Tasmania redux - this may get long
What I did on my holiday/ research trip - LONG



Friday

Meet Bears family, attend funeral, funeral was funerally, but nice in that way that funerals for old people that have had a good long life are.

I needed to renew the parking meter money at some point during the funeral and had no small change, so I accidently had to find a book shop and buy something for small change. I found this lovely bookshop which had games, models, warhammer stuff, stationary, craft stuff and books.
It was lovely to discover that Robin Hobb has a new book out. I don't read much fantasy/SF anymore, but Hobb remains one of my favourite authors.

Boy can Nigel's family put away the wine, so many bottles emptied, and not that many adults...

Saturday

Brunch with Nigel and Liz, much talking and catching up and heritage geeking, followed by a climb up a rocky hill over looking cataract gorge which is a pretty good way to start the morning.

Then we drove to Ross to look over the site of the Ross Female Factory. It was absolutely freezing outside, with high winds and intermittent rain. But lots and lots of rainbows. Say what you like about Tasmanian weather, and I can say and complain a lot. My god its a beautiful country.
Ross Female Factory site is basically an open paddock with a fence around it. If you know archaeology, you can spot the remains of the foundations of various buildings in the paddock, there is also a little house that used to be a wardens cottage which has been turned into a kind of museum.
It was interesting, but way to cold to stay out of the car for long in the wind, so we hopped back in the car and drove through many rainbows on the way to Hobart.

Sunday

We decided Sunday would be relaxing holiday, plus Nigel was a bit mopey with the whole grandmother dying thingy, so we cheered him up the best way I know how. Beer and Boats!

We headed out to Cascades Brewery and went on the Cascades Brewery tour, we got a long history of brewing, the history of the site, how they make different beers and a tour of the factory floor. The whole fully automated labeling and bottling bit was pretty awesome.

Then there was beer tasting and more tasting, and some snacks and more tasting, and then Bear wanted to buy a little beer tasting paddle and win a hat if he guessed all the beers correctly. He won the hat. Evidence demonstrates that the best Cascades beers are those which unfortunately don't make it to the main land. Cascades Bitter, Draught and First Harvest.

I did buy a couple of bottles of their Artisan Cider to bring home though. And I little stuffed Tassie Tiger toy I originally thought to buy as a present for Althea, because every small child needs a beer logo stuffed toy, but its so cute I might keep it for myself.

Then we travelled out to Franklin, to the only wooden boat building school in the southern hemisphere. Its a school where they teach the building of wooden sailing vessels in traditional styles using the magnificent woods that you can only get in Tassie. Guess what Bear wants to do now?

Then we drove back to Hobart and had a big Indian curry feast! Trying to find food in Hobart is interesting. There are a few big seafood houses near the docks, and a couple of steak houses. But if you don't know the area, its pretty much a drive around and see if you can spot a restaurant, there doesn't seem to be an area you can go and find an interesting selection of foods. The most common sort of restaurant we found was Indian...

Also - Hobart is tiny, it takes no more than a few minutes drive to get anywhere, and driving doown mostly one way streets is odd.

Monday

Research mode. We spent Monday morning in the Tasmanian Archives Office, which was on the 3rd Floor of the State Library of Tasmania, and also houses all the cultural heritage management plans. The kind of info I want in Melb is stored in three different buildings and I'm dealing with multiple departments within the State Library as well. In Tassie it was lovely to find everything in one place and a hell of a lot easier to find information and retrieve it. If you want something from PROV or the State Library, you need to put in a request and return several hours later to retrieve it. In iZone in Tasmania you find what you want and they retrieve it within approx 10mins. I took notes and photocopied lots of relevant maps and data, well I found them and then let Bear photocopy them. It was so much quicker to get the info I wanted with a photocopying minion.

Then we went back out to Cascades Brewery for lunch and more beer tasting :)

Monday afternoon we went to the Convict Penitentiary Chapel, which is the remaining building still standing from Old Hobart Gaol. Basically the gaol was along side the chapel, and the chapel itself had solitary confinement cells underneath the chapel floor. The chapel was cross shaped. Later 3 of the 4 arms of the chapel cross were converted to court houses and it remained an important court house in Tasmania for quite some years. The presence of the cells underneath the chapel floor meant the bishop declined to consecrate the chapel, and so it was used for all kinds of church services, not denomination specific. We also got to witness a magnificent example on convict stone and brick work. Then we got to walk down a small stone tunnel underneath the chapel which connected the gaol to the court house. Once you let people know you are researching these sites, you get a much better and more detailed tour than the general public gets. We just kept talking and talking with both the tour guide and the head researcher on the site until it got way too cold for people to be outside.

Then I drove Bear to the airport and waved goodbye.

Tuesday

I got up nice and early in the morning and headed out to Port Arthur, very pretty drive, very twisty turny road, the beach at Eaglehawk Neck is stunning.

Finally found the admin building and spent most of the day in the research library there, getting more maps and reports and data on the buildings I was interested in. Then they let me on the Port Arthur site to check out the Penitentiary and Model Prison. I'd visited Port Arthur about 5 or 6 years ago, and I remember the Model prison, which was essentially a ruin having a massive impact on me with how it looked and felt and the vibe it had. In the last 12 months they have done a massive reconstruction on it and rebuilt a lot of it and I have to say I don't think much of the reconstruction, I don't think its nearly as powerful as it used to be. Its probably a more accurate demonstration of what Benthams model prison was intended to be, and maybe I've gotten a little desensitized studying and viewing old prisons. But it didn't have nearly the emotional impact it did pre-reconstruction.

Wednesday

Slept in :)

More time spent looking at Maps and printing architectural plans in the library.

Visited the site of Cascades Female factory. Again there is very little on the actual site, most of its been demolished or is now private property. The remaining walls are in the process of being dismantled as they are unsafe and new reconstructed walls are being put in place, the whole thing was very much a construction site, as they are preparing for the inspection tour next month for their world heritage application. I don't think they will get it. That said, the history of the site is very facinating, there is plenty of documents about the site and the tour guide gave a very comprehensive overview of the site and encouraged us to use our imagination. There were only two of us on the tour, me and a girl who knew nothing about the history of the site, but she was very interested and got involved in the more complex questions about the site and its history that I kept asking, and again we got more than I'm guessing the general public usually gets. IE - its advertised as a 1 hour tour, I was there for 2 and a bit hours.

Then I came home to Bear and cats and cuddles.



TL/DR - I went to Tasmania, I saw lots of Convict Heritage sites, Hobart is weird to drive in, we drank Beer.