Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery

 After the Female Factory we drove downtown to the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery.  If you ever get to Hobart don't miss it.

Because this area was full of prisoners sent over from England in the past, there were many displays on tools of the imprisonment trade.  Here are a cat-o-nine tails for whipping and some heavy leg irons.

Here is a kangaroo coat made by one prisoner to escape but he did not make it.

This is an actual man trap set and covered in a path for catch escaping convicts.  Ouch!

Australia has unique animals compared to the rest of the world.  These are types of kangaroos and wallaby.

More animals of Australia and Tasmania.

Here are a stuffed Echidna and Platypus.

Now to the most fascinating specimen, for Bill at least here above.  Here was movie clips of the last Tasmanian Tiger before it died in 1936.

This sign explains the details of the last of the species.

Notice how it resembles a kangaroo.  A carnivorous type of kangaroo.  There are no large predictors on Tasmania now.

Here is the actual creature today.  Stuffed of course.  The museum also had a large art gallery upstairs.

A great place to visit the next time you get to Hobart.

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An Old Womens' Prison

 After our Sunday brewery  tour we drove just down the street to another interesting tourist attraction in Hobart that we had seen from the bus the day before.

It is an old woman's prison that they called the Cascade Female Factory.  Above is one headquarters building that is still intact.  The prison ran in the early 1800's for about 40 years.  Prisoners were often sentenced to hard labor here.

There was an actual cookbook used in the kitchen.  We though this paragraph from the book was interesting.

Above Karen and Francis are looking at a large board with the names of children who were born and died here.  You see, the female prisoners were often loaned out into the town to clean houses, and do other work and came back pregnant.  Children were born here and many died and were buried here as well.

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The Largest Town in Tasmania

 From Queenstown we headed southeast to the large city of Hobart.  It has approximately 200,000 people and Tasmania has half a million total.  We checked into a beautiful 2-bedroom 2-bath apartment close to the downtown area.

On Saturday we rode around town on the Hop-On-Hop-Off bus to get our bearings, and to grab lunch downtown by the bay.  Here is a picture of part of the city from our bus window.

On Sunday morning we drove up to the Cascade Beverage Company for a 10 A.M. appointment for a guided tour.

It is an old brewery with a long history

We met in a room at the factory with about a dozen visitors from various locations around the globe who had also booked the tour.  Above are containers from yesteryear.

This  is a poster from the waiting room that we thought was interesting. You will see more about the real devils in a later post.

Here is our sweet young tour guide who led us around the grounds for an approximately two-hour guided tour.  We had fun and learned a lot about the beer business on Tasmania.

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On to Queenstown and a Beautiful Old Grand Hotel

 After about a 2-hour drive east from Strahan we arrived in Queenstown, Tasmania.  

We checked into two updated rooms in the old Empire Hotel in the small village.

The old hotel had this Grand staircase that made Karen feel like Scarlet in "Gone With the Wind".  We were told that back in the early 1900s the wood was cut in Tasmania then sent back to England where the staircase was made.

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Strahan and a Long Boat Ride

 After about a 1-1/2 hour drive south/west from the national park we arrived in the small coastal town of Strahan, Tasmania.  We spent the night in two old rooms in the Strahan Village hotel.  It was ancient, but spacious and warm in the cool coastal village.

The next morning we boarded the Harbour Master II for a six-hour cruise that included lunch.  Here is Captain Millikin boarding his ship.

Out in the bay we passed numerous fish farms.

After a two-hour tour of the bay we entered the Gordon River into a cold-climate jungle.  Here is a tall waterfall seeming to come out of the trees above.

On one of our two shore walks we saw these fungi that looked quite like some in Michigan.

Our captain said this tree was 600 years old but we had our doubts.

Here is Francis on one of our shore walks.  It turned out to be  a beautiful cool day. We had a nice ride but saw few birds and the lunch was nothing to brag about.

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Out of Launceton Into the Wild Tasmania

 Our flight from Melbourne to Launceton, Tasmania took about 1 hour on JetStar Airline.  We rented a new Kia and headed west on a secondary highway.

