{"id":6055,"date":"2013-02-24T16:06:05","date_gmt":"2013-02-24T09:06:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/whatsdavedoing.com\/?p=6055"},"modified":"2020-11-23T22:56:52","modified_gmt":"2020-11-23T22:56:52","slug":"hobart-great-little-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/whatsdavedoing.com\/hobart-great-little-city\/","title":{"rendered":"Hobart, you’re a great little city"},"content":{"rendered":"
I’ve got a soft spot for Tasmania.<\/p>\n
Maybe it’s because the scenery and weather remind me a lot of New Zealand – rolling hills, rain forests and an unpredictable climate.<\/p>\n
Maybe it’s because, like New Zealanders, people from the Apple Isle get a lot of grief from the rest of Australia.\u00a0 Whether it’s supposed relationships with their cousins (Tasmanians) or sheep (Kiwis), those sophisticated<\/em> folk on the mainland are never short of something to say about their island neighbours.<\/p>\n Maybe it’s just because I love empty roads and deserted beaches, and Tasmania has those in abundance.<\/p>\n Whatever the reason, I had a wonderful time in Australia’s smallest state a few years ago and was very excited to head back.<\/p>\n And then I almost didn’t.<\/p>\n Bushfires had been blazing fiercely throughout much of eastern Australia for several days, and Tasmania hadn’t been spared.\u00a0 Several parts of the island were still cut off as we headed for the airport, and we’d considered postponing or cancelling our trip right up until the last minute.<\/p>\n In the end, though, we didn’t.\u00a0 That turned out to be the right choice – although there was plenty of smoke from the air and blackened trees beside the roads, the fires ultimately didn’t cause us any real problems.\u00a0 A few days earlier, of course, it would have been a very different story.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The nice folk at Vroom Vroom Vroom<\/a> had offered us a discount on our car hire for the week, but we hadn’t expected to get an upgrade as well – our Renault sedan was far fancier than I’m used to.\u00a0 Leather seats, inbuilt GPS with sexy robot voice, and controls in interesting places. Still, there’s nothing wrong with turning on the windscreen wipers when wanting to go round a corner, or changing radio station when trying to enable cruise control … right?<\/p>\n We didn’t have all that long in Hobart, and I was determined to make the most of it.\u00a0 It’s a small city, and many of the highlights are clustered near the waterfront.\u00a0 Salamanca Place, with its bars and restaurants inside old sandstone warehouses and a famous Saturday market that I’ve never yet managed to see.\u00a0 The colourful docks, with cruise ships and expensive yachts vying for space alongside rusty fishing boats.\u00a0 Even the central business district is full of restored historic buildings – a far cry from the generic glass shopfronts of most other Australian capitals.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n We stayed in one such building, the rather charming Tassie Backpackers in the middle of the city.\u00a0 On top of the refurbished Brunswick Hotel, it had friendly staff, clean private rooms with ensuites and free (albeit intermittent) wifi – a rarity in this part of the world.\u00a0 The common room and kitchen area were in a cool outdoor space downstairs – probably a little too cool in winter, but great in summer.<\/p>\n The two things that I had really come to see, however, both lay out of town.\u00a0 Mount Wellington dominates the Hobart skyline, the peak around a 20km drive from the central city.\u00a0 The mountain’s infamous bad weather had closed in when I was last there, and given the overcast skies I wasn’t certain things would be much better this time around.\u00a0 Still, despite occasional spits of rain on the winding drive to the top, the view turned out to be a vast improvement – even as the temperature hovered around a balmy three degrees Celsius.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n If Mount Wellington is an impressive natural feature on one side of the city, MONA<\/a> is an equally impressive man-made feature on the other.\u00a0 Open now for barely two years, the Museum of Old and New Art has created quite a stir in that time.\u00a0 Built largely into the ground on a winery east of Hobart, the museum has quickly become Tasmania’s largest tourist attraction.\u00a0 My friend Christine had raved about the place<\/a> a few months after it opened, and after only a couple of minutes inside, it was easy to see why.<\/p>\n Descending from the brightly-lit atrium into the gloom of the museum proper, the subversive nature of the design quickly took over.\u00a0 This is not a museum for the prurient – nudity and sexuality is celebrated, and let’s just say that the faint smell of human digestion in the air was not due entirely to my fellow patrons.\u00a0 Consumer greed was a common theme of several exhibits, and the artists don’t hold back.<\/p>\n