Author: Chris

After returning from Port Arthur I definitely needed a beer, so we walked around the corner from our hotel to the Hobart Brewing Company.  The Harbour Master Amber Ale was pretty good.  I’m just glad they had an amber ale, as they are becoming quite hard to find.

It was a Friday night, so the place was packed!  Loved the hops hanging from the supports, even though I don’t like hoppy beers.

The next morning was a Saturday, so we walked through the Salamanca Market, which is like a rite of passage in Hobart.  We ended up at a booth that has artwork from Jake Mikoda, who makes beautiful bronze pieces, some of which we had seen previously in Cradle Mountain.  I had been thinking about buying a Tasmanian Devil piece since then, so I went ahead and made the splurge.  Here is a photo from his website (mine is all wrapped up for the trip home).

That afternoon we got on the ferry to a famous “must-see” called MONA, the “Museum of Old and New Art”, a bizarre collection of stuff from a very wealthy guy, David Walsh, who didn’t have anywhere else to store it.  This guy apparently made his fortune  by developing a gambling system to bet on horse racing and other sports.  In other words, he is using art to launder money.

Hey, at least the ferry ride was fun, with Hobart in the background.  In case you were wondering, in the foreground is the side of a white plastic cow, which was a sign of things to come.  Mr Walsh isn’t exactly known for his tastes!

We passed under the Tasman Bridge, which feels like a very dangerous drive if you ever decide to cross it, with 5 lanes of traffic and no divider.  You could easily high-five somebody driving the opposite direction.  Just one more crossing on the way to the airport and we are clear!

After entering MONA you take the elevator down to the 3rd floor…most of the museum is underground (for good reason?).  One of the first pieces of “artwork” is this young Mick Jaggar sleepwalking on a corn-hole target, with sausages hanging off the end.  I can actually feel you asking WTF?  I completely agree!

A MONA blog post states the following:  “I have no idea what the salamis are about, but I feel the pose, the altered body scale, and the wonky table, together convey the artist’s sense of helplessness and inadequacy in the face of art history.”  Well of course!  Like, duh!  I feel so stupid having not seen this obvious reason for this artwork!

Then, just a few feet away from Mick is this Egyptian woman’s coffin from between 1550-1069 BC.  Real artwork versus 3rd grader paper-mache crap just a meter or so apart.  This David Walsh dude is a tool!

Here is a crushed car on an under-lit stand, something you can see in pretty much any wrecking yard (minus the dramatic stand).  Not entirely sure what the point of this was, but to be honest, I don’t really car enough to find out (pun intended).

This McDonald’s arch was created by a Chinese artist, who makes these for a living.  Here is the take on her artwork:  “Through the combination of the McDonald’s theme and carefully crafted, traditionally painted porcelain, Lihong sparks a dialogue on cross-cultural exchanges and opens a conversation between precious object and consumer commodity.”  Do these come in the Happy Meals in China?  Is Lihong friends with Fang Fang, Eric Swalwell’s girlfriend?  These are questions that need answers!

Right around the corner from the Golden (Blue?) Arches are these two Egyptian hieroglyph stone art pieces.  The one on the left is “Lion Hunt Scarab of Amenhotep III”, from 1380-1352 BC, which tells the story of how Amenhotep single-handedly killed 102 lions with his bow and arrow.  The one on the right is also about Amenhotep, which commemorates his marriage to Queen Tiye in 1379 BC.

It was here I decided they need to have one floor for cool old shit like this, and one floor for the rest of the crap spread throughout, but that’s just one man’s opinion.

This huge piece of leather is supposed to represent a crushed Soviet tank, created by a Chinese artist. Yeah, so what?  Crushed leather means what exactly?  They used the leather from 250 cows for this.  There are people in China freezing to death in the winter…make some clothes out of those poor cows!  Oh, by the way, don’t even think about touching the leather!  In the few minutes we were in this area the Gestapo guard had to remind 2 people “Thou shall not touch the sacred leather”, or something to that effect.

When we were in Melbourne just a couple weeks ago we saw the original Picasso piece titled “Weeping Woman” from 1937.  MONA had a rather crude copy, based on my photo of the original you can see here.  This was painted by artist Juan Davila after the original was stolen in 1986, and he offered it to the Melbourne gallery as a replacement.  Sorry, but I’d not be interested in seeing a poor replacement of a Picasso in a gallery.  Fortunately the original was returned unharmed.

