Spirit of Tasmania

Hobart's Salamanca Market is such an enduring institution. For over 40 years it's been doing its roaring trade every Saturday.

If anything, it's continued to grow in the 20 years since I lived there. But most of the products on sale, and probably many of the stallholders, are exactly as they were back then. There's a wonderful familiarity to it all.

One change I did notice this trip though, was the proliferation of boutique distilleries offering their wares. There's whisky, whiskey, and gin, and there's vodka made from barley or potatoes.

Some names: Nant, 666, Hellfire Bluff, Belgrove, McHenry, Storm Bay, Lark

The tourists were loving it. Not me though. I was a bit deterred by the prices.

Bedlam Walls

While in Hobart I did one of my favourite little walks on the Eastern Shore: the Bedlam Walls / Shag Bay walk, starting from Geilston Bay.

I was particularly interested in the information boards that used to be there, about the aboriginal massacre that had taken place either there or a bit further north at Risdon Cove. I wanted to get a little bit clearer about exactly what had happened where.

Strangely, there was now nothing about any massacre. (Massacre? What massacre?)

Only stuff about the old boilers you see at Shag Bay. There was apparently a blood and bone fertiliser plant there at some stage, and it blew up.

Some rather beautiful gum trees around too.

Easy guide to Tasmanian snakes

It's easy because they're all venomous, so you don't have to waste time deciding whether they're harmless or not. Just step back a bit, grab your camera, and click away!

Most people have evolved a very healthy phobia about snakes, but I don't seem to have that. Just a desire to photograph them!

On this trip I saw two of the three species. On Mt Wellington I encountered a white-lipped snake (which I'm sure we always used to called the whip snake). Not that venomous. But then on a walk in the Wielangta forest, my walking companion suddenly jumped backwards onto me, and there was one of the big ones, holding its ground in the middle of the track, and looking every bit as deadly as we knew it to be.

It was either a tiger or a copperhead. They're not that easy to distinguish, as they each have a range of possible colour schemes. I thought copperhead, as its head looked fairly small. It did have tiger-like bands ofcolour though. I've since shown the picture to several alleged snake experts, and there have been votes for each.

If you do get bitten, the antivenom the Tasmanian hospitals give you covers all three snakes.

Mawsons Hut warmed up

It's a faithful replica of the original hut built over 100 years ago at Cape Denison in East Antarctica by Douglas Mawson and his crew.

It's become one of Hobart's top tourist attractions, and I thought it was an impressive little niche museum.



It's run by volunteers, who explain how the original expeditioners built their temporary home, how they survived the winters there, and generally what they got up to. The money raised goes towards the conservation of the original.

The original is still down there, but it's a lot colder there, and harder to get to.

Airbnb or motel room? Take your pick

I started my Tasmanian adventure in a Sandy Bay motel room. Clean and comfortable, a bit unexciting though, and amazingly, it cost me $185 per night.








So I did the inevitable, and made the move into Airbnb accommodations. I stayed in West Hobart, Launceston, and Turners Beach (on the North West Coast). I generally got the use of several rooms, all relevant facilities, and they were consistently clean, comfortable, and stylish.

They each typically cost me about $100 per night. You get to review the accommodation online, and your host gets to review you. So everyone behaves themselves, and it all works rather well.


So take your pick.

Notorious strumpets and dangerous girls

South Hobart's 'female factory' - ie convict women's prison - has recently been much renovated. It's gained World Heritage status in fact, and is well worth a visit.

There were in fact five female factories in Van Diemens Land, but this is the best known and best kept.

You get to read about some of the individuals caught up in this system. Like the male convicts, a lot of them seem to have been victims of hard economic times and ultra-harsh punishments for trivial crimes.

The whole thing was clearly not just about criminal justice, and relieving pressure on Britain's gaols. It was a big industry, providing wives and servants for the colonists. Just as the male prisoners provided free labour for the land owners.







So you could argue there was a useful function for the place. What's the useful function of our modern day prison systems, I wonder?

A stairway to ....... Kunanyi

Or Mount Wellington, as it used to be called.

They changed the name on me while I was away. It's still the same magnificent old mountain though, dominating Hobart's scenery and beckoning bushwalkers like me.

One of the first priorities during my recent Tasmanian trip was the Wellington Pinnacle pilgrimage. I went up from The Springs to the Pinnacle, via the Zigzag Track, and down by the South Wellington and Icehouse Tracks.









It's nice up there. Fragrant botanical smells, blue skies and bracing breeze. Excellent views too across all of Hobart, and much of southern Tasmania, including the Tasman Peninsula and the main peaks in the South West wilderness.

The observation shelter is still there. Looking as ever like the cable car turn-around station that I half believe it was originally meant to double as. Every few years somebody cooks up yet another cable car or chairlift plan, probably hoping the taxpayers will build it for them to make private profit out of. Nothing doing there yet though.