Tasmania Part Two: Hobart

On the drive from Bicheno to Hobart

Part one of the Tasmanian epic is here.
For the last couple of days in Tasmania, we parked ourselves in the port town of Hobart. We left Bicheno early because it was a Saturday, and we wanted to make Hobart in time to catch the Salamanca Markets, which everyone I asked about Tassie said was a must-do. The markets are relatively large, with a section for crafts and tourist items, as well as a farmer's market section.  There were plenty of food stands (including, for some reason, the "smallest pancakes" booth) and musical buskers.



Honestly, I'm not entirely sure why they are so heavily hyped. They reminded me of most craft fairs and markets I have attended in any town. They were extremely crowded, and did have a festive feel to them. I was tempted by some of the Tasmanian wood craft, particularly some beautiful cutting boards, but I ended up walking away with just a jar of honey and a Tasmanian devil potholder (best $5 I've ever spent). I was back in Salamanca Place a couple days later, and I can suggest it's a great spot to enjoy a few galleries and get a cup of coffee or lunch.

After the markets, we did a bit of a wander around town and had our first of several fish and chips experiences. The Tasmanian scallops were so unbelievably good; worth their weight in currency. Downtown Hobart was easily walkable, and I killed a few hours on the beautiful pier and a exploring number of pretty parks.

The next day, I scheduled myself into a tour of the Cascade Brewery. A few months ago, I did the tour of the Budweiser brewery in St. Louis, and I thought it would be fun to compare a little brewery to that mammoth operation. Plus, I was hoping for samples. The brewery grounds are stunningly green and lush, with the imposing Victorian building glaring down from the hill.

My favorite story from the tour was that when it first opened in the early 1800s, the brewery had an open bar for the workers. After awhile, this seemed inadvisable, so they decided that they would only open the bar four times a day. A bell, which still stands on property, signaled to workers when the bar was open. This lasted until not so long ago, when health and safety standards came into effect.

We were, in the end, rewarded with samples. It was a day from a postcard, and I sat in the beautiful garden with my several beers until Partner-in-Crime arrived from the maritime museum to peel me off the floor whisk me off to our next destination.

We headed about an hour and a half out of town to Mt Field National Park, where we expected to be dazzled with wonder at Russell Falls the most photographed falls in Tasmania (or something along those lines). On the way, we had another disagreement with the GPS, whose affinity for dirt roads was becoming rather tiring. But, we made it eventually, and were pleased to find that the falls were a mercifully short 10 minute hike (good for me, after all those drinks). The falls really were quite photo worthy.

We carried on to the top of the falls, and beyond, to see what further sights we could see, and were soon rewarded with a view that struck me emotionally more than perhaps any other natural locale I've experienced. Photos do it not justice, naturally, but tucked away in a mossy alcove was Horseshoe Falls. Not even close to the largest or grandest falls I have ever seen, or even saw on this trip, the delight I felt came from the sense I got that I had entered a fairy land. It was cool, quiet, green, with beams of light peeping through the messy forest. There was not another hiker in sight, and P-i-C and I just about melted into the scene.

Dragging ourselves away, we walked on a bit further and found a couple more excellent trails to explore in the park. 

Another pademelon on the Tall Trees walk.

Hiding in the enchanted forest.

Ciao, kangaroo.

We devoted our final day in Hobart to the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), a wild child of a museum just outside of town. MONA is a world class museum featuring the private collection of an eccentric local bazillionaire. The collection spans the old (mummies, ancient artifacts) to the new (installation art, film). There are no plaques on the walls, but rather all guests are given an ipod with a GPS system that provides information about pieces that you are near. You might get just a short paragraph (none of the curatorial material tries to explain the art, but gives a sense of things the collectors thought about and so forth) or you might have the chance to listen to a 15 minute interview with the artist. Each one is different and  the level of engagement is up to the viewer. The collection and curation is fascinating and well thought out, and I actually found it to be an exhausting day because there was so much to take in. There seemed to be an overarching theme to the collection that dealt with the human body and mortality, so it is a pretty a dark museum, but not without points of light and a good deal of humor.  

This installation was a wall several stories tall with a device that somehow pulled words
frequently used in the media and dropped them out with water. Crazy.

P-i-C and I sitting on a bean bag sofa on the ground watching a video installation on the ceiling.
Like you do.

With just a bit of time to kill before our flight home, we took a quick drive to the sweet, touristy little town of Richmond, where there are a number of Tasmania's oldest buildings, and a disproportionate number of adorable B&Bs.

