Necessity is the Mother of Invention
With no gas cooker and no mains electric for the microwave we warmed our pre-cooked lasagne by placing portions into a plastic punnet and sitting it on the hot surface of the engine as soon as it was turned off and making ‘just hot’ black coffee using water from the hot water tap. Both lacked extremes of temperature but sufficed adequately as a temporary measure. We have since found the gas regulator on top of the tank was blocked and with a surreptitious tap and blow Rob restored the gas flow to better than it was before!
We left Wineglass Bay, famous for its beautiful shape and beach and now the film ‘Lion’, heading for our last arrival anchorage, Prosser Bay and briefly had the company of a big humpback whale near to us travelling north amidst more albatross. At the time we were unaware of the bush fires that had now started along the north shore of Tasmania but we did know that the NSW fires were getting a lot worse, greater in number and size and this trend was only going to continue.
We anchored in the bay while Stuart on Blithe Spirit picked up a free mooring and during the evening we watched as a thunder storm blackening the skies moved around us. So often the coastline gets a spot of rain but it doesn’t go further inland. A weather terminology new to me is the ‘Indian Ocean Dipole’, which sends westerly winds over Australia bringing with them the incredible heat from the ‘hot red centre’, making firefighting around Sydney, Brisbane and Canberra so difficult. The fires we have seen here are more frightening and faster moving than we have ever seen. Even areas of the South Island New Zealand have seen the smoke from 1200 miles away.
But we were heading south, would that make a difference to the risk of bush fires, in a cooler climate? We would see.
News was also coming through on ABC RN Radio transmitted on AM radio about the eruption of the volcano on White Island off Tauranga, NZ. What a shocking way to die in more ways than one. Rob and I take issues around our personal safety very seriously, especially in our present chosen activity. I would never assume that just because I was on a cruise and with a local guide my safety could be assured near a live volcano. I was glad we had not visited the equally popular one on Tanna while we were in Vanuatu for just that reason.
We followed our friends on Blithe Spirit out into a bright, shiny morning with the sun’s baco foil reflection on the water between us and Maria Island and dolphins joined us while we headed south through Mercury Passage towards Marion Bay and around the sand bar into Blackman Bay. I think we might have taken the longer route around the Forestier Peninsula if it hadn’t been for the encouragement of our friends. We draw the same as Blithe Spirit and Rob had made enquiries with Shane about the Denison canal transit as close to High Tide as possible, but first were the shallow waters of Blackman’s Bay. In the photos you will see some are of Zoonie following our friends and other are from our lead boat! Many thanks to Sally and Stuart for them.
The transit was a short experience and we would traverse the swing bridge at Dunalley twice more by car later on during our stay on our visit to Port Arthur and all the other gems of interest on the Forestier and Tasman Peninsulas as you will read later.
We had another seven hours of motoring to do across the vast Great Oyster Bay and up the Derwent River towards the Tasman Bridge. We had plenty of gaps to choose from between the piers, ignoring the biggest central one used by shipping it was guesswork to see which one BS would pass beneath. Quite a strong ebb tide prolonged our journey, well we had to have it right for the canal and the wind had picked up too, funnelling hard against us, but the visibility was perfect, unlike on the foggy night the SS Lake Illawara, a bulk ore carrier (10,000 tons of zinc on board), hit the bridge in 1975. Two piers and 127 metres of bridge collapsed into the river sinking the ship and killing seven crew members and five people from the cars that plunged into the icy depths. We have been told the ship is still down there but it must be a very deep river for that to be so. My researcher is finding out as I type. She is still there in 35 metres of water. The bow and her oil have been removed but not the cargo. Cheers Rob.
The days are long now and we knew that we would still have at least an hour of light after our eta around seven pm. We chose The Prince of Wales Marina in this lagoon on the advice of our friends and as we approached noted how industrial the area is. Turning into the little lagoon past the zinc factory the ill-fated ship was heading for, we saw the Tasmanian Catamaran Factory and various other industrial units but also the neatly grassed banks, residential area of different coloured roofs and Mount Wellington rising dark and proud to 1270 metres (4180 feet) behind everything. I have it on very good authority that a mountain rises above 2000 feet (thanks to Jane and John Hoult) so Mt Wellington definitely qualifies!
