and very comfortable room and the lady who runs the bar knows her cocktails.

All that was yesterday. Today, we were booked to go on an excursion to Bruny Island, a very oddly-shaped island south of Hobart.

(By the way, the empty bit shown on the left of the map really does look like that on Google. That’s because it seems to be empty – it’s the Southwest National Park and appears to be devoid of anything which looks like civilisation.)

Our tour was billed as offering “spectacular landscapes and tastings of gourmet local products”, so I thought we were in for a day of mainly majestic scenery. Since it was raining when we were picked up, I also hoped that we would simply be ferried about to gawp at (and, of course, photograph) the views without getting too soused. The day didn’t turn out like that, actually.

Our guide for the day was Alan

who was wrangling a coach and 24 guests. We had a drive to the ferry terminal,

where there was also a marina.

As we crossed the D’Entrecasteaux Channel and looked back, it was clear that the Tasmanian scenery was going to be quite different from almost any we’d so far encountered.

Having expected majestic landscapes on our arrival, I was a bit surprised that the first thing that Alan was talking about was a cheese stop. As we headed there, Alan gave us a few facts about Bruny Island, and it was clear that it was reasonably close in spirit to French Island, where we’d been just a couple of days before. Larger than French Island, its population is just 600. It’s not so off-grid – there’s electricity, for example, and a greater range of retail options than just the one general store – but it’s still mainly national park, state forest and some grazing areas, popular as a holiday location with some surfing beaches.

And so this was our first destination on the tour:

the Bruny Island Cheese Company. It is the first time in my life that I have had a tutored cheese tasting.

The tasting was led by Paola

who did a great job of explaining about the company, its products and its ethos, all of which are rather impressive. The cheese business has been going since 2003, after its founder, Nick Haddow, spent 10 years working with specialist cheese makers in many different countries around the world. The milk used is from their own farm, Glen Huon, which is actually on the mainland and which raises three rare breeds. Unusually, it allows the calves to stay with their mothers and drink their milk for several months, which lowers the stress levels for the cows, thus improving the quality of the milk yield. The focus on solely Tasmanian produce shapes the way they make their cheese and what ingredients are used in its production. We sampled four cheeses.

(Apologies for the photo of food, which is normally against my principles, but it is rather the story, here.)

You’ll notice a glass of beer in the photo. That’s there because in 2016 the company also started brewing its own beer, again using only Tasmanian-grown ingredients.

It was clear that there was a lot of passion, dedication and expertise at work. As a result, the cheeses are award-winning.

As we trooped back on to the bus and moved on, Alan mentioned the other tastings we would be doing during the tour – chocolate and honey. So it became clear that this was to be a major component of the day.

Our next stop, though, was a scenery stop, with a historical twist. From the map above, you can see that the two major lumps of the island are joined by a narrow stretch of land, which is about 70m wide at its narrowest. We could take the opportunity for a good view over it, provided we were prepared to walk up

some 240 steps. I did this, and the view was, indeed, worth the climb. You can clearly see The Neck, the strip of land that connects North and South Bruny.

The historical angle could be found at the top;

a monument to Truganini, a powerful aboriginal woman who fought for the rights of the indigenous people against the early colonists. She witnessed the murder of her mother by sailors and the kidnap of her sisters by sealers. She formed an association with a lay preacher, George Augustus Robinson, who hatched various plans to relocate those aboriginals who had not been killed of by colonists and their diseases, and enlisted Truganini’s help in executing those plans. The various plans and promises came to naught – it is a depressing story to read, and her treatment after her death reflects even more badly on the colonists. Her life has become representative of both the dispossession and destruction that was exacted upon Indigenous Australians and also their determination to survive the colonial genocidal policies that were enforced against them.

The area around the lookout is also home to Little Penguins and Mutton Birds (Shearwaters), and their burrows can be seen in places, and beside a lower boardwalk in the same location.

