All about Tassie

Hello I thought I would write my latest blog to tell you about our time in Hobart…..

Saturday 29th July

We waved a teary good bye to little old Melly and flew south to Tasmania. The flight took about an hour and was really uneventful. We passed over a lot of water and nothingness. We were given a traditional welcome when we arrived in Hobart i.e. it was bucketing down. Well we did imagine it to look like Scotland!

The airport was tiny and you had to collect your own luggage direct from the luggage cart (this was strange but actually made it a lot quicker with no waiting for the conveyor belt to start!).

On arrival at the hostel we were very pleased with our room. We had a fridge, kettle and coffee and tea! (Those of you who have stopped in hostels will know that this is a rare treat!). The room was clean and tidy and looked more like the accommodation you would find in a three star hotel rather that a hostel- what a result!

The rain decided to stop so we ventured out to explore the city centre. We walked along by the waterfront and breathed in the fresh air (apparently Hobart has the cleanest air in the world!). The harbour area was very pretty with lots of boats and sea food restaurants serving sea food direct from the Tasman Sea. We explored Salamanca Place which has pubs and more eating places. We went into Knopwood’s pub to sample the local beer which is called Boags- it went down very well indeed. Then we succumbed to temptation and headed to Mures to sample the local sea food. We had a fisherman’s basket which included prawns, calamari and some of the freshest fish I have ever tasted!! What a good way to end our first day in Hobart.

Sunday 30th July

Not much to report for this day as we decided to have a chilled out one researching trips to go to in Hobart. We did however dive head first into the hostel life style and managed to prepare lunch and tea in the communal kitchen. It’s not so bad if you can cope with doing niceties with other travellers!

It’s quite surprising that many of them are actually middle aged couples or old loners! There was one old bloke that got on our nerves because he used the kitchen as a place to sit and talk all day to any poor unsuspecting person who sat next to him. Even as I write this we have left one poor Chinese kid having to listen to him droning on!! Needless to say he quickly realised that the Wheldons were having none of it!!! Anyway onto Monday……





Monday 31st July

We had an excellent day today visiting Port Arthur and other sights along the way. Again we opted to use a local tour company which was a good move as the guide was a great laugh. He actually knew we were brummies (most Aussies haven’t heard of old Brum) and was also interested in football so chatted to Chris about the Blues. Our fellow passengers included a local women, a yank and a girl from Stourbridge! (It’s a small world!)

The trip was good fun. We saw the old zoo where the last Tasmanian tiger in captivity died (they haven’t sighted one in the wild for years and it is thought to be extinct).

We went to a place called Clarence and heard about the terrible boat disaster in 1975 in which a boat hit the Tasman bridge causing part of it to collapse. Unfortunately cars were still travelling along the bridge and some cars plunged into the water killing their occupants!

Next we headed to Risdon Cove which was the original place for Hobart. The first white settlers lived here for a while before moving to the more favourable location where Hobart is situated today. It’s also the unfortunate place where the white settlers killed loads of aboriginals. These guys had lived in isolation for around 12,000 years doing no harm to anyone. The white settlers murdered so many of them that very quickly there were only 300 left. These lucky few fled to Flinders Island to escape death!

We went through a beautiful place called Eagle hawk Neck this is the only place that leads to the Port Arthur site making it a good place to keep convicts as they had very little chance to escape!! Port Arthur itself was a very interesting place and we learnt a lot about the terrible lives the convicts led (there were no free holidays for them!)

The best place was the isolation part of the prison. This was where the worst offenders were kept. They were housed in individual cells and were not allowed to speak for days or months on end!! I wouldn’t have lasted five minutes!! The only time that they were allowed to speak was when they were sent to the chapel to sing hymns- poor buggers!! Chris would have loved this!!!

The Port Arthur site is also the place where a terrible thing happened in 1996 or 97. A local kid came to the place and basically killed lots of people by shooting them which his gun. We are told not to ask the staff anything about this as many of them were there on the day. Our guide was very surprised that we hadn’t heard of it- it was called the ‘Port Arthur Massacre.’ It happened at around the same time as Dunblane and some people think it was a copy cat killer who murdered people at Port Arthur. In total he killed around 35 people including tourists, staff and children. Eventually the police caught him and he is now in prison for evermore…send him to the isolation prison I say!




Tuesday 1st August

Today was a chilled out day we went to the cinema to watch the Pirates of the Caribbean which was pretty good. I managed to blow the hob up in the kitchen at the hostel and it also fused the lights- you really can’t take me anywhere. An aussie guy asked me if I was Irish as they expect them to do things like that (good to see that the same stereotypes are found over here!!). On the evening we had a few beers in the local pub and Chris attempted to show me how to play pool properly, needless to say I think I need more lessons!


Wednesday 2nd August

It was a sunny day in Hobart today so we headed down to the waterfront to see if we could go on a catamaran cruise down the Derwent River to Peppermint Bay. Well it turned out that we got the trip half price because we are YHA members! Joining the YHA was the best thing we did as it has saved us loads of dosh on accommodation and trips all over Australia.

The photos show was a lovely day it was, we passed great sounding places like Bruny Island, Green Island and Snake Island. We saw white bellied sea eagles and seals swimming in the water. We passed a fish farm and saw all the salmon leaping up through the water. It was an excellent five hour trip and of course one of the highlights was the scrumptious lunch! It was a range of local produce including Tasmanian ham, tomato chutney, smoked Atlantic salmon and fresh oysters (as you can see from the photo I wasn’t to sure about these!). It was all washed down with a nice glass of Chardonnay- perfect!

Thursday 3rd August

We left Tasmania and flew up to Sydney. We decided to get the train to our YHA which turned out to be a dodgy decision as it was a challenge to get through the station with large suitcases (I can’t wait to put them in storage and use a back pack from now on).

It was about 17c in Sydney and felt lovely and warm to us compared to Hobart. We walked from our hostel to Darling Harbour. I had forgotten how much I love this place especially on a sunny day like today! We went to find the Bailey’s Oaks apartments which have a view over Darling Harbour and looked posh inside (we only got to peek in the lobby but it looked good to us!). Next we had a beer in the sunshine in a bar in Darling harbour- this is the life!!

Back at the hostel we had a bbq which involved a kanga burger or hotdog plus a beer for $3 each (about £1.20) - what a bargain!

From now on I am going to try and write a brief entry at the end of every day. So that you can keep in touch with where we are and what we are doing. As for Sydney we are here Friday and Sat before flying to Cairns on Sunday to start the Queensland greyhound bus thing!

Bye for now
Donno (everyone in Aussie has to shorten their name and put an O on the end e.g. Jeffo!)