All the way to the airport, and onto the airplane, I tried to tempt P-i-C into staying in Tasmania for another week. Or, maybe finding employment for a year and taking up residence in a cottage with a handful of livestock and a rented dog. 

Strangely he said no, but I know I'll win him over. 

Hold our spot, cows. We'll be back one day.

Tasmania

Though it has been a couple of months, and our trip to Tasmania is now a memory with a soft-focus filter washed over it, I still want to share some of my impressions. It was one of the most relaxing and visually enthralling trips I have taken.

Tasmania is an island in the Southernmost part of Australia, and often the source of jokes by mainlanders about it not really being part of Australia or that things are a bit slooooow there. But, enough people had said to me that it was geographically reminiscent of Montana to make me desperate to go. Those are the magic words.

We had five days, which is hardly enough time to scratch the surface, but we squeezed in as much as we could, mostly on the East coast.  To maximize our travel time, we flew into Launceston, rented a car, and made our way steadily south to Hobart, where we departed from.

Our day in Launceston was a bit of a wash, as we started at a local park, which we'd heard was amazing. It was scenic enough, with some nice trails and a gorge, but because we had our hearts set on World Class Amazement, we came away blase. We then went off to try some wineries. It was late in the day, and we only hit about four before the cellar doors were closing up shop. At our final winery, the excellent and quaint Moore's Hill, we chatted up the owner who suggested we drive on to the nearby Narawntapu National Park, where we'd see some nice scenery. We found the beach and got our feet wet, and then did a short hike for some lovely views.

With a little daylight left, we drove on to our hotel further west in the pretty little mountain town of Deloraine, where we'd stay for two nights. It positioned us to be closer to our next stop, Lake St Clair National Park, and the oft-photographed Cradle Mountain. 

Navigation around Tasmania proved to be a trick: our GPS developed a fondness for long dirt roads and never-built thoroughfares. We experienced our first confusion on the way to Lake St Clair, and turned around lost on a dead-end dirt road an hour out of our way, and without any cell phone reception. Thankfully, we ran into fellow tourists in a camper van who had just come from there, and they set us aright again. Later in the day than we'd intended, we arrived at Cradle Mountain, where we started on a two-hour hike around the lake. In reality, it took us more like three hours because I kept stopping for photos. 

For people who hike on a semi-regular basis, Partner-in-Crime and I have been lucky to have experienced essentially no injuries. In fact, I received the worst injury of my hiking life on this walk. Coming down a hill, I grabbed onto a tree to steady myself, and when I pulled my hand away, I had extreme pain and a huge ant clinging to my ring finger. I later discovered that the ant was a Jack Jumper Ant, native to Tasmania, who stings its victims with one of the most powerful venoms in insectdome. Of course, this being Australia, it could not just be a normal ant, but a life-endangering one. I got into an increasing panic until I was able to somehow coax my wedding ring off my swelling finger, which eventually doubled in size. No lie, two months later my finger is still swollen enough that I can't get my ring back on (and I'm not just saying that so that I can go to singles bars!). 

Done with the hike, my husband, my giant finger, and I explored Lake St Clair a bit longer. We took a couple of short hikes, the best of which was the Enchanted walk, a moss filled forest with waterfalls and a stream, which lived up to its name.   

We ran into this little guy on the walk, a pademelon, which we learned is a marsupial.

I'd gleaned that Lake St Clair was in wombat-country, and given my little obsession with wombats (I had a wombat figurine in my wedding bouquet, for heavens sake), I was determined not to leave without seeing one in the wild. I am not ashamed to tell you that I spent a good hour stalking all the fields I could find that had - ehem - telltale signs of wombat presence. Dejected, I finally had to abandon my hunt for poor P-i-C's sanity, and probably my own, as well. Cruising out of the park, we saw a couple people on the side of the road, and oh my, they were looking at a wombat! I almost cried. We watched that wombat graze for a long time, until we noticed that there was another wombat across the street. And then, that wombat had a friend. All totaled, we saw five wombats feeding that evening. I was bursting with wombat joy.

As the cherry on top of an already overwhelming day, I added not one but two giant roadside attractions to my "collection..."

Mikey, the Giant Tasmanian Devil

The Giant Coffee Kettle, Deloraine

The next day, back in Deloraine, we woke up to the most incredible foggy mountain scene outside the window of our hotel. By this point, I loved Tasmania, and could not wait to see what more lay ahead.

We were off to another National Park - Freycinet - which is where Wineglass Bay (another one of the famous Tassie landmarks) is.

Freycinet was overrun with wallabies who were highly adjusted to humans, and boldly begged for goodies in the car park. We did not feed them, but we could not resist having just a small play.

