Hobart

Several people over the last few days have told us about a market in Salamanca Place, Hobart, that only happens on a Saturday. And today was Saturday, so we had to go. Fortunately for us, there was free bike parking outside the Tourist info place, so we nipped in to find out what would be good to see while in Hobart, and also get directions to the market. 

Turns out it was just down the road, ‘turn left at the harbour and follow the people’. And he (Alan in the info place) was spot on.

The waterfront is still very much used, but like other places, coexists with some historical bits which have been preserved. For example, the Telegraph Hotel was established in 1857 to celebrate the telegraph coming to town. 

This was a huge thing, the iPad, macbook and iPhone 5 of its day, all rolled into one. It meant that Tasmania  had immediate contact with the outside world and that communication with the rest of Australia and the world was realistic, and didn’t take weeks. Telegraph operations happened just a few doors down, and by 1900, this hotel had become the waterside worker’s local, and so was the hub of the place.

Across the harbour on a patch of grass was a pipe band, piping Christmas carols in their check skirts.

They’d added to the festive spirit by tarting up their stuff - tinsels and baubles. 

And some bikers across the way, one of whom was having a bit of mechanical trouble, got a helping hand from a passing Santa. Don’t know if he managed any magic but the bloke with his bike in pieces started packing stuff away after chatting to the man with the beard.

The market was good; part craft, part artisan food and part just interesting, we wandered through it for a good hour or so, looking, chatting to people and looking again. It helped that by now the sun was out and it was warm.

After the market, we went into the town proper to do some mundane jobs. Little things like sorting out some phone issues, buying some painkillers, looking for a Canon lens and finding coffee. But being a little place, everything we needed was right there on top of us so we didn’t have to go far. But some of the shop assistants were a bit odd.

Hobart was settled about two hundred years ago and whaling was a big thing, blubber being boiled and oil decanted in pots called try pots. 

Although Hobart is still very small by other big town standards, it has spread out along the very convoluted coastline, round the many inlets and coves that attracted the early settlers. But that makes it hard to fathom, unless of course you get up high. And fortunately there is high ground, conveniently placed just behind the city in the form of Mount Wellington. 

The summit is 1270 metres above sea level and until 1937, you could only drive part way up it, the remaining half being a foot scrabble for the well prepared and hardy. George Bass    (as in Bass Straight) was the first European to climb it, and Charles Darwin did it on his second attempt, HMS Beagle having parked in the bay. 

His first attempt was thwarted by bad weather, and the second marred by a local guide whom he thought ‘ a stupid fellow’ because he’d led them to a dense wooded part of the island rather than to a place where they could see from the top.

Maybe he should have got himself a postie bike because ours made light work of it, pulling up the winding narrow road with ease, making very light work of the hairpins and short steep drags. 

The road winds up for over 9 kms  to the summit before coming to a dead end. There was a bit of low cloud over Hobart, hanging in the shelter created by the surrounding rocks. Riding up alongside it was similar to taking off in an aeroplane, that steady rise up alongside things you don’t normally get to see close up, with buildings and roads dropping away as you climb, only much slower; were on postie bikes after all.

The summit is very exposed but affords just the views we were looking for, all of Hobart laid out in the bays below like a topographical map with moving parts. Excellent.

The two TV masts cause a bit of a problem though and interfere with various electrical items - like vehicle door locks, video cameras and key remotes. 

One of the masts is now encased in fibreglass to protect it from building ice and snow. Until they did that, telecommunications were regularly interrupted by bad weather, but because the summit is so exposed, this happened all year round and not just in the winter.

There is nothing much up there; the masts, an observation shelter which does give some protection from the elements, and an old stone shelter which provided a place out of the wind for the men who built the road. The previous one was built of wood but copped it in a bushfire some years ago.

Other than that, its just a place people go to look over the city.