We left Strahan after breakfast and headed to Hobart via Queenstown (not really like the NZ town). Queenstown should really be called Minetown, because that’s what it is, a huge mine on a staggeringly bendy road which made me rather ill. Apart from that Tasmanian roads are rather uneventful. Hobart is itself, rather uneventful. A town the size of Geelong, it feels like a mixture of Sydney, Adelaide and Dunedin all circa 1990. The town spreads like a fungus from the river up the mountains, where houses bleed up the sides until the trees hold them back. The houses defy age to young’uns like us; we just can’t tell when fibro was fashionable.
Our hostel is on the main drag at the darker end, up with the auto workshops and gay bars. The Pickled Frog is a bright green two storey building probably built in the 1930 or 40s. I doubt it was bright green then. It’s a really pleasant hostel with friendly staff and a malamute puppy called “Baloo” (we were impressed and told them about our cat counterpart, Bagira). The rooms are basic to say the least, but we can’t hear the noise from downstairs which is always a plus. My wrath is saved for door slammers who come up at about 11pm. To be fair the doors don’t lend themselves to peace and quiet but I have nearly screamed in the night enough times to make me very careful when I close the door. Our bed is probably an original and I feel I may need physio to survive. 
Saturday is the Famous Salamanca Market, which is the Hobartian equivalent of the Southbank market, although it is actually bigger. It’s packed, even early in the morning, so be careful when carrying food around lest you wear it or purchase delicate goods with it. The market is a mixture of artisan fineries, homemade trinkets, wood products, second hand books, wood products, a steady line up of buskers on a prime corner, wood products and some wood products. Like it or not, Tasmania’s economy is based on timber. They ship it, whittle it, carve it, whatever you want. I bought some pretty little wooden earrings (yes) and a wooden stand to hang them on.
After braving the crowds, bumping into some work colleagues and surviving breakfast, we felt the need for some non-timber experiences. Tasmania doesn’t seem to be interested in zoos or wildlife parks, but we found a sanctuary on the outskirts of Hobart which could fill a couple of hours. Once again we battled the Tasmanian prerogative for mindlessly stupid road signs combined with a pretty useless map. They should just give you a compass and some latitudes when you get off the boat, it honestly would be more useful. So even though they tried their best to hinder us we found the place eventually. Bonorong Wildlife sanctuary is a small place with only native wildlife. 
Despite having some truly unique wildlife Tasmania has the highest roadkill rate in Australia (if not the world). It seems hard to define why, I think it might be the high number of small roads at 110k/ph coupled with just about no out of hours wildlife rescuer services, something Victorians take for granted. So the sanctuary had a lot of injured and orphaned animals to protect/raise/release. Typically most animals are nocturnal so it’s hard to see many, but we did make it for a bit of a feeding tour. Tassie devil imps (bubs) are super cute. Heroically savage, but still cute. They actually aren’t hunters which you can work out as soon as you see them run. Prey probably dies from laughing first and forgetting to run away. Mostly they eat things that are already dead, or looks dead, which apparently can include sleepy campers who don’t shut their tents properly.
Sunday we started the day at the Hobart Showgrounds Farmers Market because I couldn’t find anybody in the hostel who could make my coffee for me. Here we noticed some more differences in culture and dialect between us and the Taswegians. Tom and I are frequent visitors to Melbourne Farmers Markets. The food is amazing and it’s easy to get excited about cooking when you see everyone around you, getting excited by cooking. Many of the farmer’s markets in Victoria have a mobile barista, so my weekend coffees are often consumed while buying dinner. As such we have used the word “Farmer” to define someone who grows/produces fresh fruit and veg and sells it to the public. Apparently the word doesn’t translate well in Taswegian as we quickly discovered that here “Farmer” refers to random bogan who rummaged through the spare room bagging up old stuff before chucking it in the station wagon to sell to other bogans. Clearly a language mix-up here. Coffee was discovered, purchased, sipped and discarded. Bleah. I should have just waited until we got to MONA (Museum of Old and New Art); the café seemed poncy enough to know how to make coffee.
MONA is an interesting place. It’s a private art gallery owned by an eccentric millionaire. I won’t surmise too much as I didn’t really pay attention and I know friends of ours know infinitely more about it than we do. So Google it, and then you will know.
The gallery is enormous, on four floors of dark high spaces. The exhibits have no labels, so you constantly look like a hipster referring to your supplied iPod touch which sniffs out the artworks as you move towards them and then tells you who the artist is and the usual blurb. Interesting points include seeing other people’s comments (invariably haters followed by the art buyer) and what they refer to as “ArtWank” which gives you a bit more history and detail, although not necessarily useful to the artwork in question. I admit posting on facebook that “some of it is art” because there is a huge range of artistic styles, and no one could like all of it. Some of it feels like rubbish, other parts feel very clever. It would be the perfect place to take an art class to discuss “what is art?”
The pieces are mainly sculpture, which some visual and aural art as well. Some of it stinks, and I mean literally. Wim Delvoye (Google him) seems to be the owner’s favourite artist as there was a plethora of work by him and it was hugely varied. And some of it was designed to smell. We avoided the poo room as I had a headache, but the industrial digestion simulation known as Cloaca was a provoking experience. And it makes you question. Why is this art? How is this art? Of course it is, but it’s very challenging in what it tries to represent. I rather enjoyed a work with Louis Vuitton tattooed to a pigs hide, but I enjoyed less the video of the pigs living in standard piggy conditions beforehand, already tattooed. Speaking of tattoos, one exhibit was a man, tattooed. Why?
We didn’t see the entire gallery, it’s hugely expansive and overwhelming. Some of the art is hard to deal with. While kids were there, parts of the gallery are marked for mature audiences which always freaks me out. Are we going to see violence, cruelty, or just sex? I view the two extremes in art very differently. I would totally object to a child seeing violence or rape records, but plaster vaginas don’t bother me. Both were in the same mature section, some I skipped.
Today has been a bit dull. After my morning coffee and careers advice session (occupational hazard, plus the American lass had no idea where Darwin was and what youth work up there might be like) we hung around like lost sheep waiting for Important People to call us and tell us Important Things. Our loan for our house was due to be approved today and we didn’t want to be far from the interwebs should we need to get online. Through a varied list of misunderstandings this day brought up a huge amount of stress which turned out to be unfounded, which has made me feel a lot better about being in Tasmania while this is being sorted out. Suffice to say the People who are Paid to Deal with this Sort of Thing are dealing with it, and I am happy.
After determining that we did not need to wait hovering over the laptop for instructions we had lunch and drove up the Mount Wellington. Not in the shape of a boot as you might guess, Mount Wellington looms politely over Hobart promising not to cause worry. We’ll be over here, promise we won’t fall over. The way to Mount Wellington is clearly the posh end of Hobart although a lot of it looks like the Mount Dandenong tourist road. We probably should have researched it a bit more before we went. I would like to advise you fellow travellers that: Did You Know? Mt Wellington is nearly 10 degrees colder than Hobart on any given day and suffers blustering, icy, nipple-numbing gale force winds? Now you know. Rest assured now in your key knowledge, comfortable in your house, in front of the computer. Don’t think about us freezing to death on the side of a mountain. Surprisingly we survived. Tomorrow we head to Huon Valley, Timber Country. Lolz.
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