Hobart, Tasmania

Tasman Bridge to Hobart

G'day!



I flew to Hobart, Tasmania on Sunday, 16 January.  Luckily, I got a last minute wwoofing job and needed to take a Monday afternoon bus.  So I started exploring Hobart immediately.  Hobart is the capital city of the island state of Tasmania.  It is a good sized city with a small but vibrant CBD  central business district.  Even on Sunday afternoon, a lot of people were wandering around.  Many of the stores were closed but eateries on the waterfront were doing brisk business.

I've noticed that Australia has a lot of festivals which often begin with a day of representive entertainment that is free to the public.  There's a Modern Arts Festival this week in Hobart and I wandered in to listen to an experimental music trio that consisted of modified instruments of drums, guitar, and keyboard.  The drummer used big wok-lid shaped metal drumsticks for the first song.  None of their pieces were titled; I can't believe that this "music" was rehearsed.  There was an audience of roughly 100 people; it was free at 8 pm on a lovely Sunday evening on the Hobart waterfront.   I listened for about 25 minutes, then I couldn't take any more of the noise.  A few people at Tassie's Hostel had similar impressions.

On Monday, I walked through a memorial grove for World War I soldiers on my way to the Royal Hobart Botanical Gardens.  The highlights of the Hobart gardens were the Japanese Gardens and the Fern House.

Fern House at Royal Botanical

Then I got on a bus to my new wwoofing job.  I'm at Harris Creek Blueberry Farm, a commercial business that sells to grocery stores locally and in Melbourne.  Some of the berries are ripe now and have to be picked.  So I am being paid $3/kilo for picking after wwoofing hours.  We had to watch a video on how to tell if a blueberry is ripe. We picked for about 3 hours this morning and I picked about 5.5 kilos.  I'm getting the hang of it.  This afternoon, I picked 10 kilos in 4 hours.  I really enjoy picking berries.  So far.  We'll see how long I last. Blueberry season just started and only lasts a couple of months.

There's no wifi here, I have fellow wwoofers to get to know, and after working all day, I'm tired.  So I won't be posting very often while I'm here.  But I will tell you more about this job next time.      Oh, I found out that the computer service they have here  charges by upload and download amounts so I won't be posting pix till I have better internet services.  See ya!

Cheers!

Cyn