Hobart Harbour & More

Following on from my post of this morning, by the time I sat down for lunch at the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens, my Fitbit told me I’d already walked 15,183 steps and climbed the equivalent of exactly 100 flights of stairs. And I still faced a half-hour or so walk back to the centre of town.

I decided that I was ready for a sitting activity after that. When I was walking around the Hobart harbour area this morning, I saw a sign for a one-hour harbour cruise.

Perfect.

When I got to the ticket booth, I found that I missed one cruise by ten minutes. The next one boarded in 45 minutes. Ah-ha! False advertising! It’s a 55-minute cruise, not an hour. I let their mendacity slide and bought a ticket.

But that left me with some time on my hands.

Mawson’s Huts Replica Museum

On the way to the cruise ticket office and departure point, I passed two small attached huts that appeared to be constructed relatively recently. A large sign affixed to the huts said “Mawson’s Huts Replica Museum.”

I knew from my guidebook and a sign I read at the site that they were replicas of huts that Sir Douglas Mawson’s Australian Antarctica Expedition team built on the frigid continent during their 1911 to 1914 expedition there.

Mawson left on his expedition from Hobart harbour, about 200 metres from where the replica huts now stand.

The replica huts are close to the Hobart harbour and only about a five-minute walk from where I had to catch the cruise. So I decided to spend my time checking it out.

To be honest, because the huts are rather small and replicas rather than the actual huts recovered and hauled back to Hobart, the first time walked by I assumed entry was either free or less than five Australian dollars. It’s not. It’s $15 for normal adults or $12 for people such as myself suffering from advanced agedness.

What the heck? Because the huts are so small, and if it’s a normal museum it likely has a gift shop inside, I didn’t think it could possibly contain sufficient exhibits to make it worth the price unless it’s a TARDIS.

And if it is a TARDIS I wouldn’t have enough time to make my way through it and get back in time for the cruise. Then again, if it is a TARDIS I would have gladly forgone the cruise to see that. I hope I didn’t make a mistake by deciding not to go in.

Instead of going into the Mawson’s Huts Replica Museum, I found a nearby bench facing the harbour and sat and watched the water until it was time for the cruise.

Hobart Harbour Cruise

The cruise travelled a wide circle of the harbour, including going under Hobart’s long Tasman Bridge and going a little farther before turning around to complete the circle and return to the starting dock.

A live (as opposed to recorded) commentary ran throughout the cruise. I think the captain who piloted the boat provided that commentary.

As always, I remember almost nothing of what he said. But this time I’m not entirely blaming my memory for that.

The commentator’s speaking style was very distracting.

The speaker elongated at least one syllable in most sentences. Sometimes two or more. And sometimes two or more syllables in a single word.

“It involved very difficult constructionnnnnn.” … “but alsoooo the Frennnch.”

I think that before he started working on harbour cruises he might have been a schmaltzy sports announcer. “And the faaaabulous Fanzeeeeepanz slides into home to scoooore a hoooome runnnnn.”

I found it so distracting that I spent much more time listening to his cadence than the words he said.

I did remember one thing. He said it near the start of the cruise, before I became too preoccupied with his intonation, I also remembered it because when he said it I realized I had to amend something I said in this morning’s entry.

In that post, I said that, apart from the Antarctic vessel, I didn’t see any ships in the harbour that looked like they made any lengthy ocean voyages. But the commentator said that this year they had a record number of large cruise ships docking in the Hobart harbour, 84. Be that as it may, I didn’t see any today. Maybe they’re quarantined because one plague or another swept through them.

But never mind the distracting commentary. I saw lovely hills and nice views of the harbour and structures along the coast. There were probably some interesting stories and information provided on the cruise, but your guess is as good as mine.

To be honest, I don’t care. My primary purpose was to get off my feet. A cruise in the harbour was an enjoyable way to do that.

Maritime Museum Tasmania

After the Hobart harbour cruise, I visited the nearby Maritime Museum Tasmania. Don’t ask me why they name it that rather than “Tasmanian Maritime Museum” or “Maritime Museum of Tasmania.” But I checked. That’s what it currently says on their website. Maybe if someone from the museum sees me questioning their grammar they’ll change it before you check out their website. But probably not. (Probably not on both the “seeing this” and the “changing the name” parts, but particularly the “seeing this” thing.)

The museum is small. Its displays consist of ship models, some texts about ships and ship disasters, various artifacts from ships, at least a couple of actual dinghies, a recreation of the commanding officer’s quarters on the HMAS Derwent, a bark canoe built not that many years back by some Aboriginals that duplicates old Aboriginal canoes, and a short black and white video about old-time whaling.

The museum pays particular attention to the sinking of the MV Blythe Star in October, 1973. There were ten men on board. All were presumed drowned. But 11 days after the sinking seven were found alive, having spent that time on a lifeboat. Only three died from that incident. Searches for the wreckage went on for decades, but it was found only in April of this year, 2023.

When I said old-time whaling above, I meant it. The scratchy video (presumably copied from film) depicted men setting out from the mother ship in a rowboat with a few rows of oars. They reach the whale and harpoon it several times, but, before dying, the whale manages to flip the rowboat, sending its crew into the water. The whale does eventually die and they get it back to the mother ship, where they process it.

It’s an interesting little museum.

More Wandering

After relaxing on the harbour cruise, shuffling through the museum, and sitting through the video there, my legs were rested enough to do a little more wandering. I don’t have much to report that would expand greatly on what I said this morning.

Not much, but not nothing. I found a pedestrianized shopping street. The Elizabeth Street Mall is just one block, but it’s a long block with lots of trees and benches and paved with patterned paving stones. At one end of the block, there’s a wavy glass canopy that would provide some shelter from the rain when that happens.

I don’t think it was always pedestrianized. Beyond both ends of the block, the street continues as a street for cars.

So many cities manage to pedestrianize a shopping street, without worrying about it bringing the city to a halt, and without it in fact bringing the city to a halt. Some pedestrianize many streets and much more than a block. Why can’t my hometown, Toronto, do that? Sometimes we’ll close a shopping street for a brief festival, or weekends in the summer. And if memory serves, many years ago we closed down a number of blocks of Toronto’s main street, Yonge St., during a summer or two. Not anymore. And we don’t create any permanently pedestrianized shopping streets. This means we can’t justify making major changes to the streetscape because we’d only have to undo them later. Harumph.

*End of rant.*

Running off of and perpendicular to the Elizabeth Street mall, at the sheltered end of it, is an indoor shopping mall. It’s newer and much less charming (in fact, not charming at all) than the Brisbane Arcade and the Adelaide Arcade. As such, it deserves no more mention in a travel journal as esteemed as this one. So, that’s all I’ll say about it.

And that’s all I’ll say about today. See you tomorrow.