The bitumen of the road running along The Neck was changed from black to white

in order that the penguins could better be seen by motorists. We saw no penguins – it’s the wrong time of year for that here – but I did spot a blue wren.

We moved on past the pleasant scenery of the island’s settled areas,

and stopped for a short walk in the Mavista area, where there’s a walking track through rainforest.

It has a very prehistoric feel to it, due to the ferns and moss that dominate the environment.

Our next stop was to be lunch, in an area called Adventure Bay. En route, though, Alan spotted something quite unexpected – a white wallaby.

It was actually nearby another, conventionally grey, wallaby,

and the two of them seemed quite unconcerned by a coachload of people taking their photos; Alan said they actually relished the attention.

The lack of predators, the indulgence of the local people towards their cuteness, and the lack of colour prejudice amongst the animals themselves means that the white wallabies prosper on Bruny. (The jury seems to be out when it comes to deciding whether their colouring is leucistic or albino; whatever, it’s quite striking). It is also the name of a gin which is used as the basis for a local spritzer-type drink

which we drank to accompany our fish-and-chips lunch.

In the same area is the Bligh Museum of Pacific Exploration,

established in 1954 to display historic maps, paintings and other artifacts relating to the landings at Adventure Bay by various famous explorers, such as Tasman himself, James Cook and William Bligh. It’s quite small, but has masses of content

including the very tree stump to which Captain Cook moored his ship, the Resolution, in 1777.

The stump had been left in its original location, with a plaque attached describing its significance, until some utter wanker removed the plaque, leaving the V-shaped gash you can see. At that point, it was moved to the museum for its own protection.

Further up the road is Two Tree point (I’m still trying to work out a gag around one Two Tree, but have so far failed). This is thought to be where Cook’s artist painted a picture, of which a reproduction is on display.

This is my version of it.

You can see a beach there, but the recent violent weather which marooned us on Kangaroo Island and which has made south Australian lives a misery over the last week actually caused much of the sand to be washed away.

All those rocks used to be covered in sand.

Enough of this history; it was time for some more artisanal experience – the Bruny Island Chocolate Company. Actually, we didn’t get sucked into the vortex of possible chocolate purchases, but instead joined Alan and a group of others in exploring the neighbouring gardens of the chaps who have created and run the chocolate company. One of them got his love of chocolate from years of work as a chef; the other is a dentist, which seems rather a neat partnership for demand generation.

The gardens – normally private, but open for our group to visit – are rather lovely.

You’ll notice, in the final picture above, that the cock appears to have, well, a cock. It doesn’t; it’s actually its foot you can see (the one on the right, below).

There’s a lovely globe, made out of bits of scrap from the garage of one of their fathers

and various other nice exhibits.

After this, it was time for our final artisanal experience of the day – the Honey Pot.

The honey made here comes from bees which are moved around the island, following the nectar flows so that they can create their honeys from a variety of flowers. One can taste them, so when a coachload of people turns up, there’s a bit of a feeding frenzy.

We were given some honey ice cream and a taster pot of our choice to take away with us.

That was it for the tour – we headed back to the ferry

and thence to our hotel, after a day which was very enjoyable but nothing like what I had expected. We have no formal programme for tomorrow, bar a tour of the Henry Jones Hotel, but I expect that the obvious thing for us to do will be to go for a walk. Whatever happens, I’ll be sure to report about it here, so do please keep in touch to find out how the day unfolded.

Wandering around Adelaide

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Thursday 29 August 2024 – We’ve been in Adelaide now for two and a half days, having arrived off the Ghan on Tuesday morning. The train was a great experience, on several levels – relief at being able to cope in a small cabin, excellent sights and scenes on our excursions and great food and service from the crew, who all worked really hard to make sure that people enjoyed themselves as much as they could.

