Part 5 Hobart – at the end of the road…

With a few days in Hobart and the weather still ….disappointing… we spent some time checking out attractions, and Jo took the opportunity to catch up with her uncle and cousins. All were good, and when I asked Jo’s cousins if/should Tasmania have a AFL team here given the cost and politics locally, the response was very much yes – Tassie needs a team.

We did a few of the usual tourist gigs in Hobart – we started off with a run up Mt Wellington – as expected it was blowing a gale and the wind chill factor was significant. None the less, we stood on top of the mountain under the trig station meaning we were at 1270 metres taking our selfie photo!

From there we visited the Cascades Female Factory. With much more information than the Ross female factory we visited earlier, we toured the “facility” with its excellent info, we also were treated to the one actor play who portrayed 6 individuals of the 1840’s, their history and their treatment. Again a very sad place to visit which ran from 1828 to 1856, made more so when you understand that any baby born to a woman meant the start of the criminal process again, and any child that survived beyond 3 years was sent to an orphanage – if the mother was released she could asked for them back, which maybe granted. Given the conditions and circumstances, to me its both amazing and remarkable that the Cascade brewery (which everyone knows about) has been brewing beer since 1824 700 metres from where the women’s factory was located – both are famous for very different reasons….

Wednesday morning and chatting to the caravan maintenance man who knew the weather said the wind was coming, “tell your wife its going to be a 2 bra arvo”! The timing was wrong with the wind arriving overnight Wednesday night – our cabin creaked, shook and even the walls moved in and out. We are not sure what the wind speed was around us, but locally there were peaks of 130k’s plus recorded up in the higher parts.

We also checked out the docks, and walked up the tallest building in Australia! Or at least from 1870 to 1875 the shot tower was the tallest building in Australia. The tower was built by a builder from Scotland in 1869 with stone quarried from nearby. The bullets (shot) made by pouring molten lead through a sieve to fall the 60 plus metres to the bottom in a bucket of cold water and if it was of the correct quality cleaned up and used in rifles. The shot was made up until the early 1900’s when the tower was no longer used and fell into disrepair – in the photos you can see the parts of the tower you walk up. In 1948 some clever builder bought the tower and land, and restored the staircase to the top with 318 steps from the bottom to the top. The stairs and woodwork have been in use and is still the way up today, 73 years of the same steps and wood – not a bad effort, and apparently it is the tallest freestanding sandstone in the world today.

Thursday and its still blowing dogs off chains, and pouring so we took the time to be in the car most of the day. On the agenda was a walk on the Airbridge over the Huon forest, checking out the thermal pools and seeing what Cockle Creek was all about.

It was a bit of a drive, but the objective first up was to drive to the end of the road, Cockle Creek is a camping area near an old whaling station with the claim to fame of being as far south as you can drive on public roads in Australia – another claim is that Cockle Creek is closer to the Antarctic than it is to Cape York! Its a very pretty spot and now ticks off the most northly, easterly and southern locations we have been too – now to work on the most westerly!

We set off to the out of the way thermal pool, but we still had rain pouring down. Hoping it would clear by the time we got to the Airbridge. A visit to the Lolly Wall shop was inexpensive – lunch in the local takeaway was not too bad either. After lunch we set off up the loop road to the Airbridge – after about 5 k’s the sign said it was closed for today only!

The next installment….coming on a dry day to you soon (we hope!)