Day 48: Copping to Hobart

Neither of us enjoy cities much, and so we don't hanker after most of the tourism opportunities available there. However we do make exceptions. This day we spent in Hobart, seeing a couple of sights and doing a little bit of souvenir hunting.

Our first stop was at the Cascades Female Factory. It's a historic site in Hobart where approximately 7,000 female convicts were incarcerated between 1828 and 1856. There isn't much left of the sandstone buildings, but we were able to walk through an audio tour inside the walls that gave us a good idea of the site and the lives of the ladies who passed through here. In it's current form this site has only been open to the public for two years.

Inside the walls of one portion of the Cascades
Female Factory (not sure why "factory")

It truly was a miserable, sad place in the 1800s. The conditions were harsh and many (including their very young children) didn't survive to see freedom again. 

This is part of a multi-campus Australian Convict Sites World Heritage Property (one of 11 across Australia). As we looked at this place and the cruise we did on the west coast, it's clear to see the powers in charge were struggling to know how to deal with crime and poverty. Many had been sent to Australia for very small crimes (stealing clothing or a loaf of bread, for example). The general policy at the time seemed to be to treat offenders harshly and trust that the convicts would see the errors of their ways and reform themselves, if they didn't the punishments got harsher and harsher. This, of course, had mixed results.

Looking towards the Derwent River and
Tasman Bridge

We ate lunch parked in the street outside the site and then proceeded to inner city areas to try to find a park for our large vehicle. We ended up finding a good spot near the Botanical Gardens that only cost us $3. It was a bit of a hike into the main centre, but good exercise! We walked near a dock area where the bright red Australian government's Antarctic exploration ship was docked.

Inside the hut replica

Our destination was the Mawson’s Hut replica. It's a little hut with a huge amount of information about Antarctica, especially in the early 1900s. The original hut was built by a team lead by Australian Douglas Mawson in early 1900s. They spent two winters living in this hut (at the windiest place recorded on the planet), exploring and doing scientific discovery. The hut is still in existence in Antarctica, but obviously most people can't visit it, so this replica has been build in Hobart to educate people, but also to raise money as they seek to conserve the original. We spent a fascinating couple of hours reading the many signs and posters there, and talking to the two ladies on duty at the time. It was amazing to explore this world, having lived through four winters in the harsh environment of Hokkaido, where temperatures barely make it above zero for several months of the year. We lived there in relative luxury, compared to this team! 

This replica is only 11 years old. The last time I really was a tourist in Tasmania was when I was 10 years old, in the '80s. It's been interesting to note what we were able to see this time that my family couldn't have seen back then!

After these two historical adventures we went hunting for coffee (for me) and souvenirs. It was about 3 in the afternoon and we had discovered that once it hit that time, many tourist things in Tassie start to close at this time of the year. But we were tired, too, so then we walked back to our van and drove to our lodgings for the night.

This was an extension of the surprises of the weekend. We stayed the night with our new friend (that we'd first met the day before at church, but knew of her before that through David's cousin), her son, and mother. They fed us dinner and we had an entertaining evening playing the game Sequence with them. This was our third night in a row in a house and it was a nice break from our little box-on-wheels.