So, as we pulled into Adelaide at around midday, we said our farewells to various people that we’d met and talked to on the train, disembarked and linked up with our (very chatty) driver, Alan, as we waited for the suitcases to arrive.  When they did arrive, there was the usual feeding frenzy as people lunged for their bags,

but we got ours quite quickly, and Alan ferried us to our hotel,

where thankfully there was a room ready for us. And I have to say how much I enjoyed having lots of space once more; we had a substantial and very well-organised room on the 18th floor. It even had kettle and milk and so we were able to have a Nice Cup Of Tea as we pondered what to do with ourselves during our time in Adelaide; we actually had nothing formally organised and so had the rest of the day and two more full days at our disposal.

So we went for a lot of walks. Obviously.

Over the last two-and-a-half days, we’ve covered about 30km as we explored the city and the various aspects that interested us. I could bombard you with the photos we’ve taken, but that would make for an exceedingly long post, so I’ll summarise here and point you at albums on Flickr should you wish to see a greater range of photos. Basically, though, we’ve really enjoyed our time here – Adelaide is a lovely city to walk around.

One of the attractive things about it is the old, colonial-style architecture, with elaborate ironwork decorating many buildings. There are also many impressive edifices squeezed (rather like London) between more modern skyscrapers. Here’s a taster.

You can see a whole lot more of the photos in this Flickr Album, which covers the main part of the city.  North Adelaide features a couple of streets with several notable buildings in them, and we made this the special destination of one walk, which yielded several more photos of this traditional architecture.

We came across a lot of murals as we walked around.

More of these can be found here on Flickr.

One particular installation is worth picking out, though, something just behind our hotel.  It looked like just this wall above a mural

but closer examination showed that it had model vehicles of all types stuck to it

in their thousands!

Yet again – Why? Who?? How???

There were lots of other things to be enjoyed as we walked around – the Central Markets, some other street art installations, the interior of the Catholic Cathedral, the Botanic Gardens and more.

The laughing chap above is one of Australia’s greatest comedians, Roy Rene, later known as Mo, some of whose catchphrases entered Australian vernacular: “Don’t come the raw prawn with me” is one of the best known. The Australian entertainment industry’s annual award for excellence in live performance is named the “Mo Award” after him.

The Palm House in the Botanic Garden is a restored Victorian glasshouse imported from Bremen in Germany in 1875; it arrived prefabricated but almost all the glass was smashed in transit and so new glass had to be fitted in situ!

The Queen Victoria waterlily, a native of the Amazon, is the second largest of all waterlilies and has huge leaves – these in the Botanic Garden were easily 1 metre in diameter and it can grow much bigger.

We found some amusing uses of the language.

There’s lots more photos here on Flickr.

We had more amusement looking out for the name of Polites. I first saw this word writ large on the outside of a building near our hotel

and wondered what it meant.  It turns out to be the name of one Constantine Polites, a Greek man who grew up in poverty but worked his way up into being a major property tycoon in the city; every building he bought in the Central Business District (CBD) featured his name. Some still feature it and we had fun looking out for them – Toujours Le Polites!

Near the Botanic Gardens is the Botanic Park, and Jane had read that it might be possible to see flying foxes – fruit bats – there.  So we included this as we walked back from North Adelaide. And, indeed, you can see some fruit bats there.

Lots of them.

No really, lots.

Apparently this colony migrated from Eastern Australia as its food source dried up there and found its way into Botanic Park. There are between 20 and 40,000 of them to be seen! We spent a good few minutes watching them as they flew about

and I took some video of them as they squabbled among themselves about the best place to hang about.

The last thing we did was to catch the Adelaide tram down to the seaside suburb of Glenelg. (We nearly didn’t catch the tram because at the first stop we awaited one I’d failed to notice that there was no weekday service.) It was mentioned as being worth a visit, and so we walked around it, obviously; but we were out of season, and so it wasn’t really at its best. It has a smart town hall

but the beach is a bit weedy by the jetty (well, we think it’s seagrass, actually, which is a good thing if somewhat fragrant)

and is still a work in progress elsewhere.