The hike to Wineglass Bay was a challenging three-hour round trip. It is the only way to get to the beach. If I'm completely honest, I didn't find the payoff to be worth the difficulty of the walk, but in retrospect, I'm always happy to have accomplished a tough hike, so I'm glad that we went.

We had our picnic lunch on the beach in the company of a handful of other hikers, and some terribly friendly marsupial friends looking to share.

We had plenty of time left, and took a further wander around Freycinet, where we found some particularly stunning scenery in the way of dramatic ocean cliffs and colorful coastline. These were some of our favorite views of the entire trip.

That night, we stayed in a pretty little town called Bicheno. We treated ourselves to an incredible meal at a highly recommended French restaurant, Cyrano. The decor was nothing fancy, but the food was divine. The owner personally cooked all the meals herself in an exposed kitchen. I had easily the best lamb shanks of my life. 

We were really rolling in the wonderful in Tasmania.

The next day, we headed out early to spend our last couple of days in Hobart and, as this has turned into quite the missive, I'll finish the adventure tomorrow.

First Pavlova

I have the week off of work, and there is no point in trying my hand at any freelance projects this week because most of the country is taking it easy until after New Year's. So, I am enjoying a week at home watching movies, finding the gym again, catching up on little projects, and flitting around with friends. I am also going to take this week to catch up on blogging, since we've taken two marvelous trips that I have not yet posted about.

Today, though, I must tell you about my latest culinary accomplishment: I tackled the pavlova.

Pavlova is a meringue-esque cake that is incredibly popular in Australia and New Zealand. It is a good Christmas dish for the Southern hemisphere summer since it is light and cool. Don't get Aussies or Kiwis going on which country invented it; that is an ongoing debate. Makes little difference to me. All I know is that it is a treat, and famously tricky to make well.


I followed this recipe to relatively good success.

Ingredients are: 6 egg whites, 1-1/2 cup caster sugar (don't use regular sugar, it won't dissolve well enough), 2 tsp corn starch (called corn flour in Australia), 1 tsp white vinegar, 1/2 tsp vanilla. For the topping, you'll also need cream for whipping and fruit.

The first part is really fun. Beat the egg whites until they start to form peaks, and then begin adding the sugar one tablespoon at a time.

It takes awhile, but you end up with the most gorgeous, shiny white concoction. Whip in the other ingredients. You then gloop that onto a lined baking tray. I used baking paper with a pencil-lined circle to mark my outline. I smooshed down the middle to make a bit of a crevice for the topping.

This bakes on low heat for about an hour and a half. When done, it should be lightly brown with no dark, syrupy peaks. The corn flour gives it the crunchy outside layer, which is decidedly the best part. 

OK, believe it or not, this is where things get tricky. At this point, the cake is very fragile, and exposure to cold air can make the pavlova implode in on itself, leaving it less beautiful than what you see here. The trick, apparently, is to let it cool in the oven with the door ajar so that the temperature change is gradual. This probably works super well ... as long as you don't accidentally slam the oven door shut. 

My pav went from gorgeous to sad (but still tasty) in a flash.

Thankfully, generous toppings hide a multitude of sins. 

Don't put the mixer away when you're done with the eggs. The middle section gets covered with whipped cream.

Then, choose your fruit. I saw a photo of a stunning pav covered with pomegranate. My friend Mimi's Christmas pav was a beaut with passion fruit and strawberries. I went with ...

... mango, kiwi, banana and passion fruit pulp, with lime garnish.

I feel like passion fruit is not well known in the States. It is wildly popular in Australia (in the U.S., raspberry is the most popular yogurt flavor. Here, I'd bet you that it is passion fruit). It is delicious. You can buy the pulp in cans, but since I was being experimental, already, I thought I'd go all out and see what happened if I bought the actual fruit.

I liked having the green kiwi fruit to contrast the abundance of yellow/orange.

All put together, I think it looked nice. Moreover, it tasted great. Personal preference, I would probably use something instead of bananas next time, as they are a fairly overwhelming taste ... but, I quibble. We ate it with enthusiasm, and I felt the warm, fuzzy sense of satisfaction that only a lovely baking project affords.

A Boxing Day Tradition

Merry Christmas! Or, if you really want to get into the Aussie spirit - Happy Chrissie! And for those Down Under, a Happy Boxing Day to you.

In the States, of course, we do not celebrate Boxing Day, and I remember people there sometimes saying that it was so named because it was the day the you returned your presents. I always thought that sounded silly, so I latched on when someone told me that it was so-called because it was the day the British servants got the day off to celebrate Christmas, so the aristocracy had to eat boxed dinners. That sounded logical to me, and I have often gotten my smugly on and repeated it. Humble pie for me, though, as I learned yesterday, that it probably actually has something to do with charity boxes, but no one really knows.