Zoonie Current Position 42:49.73S 147:18.17E
Swings and Roundabouts in Hobart
It was just eight days before Christmas, would we get anyone on board to help with Zoonie’s repairs, to the fridge, the autopilot, the cooker, the heater, the wave generator and the hot water tank nut that had cracked? Would we get any spare parts this close to the big shut down? We were amazed with what Hobart and our suppliers as far away as Great Britain came up with.
Martin arrived with his gorgeous pure kelpie, Zoe. Martin is a marine electrician who came at first to look at the fridge while I chatted with his dog. He concluded the fridge would benefit from a new thermostat and perhaps even a new control unit. So Rob ordered them and they arrived at the marina two days later and he was able to fit them even before we went north for the celebrations. Rob then asked him if he knew anything about autohelms and over the next hour he used his magic meters to trace the fault to the motor on the old ram which was eating electricity but not using it as it should. A new ram was ordered (£1550) and that was the ‘swing’ that arrived after only two days from the mainland to a local dealership just in time for us to wrap it up and give it to eachother for Christmas because it felt better than just buying it. The most generous present we have ever given eachother by far!
That evening, daytime in UK, Rob called his old friend Teresa at Marlec and chatted first to an engineer who agreed the windcharger control unit misbehaved badly when it started to smoke and melt instead of just turning off in the strong winds. Teresa said she would contact her agent in Brisbane and see if he had one he could send to us all free of charge. That was the ‘roundabout’. Again it arrived before our Christmas exodus and Rob promptly fitted it. See how ‘scary’ the old one became!
Juan arrived from a pretty little town (we discovered later) called Cygnet, just south of Hobart, to fit the Ebespacher air heater we had packaged up and sent to them while we were in Mooloolaba if you remember. He was perplexed because it still wasn’t working right through to actually producing heat. They had spent many hours working on our monster of a heater, the biggest they had ever seen. They bought a new thermostat for it as we knew our old one didn’t work and when we had used the heater it would heat up till our toes curled and we had to turn it off. Not an undesirable characteristic in an English winter!
So all he could do was re-install it and try it. Again it hummed and whirred and checked the surrounding air as it always does, confirmed the fuel quality and supply was right but the familiar little click of the fuel pump just would turn on and start to fuel the heater. Poor Juan, all that way and after all their combined efforts he had to go away disappointed.
But not for long.
The very next morning we just thought we’d give it a final try. Hummm, whirr….click,click and a few seconds later we had heat coming through the three big vents that send it into the three cabins from Zoonie’s right hand side. Whoooo, as soon as was respectable we phoned Nick in their office and told him the news. Well he was as over the moon as the cow and I just wished I could see his and Juan’s faces.
We went on a couple of jaunts in Bron’s daughter’s car that she kindly loaned to us over the period. One was to find plumbing bits so Rob could replace the plastic fitting that holds the pipe onto the hot water tank he had spotted was cracked. A big supplier couldn’t help, even with ideas, which was surprising as they were recommended to us but on the way we had spotted 20th Century Plumbing tucked behind a residential house. There Rob met Mark who had just finished for the day and was most understanding that what a couple of mariners do not want when they are at sea is a boat full with hot water, even though it would make a grand bathtub. So he followed us back to Zoonie, took a look and some measurements and disappeared back to the plumbing supplier that he always uses, the same one that couldn’t help us (?) and returned a few minutes later with the right parts and sorted the job, bless him.
That leaves just young Nial who came to look at the wave generator and found one of the three wires that goes into the control box in our cabin (you know the one Rob made the little grey hat for so our cabin would not be lit up all night like Portland Lighthouse) was not pressed fully home, so he pressed it fully home and we would have to wait until we next took Zoonie out before we could try it. Or would we?
A quick phone call to Greg in Jilliby and he suggested Rob used an allan key in his drill to poke it in to the hole in the centre of the prop on the Watt&sea and turn it that way, where it would normally be turned by the water as we sail along, while I watched the light on the top of the control unit. Would the red flashes start again telling us that something was wrong? No they didn’t, the light just stayed purple as it should if it is producing that invisible gold, free electricity.
With all that work done and numerous blogs written it was time for some fun. Hobart City here we come.