We entered Cradle Mountain National Park where we stayed in this new "cabin".  It was a huge National Park and many sites were taken by tent campers.

Our cabin was modern, as you can see, and it was warm and comfortable even though the night temperature was rather cold and it was spitting snow in the morning.  Luckily, the snow did not stick and we moved on as planned Wednesday morning.

We drove a few miles into Cradle Mountain National Park and boarded a bus.  The bus drove us about 15 miles into the park (kind of like Denali in Alaska) and dropped us off at a visitor center.  Behind the center was Dove Lake.  After our tour we got back into our warm Kia and headed deeper into west Tasmania.

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Melbourne Boat Ride

 On Monday April 22 we took a boat tour in Melbourne on the Yarra River.

                It was a warm and pleasant day.  Dave and Marilyn had done the tour before so they stayed in the city.

It did not take long before we started seeing some interesting architecture.  Does the building on the left have a back problem?

These two towers seemed to have a huge belt holding them together.

These structures are designed to load the huge ocean-going ships.

Just like Chicago and other big cities on the water in the USA.  Melbourne had its own large yachts in port.

This skyscraper seemed to be wearing a pair of goggles. On each side.

We passed this accounting firm with an interesting name - don't you think?

Here is what the city of Melbourne looked like from our tour boat.  We had a great ride on the water in a beautiful Australian city.

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On Tuesday morning we were moving early to catch a plane to our next destination down under. 

Come back to check it out.

Melbourne Part Two

 After our tour of the prison Francis and Bill decided to visit the Melbourne Museum near downtown Melbourne.

It was very large and had plenty to see.  This dinosaur was perfectly done.

There was a movie featuring dinosaurs  that we think we had seen in the large Chicago Museum of Natural History?

These two boas with a boa skeleton between them was interesting.  (if you like big snakes)

We thought this doll house was worth a picture with all its detail.

This is Australia's most famous racehorse, Phar Lap.  Stuffed of course.  He won 37 of the famous 51 starts in which he raced in the 1930's.  Move over Secretariat!

In the museum one visitor could stand at a TV screen in one room, while another posed in the famous painting in another room.  Above Francis is trying to look like the king of Frederic! 

The Melbourne Museum was excellent.

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Melbourne Australia

 We arrived in Melbourne by car with Dave at the wheel and Marilyn flew in to meet us.  We stayed at a beautiful three-bedroom high-rise apartment down town.

When we took our first walk in the city we came across this loud gathering of people protesting what Israel is doing now in the Meddle East in its war in Gaza with Hamas.

We visited the Old Melbourne Gaol (jail) or prison near downtown.  We have toured a few other old prisons in our travels, and this one was hard to beat.  We could roam almost anywhere freely, and there was plenty of information in each cell telling about famous prisoners.

We were surprised to read that the old prison held women as well as men.  It said that often homeless children were sent there because they had no other place to go.  Above are our wonderful hosts: Dave and Marilyn. 

The prison was a place to avoid back in the day!

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Australia - The Americans Have Been Here Ahead of Us

 As we spend time in Australia we are seeing more and more American businesses that we recognize.

Here are a couple that we think you know.  (besides McDonald's)

The Colonel is all over Australia.  (Must be a lot of chickens here)

And we bet you can guess this one from the States.  Go Whopper!

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A Two-Day Drive Along the Sea

 On Friday morning we left Adelaide with Dave at the wheel and headed south and east along the Australian Sea toward Melbourne.  Marilyn stayed home to clean house.  She would fly in later to meet us in Melbourne.

It was a beautiful drive along the coast; a bit like California's Pacific Coast Highway.

The views were numerous like this as we drove along the sea.   These middle rock formations are the "two sisters.

       Here is a hitch-hiker we picked up.  We stayed overnight in a small local motel in the tiny village of Lavers.  The road was full of many ocean scenes like this along the southern Australia coast.  Note the cave in the rock.

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