This helmet was worn by the late Heath Ledger in the movie Ned Kelly, a movie we have yet to see.  This guy’s collection knows no boundaries.

This Oliver doll from Oliver Twist” was supposedly cut in half by the same guillotine that cut off the head of Marie Antoinette.  This guy searches out some fricking bizarre pieces!!  I highly doubt some French dude bothered to cut a doll in half with a guillotine.

We actually liked this display, which was made from 80 tons of sand, and only sand.  Quite amazing!  Far more artistic than Mick Jagger on a corn-hole board!

This disaster landscape is quite remarkable based on the quality and reality of the artwork!  All with sand!  Amazing!

Ok, almost done with the weird art!  You walk down a long tunnel and then into this room of bizarre colors and shapes.  This would truly be a great place to get stoned…if I was still in my 20’s.  This display is called “The Grotto”.  There were some people laying on the ground looking up at this that seemed like they had been there awhile.  We didn’t stay long, as it was giving off cult vibes. I’m pretty sure I heard somebody whispering something about Scientology.

Now this piece if very cool, and had I known it was here, it would have been worth the price of admission on it’s own.  This is an authentic Enigma Machine from Nazi Germany, that was used to send secret messages about Nazi war plans.  This machine was cracked by the famous mathematician Alan Turing, which was memorialized by the excellent 2014 movie “The Imitation Game”.

There are several tunnels that look a lot like this one.  I think he might be a bit obsessed with James Bond, or Stargate!  Loud futuristic music plays in each of these, as if you are walking into a new dimension.

This is known as the “Fat Car”.  It’s a full sized Porsche Carrera chassis molded into obesity using polystyrene and fibreglass.  All I can say is, what a waste of a Porsche!  Other than that, I don’t get it.  Just another reason some people shouldn’t have that much money.

Ok, we finally left MONA, and got a photo of our ferry as it pulled in to pick us up.  I’m unsure of the reason for the use of desert camo…just to be different?

We were lucky to see the sunset on the ferry ride back to Hobart.  Tasmania is so gorgeous!  Come here!  Seriously!

Up next, we fly north nearly 1800 miles from Hobart to Cairns, where we plan to visit the oldest rainforest in the world, as well as expect a major change in the weather.

 

About a dozen of you loyal readers checked out my last post regarding Freycinet before I realized I had posted it without finishing it.  My apologies, I hit “Publish” instead of “Save Draft”.  Kim says I was drinking, and who am I to argue?  Regardless, onward we go!  That post was completed, so if you are curious, please check it out.

After we finished our Freycinet harbor cruise we jumped in the car (ok, we are getting old, we hardly jump anywhere, but I digress) and headed south towards Hobart.  Our first stop was a winery; I know, shocker!  We had ordered a bottle of wine in Cradle Mountain that was our favorite of the entire trip, and the winery just happens to be 20 minutes outside of Hobart.  This is the home of “Domaine A”.

The visit to Domaine A comes with a funny (and a little bit sad) story.  At a restaurant in Cradle Mountain I decided to splurge and order their best bottle, a 2018 Pinot Noir from, you guessed it, Domaine A.  This bottle was $170 AUD, or  about $108 USD.  Not outrageous by California Pinot standards, particularly in a restaurant.

So imagine my surprise when the waitress brings the bottle to the table and tries to open it like a screwcap.  It’s actually under cork, which is unheard of here in Australia!  So she gets her manager who finds a winged corkscrew, and while attempting to hold both sides down (wtf?) she tries to screw into the cork.  She was unsuccessful, and actually ended up destroying the cork.  She got another bottle, same result.  She got a third bottle of $170 AUD wine and tried again, same result.  I then got up and offered to help her, advising I was kinda into wine.  She was notably peeved at my offer of help, and said “I can manage”.  Well ok then.

How she got the 4th bottle open is a mystery, as she made sure to do it out of my line of sight.  Thank god the bottle wasn’t flawed!!  Quite the contrary, the bottle was excellent!!  I’m very sad she destroyed three corks on her way to delivering this excellent wine!  So, with taste buds and funny/sad story in hand, we had to visit.  Yes, the wine was still excellent, and I bought a 6 pack to bring home.  Here is the view right outside of the tasting facility.