In any case, one of the biggest Boxing Day events in Sydney is the launch of the Sydney to Hobart sailing race. We missed it last year because we were out of town gallivanting with Ned Kelly. This year I very much wanted to go, but it was supposed to rain, and I didn't actually want to go that much. When I woke up this morning, it was sunny, so I quickly changed gears, and we dashed off to Middle Head to watch the start of the race.

It was packed there, but we found parking and a little corner to set up our picnic blanket, so that was no problem. Partner-in-Crime is a sailor, so he fielded my steady stream of questions about the race and strategies. He was most amused by the amazing amount of maritime paparazzi present. Many people watch the launch from the water in boats, and there were also loads of helicopters over head. P-i-C races a couple times a month and he said, heavens, there had never been any fanfare like that for his races!

We saw the boats get their positions, and maneuver around the starting mark, which took about 20 minutes in all. They'll be sailing for two or so more days before reaching Hobart, Tasmania. It can be quite a treacherous race, so I wish them all safe travels and speedy delivery.

Wild Oats XI (last year's winner) and the zebra boat Loyal were waaaaay out front at the start.

This helicopter swooped in for a better shot. It was nuts how close it got to the ship.

More of the race, with the paparazzi.

On to Tassie.

Day Zero Update

Time has been whipping by lately, and I can't believe that it's been four months since I last updated on the Day Zero project. I've ticked a few more items off the list, bringing me up to 36 out of 101. Tomorrow, we head off on a cruise to New Zealand, which will mean at least one more item off the list, but until then, here are the ones that have gotten the big check mark.

Travel Goals

         Go to Tasmania

In October, Partner-in-Crime and I flew to Tasmania for a week. Before moving to Australia, if you had ever told me that Tasmania was somewhere I would travel to in my life, I would have laughed (and probably said, "wait, where is Tasmania?"). Recently, I was talking to someone who hails from Tassie, as they call it here, and told him what an amazing time we had on our trip. He said, "tell everyone. People think Tasmania has a bad reputation." I told him I thought Tassie would be better off if it remained a bit of a secret. Its charm is in its pristine scenery and its laid back attitude.

Professional Goals

        Teach a class or master class

Recently, I was a mentor for a program supporting emerging playwrights and directors. I had such a fantastic time working on that program and, as part of it, I led two workshops on dramaturgy for the participants. I very much hope I'll have more opportunities to teach.

Projects, Food, and Craftiness

-         Make a recipe box

Instead of making an actual box, I decided to go next-generation and build my "box" as a private blog. This gives me the ability to search for recipes, ingredients or themes (i.e. - "bring to a party" or "breakfast"). Plus, if anyone ever asks for a recipe, it will be easy for me to email the link. I miss the classic nature of the recipe card box, but in reality, this system is so much more practical.

Personal Health and Wellbeing

         Get a hot stone massage

 

I did this just today, thanks to a Groupon I bought back in September. I have never been so blissed to heaven in my life. What a great goal I set for myself.

 Join a gym

I finally broke down and made the investment in joining the gym. I ended up joining a large chain here, which has been pretty good because it frees me of the excuse of it not being convenient to home or work.

Things to Watch

         See Kathy Griffin perform

My crummy cell phone picture of Kathy Griffin
at the Opera House.

I was elated when Kathy Griffin announced dates in Sydney, and rounded up a few girlfriends for a night out at the Opera House. She was every bit as funny as I'd expected, and some of her best material was stuff she'd tailored for Australia. One of my favorite observations was that Julia Gillard looks just like Tilda Swinton, and that she and Julia are "fellow 'rangas" (a disparaging slang for red-heads, which I am not going to deign to tell you the ridiculous origin of). She also had good fun with Oprah's Australian visit, saying that Oprah told everyone that she'd "discovered a new city. It's called Australiaaaaaaaa." Every bit of the show was a riot.

Things to Buy

      Invest in the perfect little black dress

 When I was in the States, I was on my umpteenth trip to Ross, when I saw this gorgeous Calvin Klein cocktail dress. I had no intention of spending any more money, so dragged the dress into the change room with me to talk myself out of it (obviously). It was almost like the dress had been fitted to me. I could not say no. I wore it for the first time to the aforementioned Kathy Griffin show. And, guess what ... I discovered that it even has pockets!

My big investment? $25.
I would make ritual sacrifices to have a Ross here.

That's the wrap up for now. I'll be back with more tales of life and so forth when we get back from visiting the hobbits our cruise.