Tassie

I was really hoping for a great big week so I could come up with some really fanstastic stories for you - but Tassie was so bone-numbingly cold, no one could be asked to get up to trouble. It's officially winter down there - about 3 degrees overnight, up to 10 at noon, and NO HEAT in the hostel. So number one - there aren't that many travelers in Tassie at the moment, and two - the ones that are there, are in front of the TV with a beer and in their sleeping bags to keep warm.

Due to poor planning I flew in and out of Hobart - and without a car, I was left with precious little time to see the country, so I concentrated on the lower East Coast.

First up - the infamous Port Arthur penal colony. A really fascinating historical site (it happens to have actually been a tourist attraction longer than it was a jail... how about that?) The jail is set on a lovely pennisula, remote from the mainland. It was a tad disappointing to discover most of the inmates weren't blood thirsty murderers or savage brutes (wouldn't that have made a good ghost story!) most of the inamtes shipped there were just poor, petty criminals (handkercheif theives, sticky-fingered pick pockets and the like). For those of you with an interest in crimiology, it was interesting to hear that Port Arthur was the site of one of the first Juvenile jails, and it was based on the "modern" principles of Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon (including the important reformatory grinders of 'honest' labour, 'moral' instruction, and the seperation of prisoners - legacies of which are all in our justice system to this day).

The next day, I managed to rescue a wayward German girl trying to climb Mt. Wellington, which overlooks Hobart, who was climbing without the benefit of a map. She was lucky I found her - another girl from the hostel did the same 3 hour climb, and found it took her 7 hours to manage to find her way down again. Tourists. Anyway - Mt. Wellington has a spectacular view of the Penninsula, Bruny Island, and next stop - Antartica! (It was a clear day, but I couldn't see it...)

I spent the next two days out of the road, checking out the Mt. Field World Heritage site (and spying my first Platypus - they are smaller than you think) and checking out the gorgeous Wineglass bay. Really - it was like New Zealand with less rain and the trees were smaller :-) I had a fine little nip of Tassie Scotch (it's making was banned for 100 years in the state by Parliamentary decree - the first newbie distillers had made a god-awful spirit!), and tasting a few good beers, and it is off to Adelaide for me! ... where I am going wine tasting.