The day after Port Arthur I drove to a remote place called the Coal Mines, another convict site. Actually the site is in ruins today and nature has taken over. You don't have to pay, you can just drive there and visit on your own, it's not like Port Arthur. I don't know if it was because of the ghost tour I had done the previous night or what, but from the moment I got to the ruins (it was Monday and the site, which is far from everything, was empty, you could only hear the birds) I felt uncomfortable. I had a look around for about 10 minutes but kept feeling the urge to get away from there... so I did! Bizarre!
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| I spotted this echidna next to the road to Coal Mines. I had to stop and follow it. They're so shy! |
Then I drove to Coles Bay, in the Freycinet National Park, a mesmerising place where I spent two days hiking by great weather, I can't believe how lucky I've been with the weather here in Tasmania, it's been amazing! I did a 5 hour walk including the Wineglass Bay and a 3 hour climb to Mount Amos with a view over the Peninsula.
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| Wineglass Bay seen from Mount Amos |
From Freycinet I went to the Bay of Fires, a succession of little beaches and lagoons in the north, just beautiful.
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| One of the beaches at the Bay of Fires - but the water is VERY cold! |
I arrived to Hobart this morning and I'm staying in this cosy bed&breakfast, a Victorian house close to the centre. Hobart still has a lot of architecture from the colonial times and is a pleasant, very spread out city, I was expecting a tiny town but that's not the case at all. But to say the truth, I've seen very little of Hobart so far - I leave that for tomorrow, my last day in Tasmania - because on arrival I went straight to the pier to take the ferry to the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA). I had heard a lot about MONA even before I even thought of visiting Australia and was very curious about it. I wasn't disappointed.
The MONA is the work of a millionaire who wanted to create a "subversive Disneyland for adults", as he put it, and I think he managed, this is truly one of the most creative spaces I've ever visited. The museum site occupies a whole island. You get out of the ferry and take the stairs to the stunning building (already worth a look in itself) and then visit the 3 underground floors with art ranging from ancient Egypt and Greece to nowadays, organised by topic, not chronologically, so you can have a 3000 years old mummy next to a video by a controversial Japanese artist, both related to the topic "death", for instance. Controversial is indeed the word to describe a lot of the works in the museum. There are no labels. When you arrive you're given a tactile device which they call "The O". You can ask the device what art works are physically near to the place where you stand and if a particular work gets your attention (and trust me, the majority of them do!) you use the device to find out more about it (name, artist, you can even read articles and interviews on that particular work). You can also rate it if you like - "love it" or "hate it", they don't foresee any in-between :-) - and The O will let you know how many people voted as you did. You can also save your tour and use The O to email it to yourself or anybody else. I just checked their site and by typing my email I got the itinerary I did today, what I saw, what I "liked", and what I "hated". An impressive place not to be missed if you visit Tasmania.
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Bit.Fall (Julius Popp), 2006-2007. Words fall from above, formed by thousands of drops of water. "Julius Popp thinks our brains are being changed by the age of communication technology. For the worse."
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Tomorrow I'll stay in Hobart, I hope to visit the Salamanca Market and taste some wines and yummy food and then on Sunday I'll fly to Melbourne to start the Great Ocean Road.
I'm so glad that I came to Tasmania...
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