The light was just right as we were leaving.  This made for a great photo!

After checking into our hotel we took a walk along the Hobart waterfront.  These sculptures memorialize the 13,000 women and 2,000 children who were brought to Hobart via “transportation”.  Hobart was the main port for convicts who were then sent on to their final prison location, usually Port Arthur.

The bases at their feet list the sailing vessel arrivals and how many convicted women and children were transported.

Also on the Hobart Waterfront are these sculptures that commemorate the Antarctic explorer Louis Bernacchi, whose ship “The Southern Cross” left from this spot in 1898.  He was one of the first explorers to take photos in Antarctica, and apparently even took selfies with his dog!

These statues of penguins and seals sits adjacent to the sculpture above.

In the atrium of our hotel sits this massive thousand year old Huon Pine stump that was retrieved from the forests near Strahan, on Tasmania’s west coast.  It’s covered in tree burls that are highly praised by woodworkers, so it’s surprising they were able to find this portion mostly untouched.

The next morning we drove 1.5 hours to Port Arthur, a site of great historical importance.  This penal colony started out quite small, as a timber station in 1830, but quickly grew in size as the convicts started building ships here from the surrounding lumber.  The large 4 story building in the below historic photo, “The Penitentiary”, was built in 1845 for grain storage and a flour mill, which was operated by water.

However, when the water wasn’t flowing there was a manual treadmill that was operated by 36 convicts at a time, one of the harshest punishments at Port Arthur.  Nowadays people do this crap for free!

The water supply was never enough, and the convicts were needed for other work, so the mill was shut down and converted into a prison between 1854-1857, and housed prisoners until it was closed in 1877.  The building was destroyed by fire in 1897.  Here is what The Penitentiary looks like today.

Our guide showed us a jail cell inside the main building.  While these small rooms seem rather spartan, our guide advised that back in England these people were very poor, so having their own room (and food) like this would have actually been an improvement in their lives.  The floor of the cell was once wooden.

Port Arthur closed as a penal colony in 1853, but many of the prisoners had to serve out their remaining sentence here, at least until 1877, when the facility permanently closed.

The building in the background was the Hospital.  Port Arthur is a huge space, so we didn’t get around to looking inside each and every building.  If you were really into the history here you could easily spend two days seeing it all!

There was another prison at Port Arthur called “The Separate Prison”.  This prison operated from 1848 to 1877 with a different mindset than a penal colony of workers.  These prisoners were kept in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day, supposedly left to ponder on their crimes and their life going forward.

This photo shows the former walls that separated the individual exercise yards, one man per yard at a time.  It had to be a pretty lonely existence.  Many of these prisoners ended up going insane due to this type of confinement.

Even when they went to church service they were kept completely isolated from each other via a set of internal doors that kept each of them in their own space.

Here is a photo of Kim in one of those spaces.  They had to stand and face forward for the entire service.  I never thought spending hours in church could get any worse!

Lastly, each admittance ticket to Port Arthur includes a short 20 minute harbor cruise.  They take you out and around the Point Puer Boy’s Prison site (middle of the photo) and the Isle of the Dead (left side of the photo).  Point Puer was the site where they kept the young boys from the age of 11 to 18 who were transported from Britain.  They originally kept them with the rest of the prisoners, but they were either being sexually assaulted or learning new criminal traits (or both) so they put them on this little peninsula to keep them safe from the older convicts.

The “Isle of the Dead” is the final resting place for more than 1000 convicts, military/civil officers and women/children who were buried here between 1833 and 1877.  The free cruise simply wraps around the island, but if you are curious you can take a special cruise that lands there and discusses who was buried here in more detail.

We didn’t have time for the tour of the island, but I was able to get a photo that at least showed a tombstone (or two).

On the way back into Port Arthur I was able to get this shot of the “Clerk of Works’ House” that sits adjacent to the original boat yard.  The metal sculpture on the shoreline depicts a ship under construction in the original spot where so many ships were built by the convicts.

The visitor center has a lot of info to absorb.  My favorite part is the model of the site, particularly how the “Separate Prison” looked while operating in the foreground.

Coming up next, we visit the sometimes interesting and often bizarre MONA, the “Museum of Old and New Art”, via a ferry ride from downtown Hobart.