We were drawn, as always to the waterfront at first where the first mate from the yellow and white square rigger Windeward Bound said we might come across them later in the west and then the lady in the Information Office suggested we explore the summit of Mt Wellington on the day as it might be closed under the total fire ban rules the next day. But not before a swift beer in the friendly, old style New Sydney pub, a rare experience we have found in Aussie which prefers the utilitarian, sports/pokemon bars that have as much cosiness as a hospital waiting room.
Apart from numerous other humans taking a look and taking photos of themselves taking a look we were lucky enough to see two long coated wallabies just outside the viewing room windows, busily eating something in the prickly, arid looking bushes. In one photo you can see the marina set just off the Derwent River where Zoonie is moored. Looking westwards away from Hobart you can see the country is mountainous and the whole vast area of south west Tasmania is virtually uninhabited. That is where we will be heading next in Zoonie, to Bathurst Harbour after our first encounter with the mighty Southern Ocean along the south coast.
But first the significant matter of Christmas in George Town to the north and New Year here in Hobart with our friends Ken and Bron.
Apologies for some of the photos in the last blog being on their side, sometimes the system gets the better of me despite my best efforts!
Hobart’s Most Successful School Drop-out ever – David Walsh and his
Museum of Old and New Art – MONA
MONA is his megaphone through which David expresses his thoughts, emotions and humour to enlightening and entertaining, not to say alarming effect (I’m thinking of William Delvoye’s bubbling and pongy four stomach digestive system in the photo, sadly we missed the feeding and poop removal show) for the fortunate visitor.
In the photos of the mother and her little girl infront of the vast sandstone wall there are fine jets of water that travel down from the bar above with the bright lights on it and by a magical feat of engineering they form perfect words that appear to be telling a message, maybe the news or some other significant comment. A mixture of the beautiful and the real and the little girl was entranced, so were we briefly.
In his ever changing exploration of human existence, from the vagina shaped bowls in the Source Restaurant to the wrought iron cement mixer on its articulated low loader outside, from a cocktail called Ocean made with the world’s best vodka and sipped through a caviar straw to the Moo Brew Roulette where a fellow gambler (David made his immodest fortune playing cards) runs a one in eight chance of getting a mouldy old Fosters out of the beer can vending machine or preferably one of his own Moo Brew range, including a quaffable Stout, our creator examines and explores and stretches the boundaries of human existence. Although undiagnosed he believes he has Aspergers syndrome, a giant of a gift in his case from which humanity is taken on a whirlwind mind tour. The journey is by no means uncomfortable if one opens up and absorbs the new information, is prepared to be touched and moved and enjoy the effect on the senses both from the museum and the gastronomic and alcoholic delights.
In building the museum David’s men ground down into the honey/pink velvet Triassic Sandstone that is a feature of Tasmania and it was bliss to wander through the garden and over the tennis court where he loves to play once he has his home back to himself to the entrance and then descend into the cool, gently lit bowels of Hobart away from the searing heat outside and mad, mad, burning world outside. He recommends a two day visit and I agree, especially with the numerous bars and restaurants on site some of which stay open late. This place lit up for the night would be a wonderful place to socialise and explore.
I like to explore a different take on reality and one certainly gets plenty of examples of that here. The British colonies of Australia and Tasmania are by some seen as Britain’s Gulags, just as we learned about in The Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzhenitsyn and as are gradually being revealed in China. I didn’’ know that H.G.Wells gained his inspiration for ‘The War of The Worlds’ from Britain’s decimation of indigenous Tasmanians on their island home.
You can see the Void Bar where we languished on a Georgian Chaise Longue supping Sav and Merlot before embarking on our museum experience; well there is also the Source I have mentioned, plus the Moorilla Wine Bar where one can lounge about on bean bags squashing the grass and getting slowly softened by his own wines watching ‘Chickens having sex in the shrubbery’ unquote from the Beginner’s Guide, plus the Faro Bar and Restaurant where art meets share plates and you have a medium chance of sighting God because apparently he likes the vegetarian dishes.
