thoughts on Tassie (with no photos yet)

[deird1]

You step off the boat in Devonport, and lots of enterprising salesmen are standing right there, waving "Breakfast at our Cafe!" signs and gesturing to their joint down the street.

You step off the boat in Melbourne, and no-one cares. You want breakfast? Eh, so does everyone else. You got off a boat? Congratulations. People do that sometimes.

Melbourne: the city where nobody gives a damn. (And, for the first time in three weeks, I felt right at home.)


Our holiday can be neatly divided into a few different topics.

Old Stuff
Tasmania's tourism centers around the old, historical stuff – for a value of "old" meaning "somewhere under 200 years old". (I'll take a moment to pause while all you Europeans laugh hysterically.)

Quite interesting, actually. In the bits of Europe I've seen, you can find out a great deal about what it was like in ancient times, or medieval times – but anything more recent has usually been built over by now, and no-one cares. In Tasmania, though, if it's old – at all – it's almost certainly heritage-listed. (Leading to the bizarre sensation of seeing the careful preservation of… a bit of wall. With thoughtful plaques saying "This is a bit of wall, from a building that used to be here. We think this building was something to do with a local merchant. As you can see, it's mostly fallen down… but we're trying to save what's left, because it's an important piece of our history." And it's… seriously a piece of wall. From something.)

So, you can actually get a pretty decent slice of life of exactly the couple of decades when Tasmania had convicts. And they know about it in incredible detail, because they have oodles of documentation.



The Oops Factor
Almost all tourist exhibits had a common theme: "Uh... oops?"

As in "So, we kinda massacred an entire people group, and commmitted genocide. Oops. Sorry about that."
Or "There was this animal that was really interesting – except we only realised they might be interesting after we made them extinct. Um… sorry."
Or "We had these really awesome ideas about reforming prisons to make them better. Aaaand they failed horribly and were kinda a crime against humanity. We'll… try harder next time?"

(For the non-Aussies in the audience: you might be slightly surprised about how much Aboriginal culture is acknowledged. Every sign, everywhere we went, started with a whole section about the Aboriginal people native to that district, and what they used to do. (Aussies in the audience: Basically, the "We Acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the Land" sign is everywhere. In great detail.))



Natural Stuff
Caves! And waterfalls! And coastal stuff! And mountains!

Unfortunately we couldn't manage to get to the west half of the island, as the kidlets wouldn't have managed the long walks. So instead, we subjected them to lots of windy (and short) hikes around lookout points, two cave tours featuring stalactites and glow-worms, and the coldest weather Secunda has ever experienced. (4 degrees, or thereabouts, on top of Mount Wellington. Primus has experienced colder, but not since he was a baby.)



The Kidlets
The kids have been great – but increasingly grumpy and bored over the last few days. They were desperate to be home!

When we walked through the door this morning, Secunda ran off and brought out every single toy she owns, and spent the whole day catching up on playing with them. Primus ran inside excited – and then burst into tears, because I'd told him it would be Easter time after our holiday, and he was expecting Easter decorations. He felt so betrayed.

When travelling with kids, you have far fewer evening walks or pub visits – and far more neverending viewings of the same two movies you packed for them, on the off-chance that they occasionally needed to sit and glaze over in front of a screen. (Seriously – I packed for the off-chance. They used them daily.) We also took four books for Secunda (and two more wordy ones for Primus), and were thoroughly sick of them by the end of week one. So nice to get back to our overflowing bookcase.



The Verdict
Tasmania is fun… but tiny. People-wise, I mean: all the towns are small towns, including the very largest one.

It has interesting things to see, and I took many photos. If you're at all interested in convict history, it's definitely worth a look.

I'm glad I went – but so happy to be home, at last.

Comments

[out_there]

"Melbourne: the city where nobody gives a damn."

That made me laugh so much. It's just... so very true of Melbourne.

But interesting to hear your thoughts on Tassie. I've never been, but people have said it's very pretty to visit (and like Victoria if you stepped back in time 40 years. I don't know if that's true or not, but it didn't fill me with an urge to rush down there. Plus, cold. I don't pay to be colder than I am at home.)

[deird1]

I've never been, but people have said it's very pretty to visit (and like Victoria if you stepped back in time 40 years. I don't know if that's true or not, but it didn't fill me with an urge to rush down there. Plus, cold. I don't pay to be colder than I am at home.)

True on all counts – and agreed. I enjoyed it, but I wouldn't want to live there.

[shadowkat]

Not at all how I remember it -- but I also visited it at the age of 23, and in 1990, with my parents and no kids in tow. And being from the US, the wildlife park with the kangaroos, etc, was really cool. We also went to the West Coast and explored the waterfalls. I think we only spent the two weeks of Christmas there..before heading back and visiting the Fairy Penguins, seeing Melbourne (not the best place to spend New Years in the 1990s, just saying -- there was nothing), and through Victoria and the Smokey Mountains to Sydney.

It's also worth mentioning that we visited in the height of summer -- so the 60-70 degree weather was lovely in comparison to the 90-100 degree temps in Sydney. I think it's why we went at Christmas -- to get some where cooler.

I don't remember any tourist sites -- just natural ones and Hobart. But we probably didn't go to them. And it was over over 30 years ago.

[deird1]

I don't remember any tourist sites -- just natural ones and Hobart.

I think about half the tourists go to western Tassie, like you did. That's mostly natural things like mountains and rivers – so I imagine it's less touristy. We were in the eastern half, which is much more about convicts and history.

[mesotablar]

haha, the oops factor! Yes, Tasmania has much to oops for. Did they gloss over the cannibal factor? or the fact it happened twice?

Apart from everything being small town did you notice things being very close together? Like you are never far from a town? but then I don't think it is all that much different from country Victoria or many of the coastal zones.

[deird1]

Very similar to country Victoria, yes. Driving distances were about the same. But all the towns are tiny.

Actually, the normal tiny towns weren't surprising to me at all, as Victoria is the same. The thing that freaked me out was the largest town (Hobart) and how small that was.


Did they gloss over the cannibal factor?

I certainly saw a couple of references to it.

[lirazel]

I would be really, really interested to hear some historians or psychologists or someone talk about why Australia are all about acknowledging the original owners of the land and those of us in North America absolutely suck at it.

[deird1]

To be fair, we're still quite abysmal in dealing with Aborigines in some ways. But, yeah, we do like to "acknowledge" them all the time.

[thenewbuzwuzz]

"In the bits of Europe I've seen, you can find out a great deal about what it was like in ancient times, or medieval times – but anything more recent has usually been built over by now, and no-one cares. In Tasmania, though, if it's old – at all – it's almost certainly heritage-listed."
Ooh, this is a really interesting point! c:

[deird1]

I just found it interesting that they had so many (hundreds) "slice of life" things for the early 1800s. "Here is a house from the 1800s, looking like it would have at the time. Here is a prison. Here is a school set up for students from the 1800s. Here is a model of the town of Hobart in the early 1800s."

It's a period you don't really find in European tourism.