3 Weeks in Tazzy
Trip Start
Sep 2005
1
39
52
Trip End
Sep 2006
Hobart,
Australia
Sunday, March 26, 2006
At last a taste of the real Oz. Tasmania really is a top spot. Hobart the capital, which only has about 150,000 people is the best city I've gone socialising in for a long, long time. Everybody just goes out and gets plastered. Happy drunk not obnoxious drunk. Not that there isn't the odd spot of trouble. You'll do see the occasional punch up. It could be 2 lads, or 2 lasses, or a bit of mixed doubles. The other night I saw this guy get a girl in a head lock and uppercut her in the face for a minute of two. But an hour or so after, the happy couple were slow dancing on the floor together. Like I say everybody just wants to be happy when they're out.
I landed a cushy job as a plumbers mate for a week which helped stem the cash outflow for a bit
01 Hobart town centre
. Plumbers mate in this case really meant being a mate for a week. My duties included eating home-cooked dinners, accepting free accommodation, polishing off free beer, and sciving off early to go fishing in the afternoons. All this and I got paid good money. I also got to do a bit of digging, and help fit a few lengths of pipe. It was one of those cases where the job finds you. Ian Kidd (alias Kiddo from Kidderminster) and myself got talking on Sunday night at 9pm, and by 7am the next morning I was on site, trousers at half mast. The following Friday I was $600 richer and enjoying a free bar at the New Sydney, courtesy of the plumber suppliers that Ian had bought all his gear from. As luck would have it Brendan Wisley was in town, on a spot of business. It was great to meet up again. We did a Saturday night in Hobart together. It's been a while since I've had a full night out with the Wiz, but he's still a terrible man for falling into bushes at the end of the night. Pity we only got one day out but hopefully we'll be able to meet up in Singapore for a little longer.
Hobart is a fatastic town for going out on your own. Everybody just talks away to each other like they would at home. There's also lots of Irish, so I've had no problem meeting good quality drinking partners, and fishing partners. The hotel I'm staying in even has a cracking wee traditional music session on a Saturday afternoon, as well as very good Guiness, which makes a nice alternative to Saturday shopping. The music scene is superb. Thanks to Dennis and Linda I discovered one of the best guitarists I've ever heard in a place called Dr Syntax. Where did do they get the names? Dennis is a good musician himself (singer/guitarist/harmonicist) and he gave a cool rendition of Van-the-Mans "Browneyed Girl" on stage for me on Sunday night
02 Kiddo and myself doing overtime
.Unfortunately the fishing was not as good as the nightlife. It was just a little bit too late in the year. And a bit too cold. I rented a car for a week and headed up to the highlands where the best sport is. On my third day I opened the door to 5 inches of snow. Not what I'd travelled 10,000 miles for. The only thing for it was a dirty big breakfast and head for home. Amazingly enough I bumped into a Dub in the exact same predicament over my eggs benedict. Wendel and myself got the maps out and headed off to fish the rivers in the north of the Island. After a lot of hard work we got a few. So we headed back to Hobart with a clean conscience and a terrible thirst for the Guinness.
I did manage to do a few tourist things. The big one that you absolutely must do if you're in Tasmania is the Port Arthur prison tour. This was a tough place. Many prisoners were masked and stuck in solitary for months when they arrived. Others were shackled together and made to carry logs. As well as being famous for being such a tough prison, it is also the site of Australias biggest mass shooting. A local guy called Martin Byrant went nuts here 10 years ago and killed 35 people. At one stage he ran round a big tree shooting a mother and her 2 young daughters
03 The Wiz and myself
. He's currently serving 35 life sentences in Tasmania. According to the local papers he's been suffering from depression lately. Shame about that. The prison itself is remarkably well preserved. Surprisingly, most of the inmates were English. You only got sent here if you were a repeat offender. There was a computer system where you could look up family names. It seems there were a few Kennedys, Sweeneys and O'Connors there, but no Walls. I wonder if they got that crank phonecall about what's holding the roof up!There was also a wildlife santuary at Port Arthur which was worth a visit. I arrived just in time to feed the wallabies and kangaroos by hand. They're fairly docile creatures, and possibly even more stupid than sheep. It's a close call. These were about the only creatures there that were safe to let loose on the public. Everything else was far too risky. The most impressive was a young wedge-tailed eagle. You only appreciate the size of these birds when you get up really close, and this fellow quite liked to sit right up at the glass window. When he hopped off his perch you could feel the tremor through the wall when he landed on the ground. He really was big. This woman came in and stuck her finger out towards the glass panel to see what he'd do. The speed that he went for it was amazing. It sounded like someone had hit the window with a hammer. The sancutary also houses some Tazzy devils. These guys are pretty ferocious, like piranha fish on legs. Think of the cartoon character but slightly more cuddly looking. As soon as the food is produced they just flip and go into a frenzy of hissing, biting and fighting. They are supposed to have the strongest jaws of any land animal, and I could believe it. The guy threw in a lump of kangaroo roadkill, bone fur and all. In a few minutes flat you'd never have known they'd been fed. When they were all worked up they even jumped up at the spectators to have a go.