The modest café is right next to the shop and has fab views of the Derwent but when we were there it seemed to be the snooze area with some of the numerous chairs filled with unconscious visitors sobering up after their cultural and gastronomic overdose before the drive home and hoping their kids would be reasonably good while they slept. There is also a Heavy Metal Kitchen or BBQ which is so vast it is an open room of flame and quite frightening for the faint-hearted. There Vince Trim the chef is ‘resolutely dedicated to the art of burning stuff just right’.
There is also the cellar door which a worth a visit in itself because God is there craning his neck to look at the 26 foot painting some ‘clever clogs put on the damn ceiling’ and because of the estate grown small batch wines, salty nibbles to keep you drinking and lots of natural light so you can read the labels through your blurred vision. ‘True/false. If you drink a glass of the dregs from the spittoon you get 2% discount.’ It doesn’t really matter by the time you’ve tried everything and made some ‘foolish decisions with your savings’, does it.
I thought of Jane in Jilliby when I saw the two chameleons embroidery, she would be quite capable of creating something similar and I thought the presence of the beautifully intricate byzantine pottery showed the healthy eclecticism of David’s taste that spans human experience through time. In fact his dedication and the uniqueness of his ever changing collection deserves its own self-appointed school name, ‘Monanism’ because even though he is not the creator of the works, he is ensuring they are seen by millions from all over the globe and these are works and ideas that are new and some futuristic like the map of AI that I included just for you and the globular glass room designed for relaxing!
Remember Sidney Nolan from Adelaide Art Gallery and his take on Eliza Fraser of ‘Fraser’ Island? Well he is here too, with his vast creation, the largest modernist sculpture in Aussie comprising 1620 mini-windows of faces, flowers and birds which, if you half close your eyes and view from a distance reveals a snake/serpent side-winding through its entirety just as an element of the sinful meanders through all of us. It is open to interpretation of course, some believe the Rainbow Serpent is Creation. Cool. David lives with his artist partner, Kirsha Kaechele in the flat above this exhibit and can view it through windows in the floor.
The more I read the info we have on unconventional and avant-garde MONA the more I whimsically plan future visits that we will not have time to enjoy unfortunately.
If you’d like to learn more about David Walsh you’ll enjoy Richard Flanagan’s article in the February 2013 edition of The Monthly, entitled ‘At Home with David Walsh: The Gambler. I found it through Google and the website is www.themonthly.com.au The information on his gambling career in the article is truly fascinating. Mona costs $12 million a year to run and makes only $4 million, but then as a professional gambler that doesn’t matter too much to him, his creation is there for a host of other reasons including an outlet for his thoughts, a magnificent home, an alternative activity to occupy his fertile mind, an experimental civic amenity etc etc.
North past Bristleback Mountains to George Town
Just a month before our arrival the fields were still green here in Tasmania but as we drove northwards up the Midland Highway from Hobart, as you can see from the photos the only relief from the dry grass was where the monster irrigators had rolled slowly around the acres of border farmland. What was there for the animals to eat? How were the sheep surviving? The trees on the hillsides looked sparse, not exactly dense bushland, the effect as they reached the summits was to look like the bristles of a brush.
The occasional town like Ross provided a distraction with neat bungalows in their own patch, some with pretty fret work breaking up the severity of right-angled corners more typical of New Zealand. In Launceston we sat in the shade of street trees outside the Samuel Pepys Restaurant and chatted about the many Devonians and Cornish folk who came this way all those years ago and made Tasmania their home, renaming the topography to mirror their homeland, at the expense of the indigenous people and their culture of course.
Before crossing the Tamar we asked Mrs Google to find an old friend of Rob’s from Oakham, Tim Spires who settled out here with his wife Carol a few years ago. Mrs G took us onto a private road, up through the bush off tarmac, off smooth road, off rough track and to a dead end. So we took Mrs G back down to the main road, turned left and drove for a while, then found their home ourselves perched high above the lovely river Tamar with a deep shady veranda and set amidst flowering bushes and plants.
Carol’s three horses graze their spread of land which also gives them distance from the neighbours. As we sipped refreshing drinks and chatted two of the horses came for some TLC from Tim and their two dogs were never far away, enjoying the company of us strangers and us of them. Who would want to return to England from this paradise? Today (4th January 2020) Tim posted a video on Facebook showing the smoke haze over the Tamar River Valley, paradise suffers natural disasters too doesn’t it and you may have seen it.
