Bruny Island n Hobart

There’s a lot to see around the Hobart area, when I first drove through the city I was just happy to get out the other side but now that I’ve spent some time here it’s growing on me, perhaps a little like a fungus. I wouldn’t want to live here, but as a major centre near by that you may need to visit, there’s everything you could need and more. Also for a capital city, it hasn’t lost it’s small scale artisan aspect, bottle shops sell local ciders and beers, IGA sells local small goods and cheeses. 

Of course if you shop at Woolies or Coles you still get the same homogenized, distilled crap that you get in any of their stores anywhere in Australia, but if you step off the main street there are shops filled with quality local products.

Perhaps this photo sums up much of Hobart, a mix of old and new, there are many old building around yet when you look through the old windows, within you often see shiny stainless elevators and luxury apartments, shops or offices inside.

Same down at the waterfront, old buildings along the front with new taller ones behind, lovely old wooden boats and on the right, barges selling fish and chips to tourists. The best place to get a real perspective of the city overall is from the top of mount Wellington.

It’s myriad of bays and hills with the tendrils of the city winding along around the flatter areas near the water, you can spend quite some time just sitting on the mountain looking out over the miniature city far below. But it’s better when you get down into it and immerse yourself within it.

The botanic gardens in Hobart make for a pleasant afternoon out.

If your really lucky, you may get to see bogans out of their natural habitat while at the gardens, at least that’s what I thought when I saw these two, they looked so uncomfortable dressed up.

There were more and more of them arriving, and then it all became clear as the rumble of V8’s could be heard.

What self respecting bogan bride wouldn’t want these as wedding cars?

The Salamanca markets every Saturday are a jostle, as with all markets there are plenty of stalls you have no interest in but then there’s the interesting, the tasty and the quirky. I ate quite a bit, unusual little tit bits of foreign foods who’s smells wafted up the market. I ignored all of the spirits stalls, especially the guy selling bottles of whisky and also whisky by the small barrel. I did buy a few shiny rocks from the shiny rock sellers, this guy sold rocks as well but they were a totally different sort.

His stall was called “Looks like art”, and the sign was “Each rock has a story already, I just make it a little clearer.”  On Sundays there’s a farmers market in town as well, it’s a nice feeling to have the inner city streets blocked off to traffic and filled with stalls selling local and organic foods. As I wandered through the market I saw a familiar face, Ross O’Meara, one of the people from the SBS show Gourmet Farmer. This show was what originally sparked me into wanting to visit Tasmania, this is what it was all about, here was Ross selling his home grown pig products at the local farmers market.

I stopped to buy something, because that’s what it’s all about supporting these people and their ventures. We chatted and when I mentioned that I was from Perth he asked where about in Perth. It ends up that he was a local boy from Willeton very close to where I lived, and he started to drop a few names of locals and of course I recognized “Snowy”, any local from the Jandakot area should know of Snowy the drummer from the Easy Beats who still lives in the area, he’d dropped into my shop a few times. So Ross filled me in with a good spot to free camp on Bruny Island and I bought a pack of his home made sausages and a smoked pigs cheek. The sausages were good, but the pigs cheek was delicious, sliced up and fried like bacon I ate it over a few days, cooking the whole lot up on the second day before leaving for Bruny Island, then recooking the precooked slices while travelling around Bruny, life without a fridge.

Bruny island is almost 2 islands with the north and south separated by a narrow neck, I wonder how long it will be before it becomes 2 separate islands with sea levels on the rise it wouldn’t take much.

There were more walks to do on Bruny and while walking one of the longer ones around the South Bruny national park I was looking out to sea and something caught my eye. Small lumps on the water, way out where you could hardly see them.

It was only after I rounded another corner into a different bay I realized what they all were.

Of course salmon cages. Talking to someone in camp they had been told during a tour that each cage could have 5 million dollars worth of salmon in it. Wow, when you look at all those little lumps across the water, that’s a lot of dollars.

While you’re on Bruny Island I’d recommend doing the Fluted cape walk, it takes you up and around some magnificent coast line, a good test for anyone scared of heights as the trail winds its way up the edge of the cliff with no barriers or fences of any kind.

Wow, I believe that I’ve finally caught up with all the pictures so far, I’m back at the Huonville caravan park after visiting Bruny, this place is packed at the moment because it’s the Australia day long weekend. I figured it safer to camp in the one place rather being out on the road visiting different camp grounds. There are a few things I needed to do in town here as well, I needed new walking shoes and needed a battery charger for my camera, some dill forgot to bring it with him. Saturday today, the Salamanca market is on again and there are some walks in Hobart I still need to do.

(Edit – That dill bought another battery charger, only to then find he had brought the original charger with him, it just wasn’t where he expected)