It’s very clearly a seaside-y sort of place

which seems to be waiting for the season to get under way.  There are some cute touches

some posher bits, such as the Marina Pier,

and, clearly, a heavy investment in Norfolk Island Pine trees,

but it was pretty quiet. I can imagine it’s more lively once spring moves towards summer.

So that is Adelaide in a nutshell. We’ve really enjoyed walking around and taking it in, and it’s been really nice to be able to decompress in comfort after the cultural and touristic overload of the Kimberley and the Ghan.

Tomorrow we’re back on the Relentless Tourism Treadmill as we head to Kangaroo Island, and I’ll try to keep these pages updated as we dive back into the maelstrom of our great Australian Adventure.

 

 

Kimberley Day 4 – Bigge Island

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Friday August 16 – My birthday, marked by the present, from Fate, of the ‘flu, I therefore took to my bed – however I should point out that I also received good wishes and a birthday dessert delivered to the room from the on-board team, and apparently Happy Birthday was sung to me in my absence at the daily briefing!

Anyhoo , while I languished, Jane went out and had all the fun. I let her take up the narrative….

Bigge Island was named by Phillip Parker King in 1819 after the English Judge and royal commissioner John Thomas Bigge. The Wunambal people of the Kimberley coast know it as Wuuyuru and it is a place of great significance to them, although it has not been inhabited for many years.

We were transferred to shore by Zodiac;

after a certain amount of milling about and depositing lifejackets, etc, our visit was split into two parts.

The first was a short walk inland (carefully avoiding the areas on the beach and in the dunes marked as turtle nesting sites)

onto rocky areas

where ceremonial sites – pathways and circles of stones – can be found.

The people who made and used these sites are no longer around to ask, but the pathways are generally thought to indicate the path of the Wunnguur, a variation of the Rainbow Serpent or creator; or (as perhaps in this case)

to indicate a significant natural resource such as fresh water.

The stone circles were most likely used for ceremonies such as marriages, places of judgement, or resting places for the dead before final interment.

We then moved on to the second part of our visit: directly on the beach are galleries of small narrow caves wherein can be found rock art.

We were asked to leave backpacks and hats outside so as not to risk scraping any of the walls or ceilings; and again the Aboriginal people request that the art is not shared on social media. However there is an interesting article here – presumably published before the no-share request – by means of which I can show you some of the art we saw.

Of particular interest are the representations of the Wandjina, the local weather deities who control rain, floods, storms and cyclones. Some Dreamtime stories say that they created the landscape and its inhabitants, and that when they left the earth they passed through the rocks, leaving an imprint of themselves behind – so what we see is not so much an artistic representation but more an imprint of their actual life force, and as such an object of reverence and respect. Whatever their nature, they date back around 4,000 years and seem to coincide with the end of a millennium-long drought that gave way to a wetter climate – which would make sense given the association of the Wandjina with water and weather.

Equally  interesting, are the “First Contact” drawings. Much more recent, since first contact was in 1788, and rather more prone to erosion than the Wandjina-era works (the skills involved in creating the art obviously dying out by a few hundred years ago) these depict sailing ships and men in European clothing, smoking pipes. The article referenced above has some (obviously processed) photographs showing some of these clearly. In addition there were representations of footprints – or rather boot-prints, from boots apparently with heels; and what we would call a churchwarden’s pipe, the characteristic clay pipe often dug up in English fields and gardens. Throughout there were handprints, the outlines of (presumably) the artists’ hands – “I am here. I am country. Country is me”.

It was a fascinating and thought-provoking excursion. I arrived back at the ship to find that Steve had just been tested in the ship’s hospital and confirmed as a case of Influenza A; he’s not going to be going anywhere for the next couple of days at least – confined to cabin! But at least it wasn’t Covid, and – so far at least – I don’t appear to be affected. So you are going to have to put up with my (deathless) prose and (second-class) photography [don’t be so modest – Asst Ed] for a bit! Here’s wishing us all luck!