5th January 2020
Remember my photos of Eden where we visited the Killer Whale Museum twenty eight days ago? Well most of the residents have run to the wharf as the fires close in on their township and they have now been ordered to leave under the state of emergency and vessels are being moved in to enable them to escape. You may have seen on the BBC News residents and holidaymakers driving their vehicles into the shallows of a lake to protect them and standing in the water looking back at the blazing shore and country beyond. Once the fire has moved through they can return to the charred and smouldering shore. The narrators of the video were referring to the fire as ‘she’, the fireships of the bush.
A helicopter was flying water to the hills near us today but at the moment the skies are blue and the mountains clearly visible. Yesterday we awoke to that now familiar smell of bush smoke and as the morning progressed Mt Wellington and its neighbours disappeared in smoke and we kept Zoonie closed up for the sake of our lungs. So either the fires are out or, more likely, the smoke is being blown the other way.
Ken and Bron are approaching Hobart after spending the night weathering 30 knot winds tied to the quay the other side of the Denison Canal. We had winds here in the shelter of the marina up to 38 knots.
Tomorrow Nial, our electrician is coming back on board to renew a very crunchy (corroded) crucial engine cable which must have been overlooked at the post ‘sinking’ repairs. It’s important to keep ahead of potential gear failures as far as we can as you can imagine.
The Sunday before Christmas in north Tasmania
Part 1
Market Day
An elderly gentleman was giving pleasure to the young generation by leading his tiny pony around the market with children sitting in the carriage, one holding the ‘reins’ while the other clung on for dear life in this unfamiliar transport mode. People chatted and laughed together behind their adjacent stalls selling all sorts of lovingly produced and presented items, many ideal for Christmas presents like the homemade jams and preserves, gleaming ornaments, cottage made children’s clothes and an impressive display of garden plants. All this despite, and no doubt partly because of, the unfolding devastation of the fires. The show of life must go on of course.
One small trailer contained goats and another, owned by the same ruddy faced farmer, chickens and I wondered about their futures, they could go either way, pet or pot.
These outdoor farmer/craft markets really are uplifting. If they continue with enough support from the punters then at least one aspect of rural life is safe.
We drove out of town on a rural road past fields of white poppies destined for the legal opium trade and started climbing a hill that took a turn, “Ah look, an echidna,” said Bron as it waddled towards the road from her side. Ken pulled over and we got out for a look. On seeing us humans the little chap made its way across the road and we followed at an unthreatening distance. Once on the other side it found a hollow and wiggled itself into it so for a few moments all we could see was its lovely brown hairy coat with those amazing spines sticking out. Along with platypus, echidnas are monotremes, mammals that lay eggs, but the name comes from their having a singular urogenital hole, mono=one and treme=hole.
We waited to see if this shy and endearing creature would unfold far enough for us to see its head and the photo you see is the result. There are few left in the wild, same old sad story, so we were indeed fortunate.
Down by the riverside we stopped at Ken’s old camping and swimming spot from his childhood. He reminisced on some of the stories of those happy days when wildlife was bountiful. A pretty little blue headed wren with its less colourful mate flitted around the grasses on the banks. This was a little haven of quintessential Australia.
The Sunday before Christmas
Part 2
Launceston – A Gorgeous Place
No doubt the people of Cornwall’s namesake town frequently appreciate this spectacular recreational spot on the door step of their home. Tourists certainly flock there for a swim in either the warm pool or the big natural lake, enjoy a tasty meal, as we did in the restaurant and a good walk if they’re in the mood, taking photos of eachother and themselves on route for the folks back home. We stepped aside on our walk to allow the regular joggers to puff through. As we walked alongside the ravine towards the town Bron pointed out where they had brought their dinghy to for a look while Nichola was anchored just a few metres further downstream. The rocks are so big and smooth from the water flow there was nowhere to tie the painter to so they couldn’t get out for a closer look. Still, our day made up for it.
The magnificent vertical dolerite stacks we see dominating the landscape all over Tasmania are the product of molten lava pouring into porous sandstone rock and hardening rather as lightning forks into sand and turns the silicates in the sand into weird and wonderful glass formations. Water then collects in the thin grooves between the rocks and expands when it freezes causing the rock to break up and tumble downwards into piles of boulders. All over millions of years of course. Sometimes these rock falls look like rivers of rock pouring down hillsides creating their own pathways and taking trees with them.
