It’s changed a little in 170 years

If all that time on the cruise ships taught me anything it’s that one day is not time enough to really get to know a place. It did however teach me to be able to get a feel for a place and I tried to put that to work today as I walked around Hobart.

The problem is that the place didn’t really do much for me. I will stand by my comment of yesterday that it has the feel of a large country town that is falling on hard times. Don’t get me wrong, it is certainly a city, a state capital in fact, it just feels like it is actually only a suburb of a much larger place.

I wanted to just walk around today and for the first time in a week the grey ghost didn’t get used. I could almost hear the sigh of relief from the poor overused engine.

I spent the morning poking through both the Maritime Museum and the Museum museum. The Maritime one was interesting if a little static in it’s displays and probably just scraped in as earning it’s $7 entry fee in value. 

The Museum museum on the other hand was a free admission and took a bit longer to wander through. It was a bit of a mixed bag in terms of displays, going from minerals in cases that barely got a look from the kids racing through, to an impressive display on Antarctica and Tasmania’s relationship to it. That was pretty interesting but the one real highlight. I had been hoping for much more on the colonial and convict past of the town but that seemed to be seriously lacking. I couldn’t help wondering why.

From there I walked aimlessly up and down the city streets.The problem I have in doing that as a way to get a feel for a place is the sense of familiarity. I’m so used to foreign places where every shop is new and even the signposts and rubbish bins have an exotic appeal that streets of business I can find within walking walking distance of my own home just fail to hold my interest.

I did find Elizabeth street though, a place named prominently in letters my GGGGGrandfather sent back to England after landing here in 1833. The family spent their first few weeks living on that street and I sat there for a while, in the middle of a pedestrian mall, and tried to imagine how it must have been all those years ago.

After a lunch of an unimpressive chicken wrap and even less impressive coffee I walked on and eventually found myself in Sandy Bay. I sat and watched the dogs playing in a park that was the place where Errol Flynn lived. I even walked on the little piece of sand where he learnt to swim, a skill that probably came in extremely handy doing all those pirate movies.

I walked back into town around Battery point and followed a trail of signs giving historical information. That I found interesting although I got funny looks from a few people as I stood contemplating overgrown plots of land or rusting steam boilers almost completely buried beside storm drains.

It was also interesting to see the street side of some of the houses on the Point. From Sandy Beach they had looked like old, rundown buildings perched on the cliff but from the road it was obvious that a lot of money had been spent on most of them and I can only imagine what the insides would be like, especially with the magnificent view they have over the harbour.

Back past Salamanca Square, a refurbished area on the waterfront that may do okay in the height of tourist season but seemed to be struggling a bit at the moment, and I ended my day by having fish and chips from a small takeaway that is actually moored at the side of the wharf.

I’m heading back to country Tasmania tomorrow and leaving the big smoke of Hobart behind.