Tassie Pics Part 1: Hobart & Port Arthur
Here we go! Pics galore. We must have taken about 200 photos altogether but we managed to narrow them down to about 40 favourites. I'll post the 40 favourites in sections according to where we were, just so that those of you with dialup don't have to load 40 at once. I have dialup myself so I know how annoying it can be!!
So
We started out the adventure in Hobart, which is Tasmania's capital and a lot smaller than Perth! I was quite amazed by how pretty it was. You can't really tell in this photo but behind the clouds on the right is a very tall mountain.
While I was busy at my Teacher of the Deaf conference, Chris was busy touring Hobart. He went to the botanical gardens:
...and the Cascade Brewery:
He also went on a tram tour of Hobart and to the Salamanca Markets.
When the conference was over, we drove to Port Arthur for a day trip. It's about 2 hours from Hobart. Port Arthur was one of Australia's first penal colonies where they brought the convicts to be held captive and to work for the government in the 1800's. It was a terrible place for convicts and is steeped in their history. Only about 30% of the buildings on the site still stand, so in these photos imagine buildings where you see grass.
A view of the main penitentiary building (where the prisoners were held in cells):
The penitentiary from the other side. All the wooden planks and frameworks inside are just for tourists to walk on different levels, since the penitentiary was 4 storeys high. In the background on the right you can see the military barracks and to the left a tiny bit of the harbour:
We took several other photos of the ruins at Port Arthur but I haven't put them up here. If you want to see them let me know and I'll show you.
After Port Arthur we stopped at 3 natural wonders along the coast nearby before heading back to Hobart. They were The Blowhole, Tasman's Arch and Devil's Kitchen and these are some pics:
The Blowhole:
Tasman's Arch (It's actually quite bigger than it looks):
and it was pretty hard to get a picture of Devil's Kitchen because it was basically a huge rectangular gap in the cliffs along the coast and the cliffs were at LEAST 100m high. From the lookout it was impossible to get the whole thing in one photograph. But imagine a square shaped bite had been taken out of the coast.
After seeing these things, we headed back to Hobart and by the time we got there it was dark. Next morning was time for a new destination: Strahan. The subject of my next photo-post.
are from Hobart, Port Arthur and some natural wonders near Port Arthur.