Our perfect day was rounded off playing ‘Up and Down the river’ with Ken’s 87 year old mom, Elve. She loves playing cards and she is very quick and clever with it. An amazing lady who can be sitting in her recliner in the living room, hearing and following what we were saying in the kitchen and then join in the conversation. With Bron’s help she is mastering the art of using social media on her Iphone and tablet. She whizzes around on her motorized scooter and is out busy doing things around George Town almost more than she is in. She was planning an extensive tour of eastern Australia visiting friends and family after Christmas.
Ringing Bells and A Thousand Roaring Elephants
On Christmas Eve at Low Head Lighthouse and a Welcome Wine-tasting
Between 1986 and 1996 Emily and I lived in Lymington, Hampshire on a ‘farmer’s field estate’ out to the west of the town. When there was a change in temperature caused by a new weather system or the prevailing SW winds were blowing up the channel a few miles away they sometimes brought fog with them. I remember lying in bed at night listening to the powerful moan of the Needles Lighthouse fog horn with its sexy little ‘grumph’ as the final note guiding mariners safely past the deadly Shingles Bank and up the Needles Channel into the Solent, the stretch of water between the Hampshire south coast and the Isle of Wight. So I remember what they sound like. The Needles fog horn is now an electric horn.
To be more technical it was a diaphone type fog horn, so you can imagine how delighted this curious mariner was to find exactly the same type of fog horn in operational order here at Low Head lighthouse on the north coast of Tasmania and locally described as the ‘Roar of a Thousand Elephants’.
I will let you read and enjoy the exact details if they interest you.
My attention had already been drawn to the lighthouse (built in 1888) from a distance as we approached and I thought it looked familiar, similar to Portland Lighthouse, the magnificent high tower at the end of Portland Bill in Dorset that warns mariners of the Race where an ebbing spring tide can run at more than 6 knots over the submarine ledge and safe passage can be made within touching distance of the rock or five miles off, but not in between. Have a look at the photos; while Portland is a taller structure the similarities of coloured red band, shape, construct, dome, circular walkway are all the same. Stretch Low Head another few metres upward and you’d elongate the curve of the walls. What is more, in Reeds Almanac 2015 Portland Lighthouse is still a diaphone, (hope they kept copies of the manual) and the flash interval of Portland lighthouse is Fl(4) every 20 seconds and Low Head Fl(3) every 30 seconds.
What I want to know now is was Portland a Stevenson design and did the designer of Low Head copy Portland directly or by the shared designer of both? Here in Bathurst Harbour, the wilderness of south-west Tasmania, as we shelter from 50 knots of wind and a 7 metre sea-state outside, we have no means to ask Mr Google. But I will!
The other photos tell the personal and humorous tales of life around Low Head over the years, including the little blue penguin looking out at us from its burrows beneath the bushes around the lighthouse, and such a fascinating and reminiscent morning could only be balanced by an equally indulgent afternoon of sipping wine at the Pipers Brook Vineyard followed by a fresh fruit ice cream at Bridport with its lovely views over Anderson Bay and Waterhouse Beach.
With such common re-use of Dorset and Devon place names here it is even more likely some-one, or persons from the homeland, migrated here and had a say in the construction of the Lighthouse and its sound signal, don’t you think?
Just out of interest the presently in commission Portland Bill Lighthouse was built in 1906, designed by Sir Thomas Matthews while Low Head was built in 1888, eighteen years before and designed by Robert Huckson, so maybe there are links between the two designs from previous ideas and between the two designers.
The exhibits inside Australia’s oldest Signals Station are part of the fine museum now housed in the building, and the taller lighthouse is Portland Bill. The red belt in the white paintwork on both lighthouses is to improve visibility of the structure from the sea and we came across the tall but all white Cape Sorell Lighthouse outside Macquarie Harbour that we could have done with being visible after its light turned off around six in the morning yesterday as without its revealing light it disappeared into the thick smoke haze and was only visible again when we were well in to the harbour mouth approaching Hell’s Gate. More about that later.