Tasmania: Day in Hobart Among Devils and Art
After eight days of travelling around Tasmania, we finished the loop back in Hobart. Here we had almost the entire day for some extra roaming before getting to the airport to catch a plane back home.
During our travel, we had seen quite a lot of wildlife but we hadn’t been lucky enough to spot a local iconic symbol - the Tasmanian devil. As we could not leave without seeing at least one, our first thing to do was a visit of Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary.
People at Bonorong focus on rescue wildlife program and they work towards getting their animals back to the wild. A lot of animals got there after a collision with a car. The number of animals killed on the roads is huge what we actually could witness ourselves during our travel. We met heaps of carcasses along the roadsides and a few times we luckily managed to stop just before a collision with an animal.
As we arrived early, there were only a few people around. At the entrance, we both got a small bag of granular kangaroo food and then carried on to the park. The wombats already ranked among our favourite animals but here they became even more adorable. One of them didn’t stop following its carer while the man was sweeping its pan. Three younger ones were munching their fresh breakfast. But when we saw two six-month-old hiding behind a carer’s legs and demanding for a rub - it was a peak of cuteness. It was hard to imagine that once the wombats turn about two years they become quite aggressive.
Meanwhile, a bit further, another carer was giving a talk to a group of Asians about tasmanian devils. When we took our eyes off wombats and came closer to the group, two Tasmanian devils had been already poking their noses out of the den. After a while, they came out completely. In Bonorong, they are running a breeding program for those endangered animals.
That morning we spent a bit of time among kangaroos which skipped around a large open area and from time to time they ate dry kangaroo food from visitors’ hands. The kangaroos were quite friendly and as we offered them the feed, they grabbed our hand in their paws and slowly crunched it. The kangaroo I fed was obviously hungry because when it finished the first handful of granules, it demanded more by pushing its muzzle to my pockets.
After we left Bonorong Sanctuary, our next stop was at Mt Wellington where a lookout at the summit provided an awesome view of the city below and coastal area. The mountain was more than 1200m high and despite a nice autumn day, it was pretty cold on the top. So, instead of an initially planned walk, we just had a look from various platforms around the summit but then went back to the heated car. Chickens!
We both like botanical gardens. Those quiet places with a number of winding paths, glasshouses with humid air and generally because of their melancholic and kind of old-fashioned atmosphere. Therefore, whenever we visit a new town and there is enough time, we go at least for a short stroll.
For this time, my winner section was an Oak Collection. The leaves on trees had already started to change their colors and they slowly passed from yellow into shades of orange and red. A few of them had fallen off and covered the grass. It was one of those nice days when you can smell autumn all around. The real autumn which we don’t have here in Wellington.
However, even in the autumn sun we started to feel a bit cold after a while but still had a couple of hours. So, we decided to be cultural once in a while and visited one of MUST DO’s in Hobart - MONA. The famous Tasmanian Museum of Old and New Art.
The collection included everything from an ancient mummy to obese swollen Ferrari. Some stuff was quite beyond our comprehension but a few pieces of installations were pretty cool. For instance, words formed from falling drops of water, a tunnel with special acoustics installation or words which could be read only with peripheral vision. Interesting was even building itself. The three-floor subterrane concrete colossus built into the side of a cliff with no windows was like a dark mysterious labyrinth.
Nevertheless, the creepiest thing about this place is that most museums offer a lifetime membership but MONA goes beyond that. They offer Eternity Membership – a membership that lasts even after your death. So, if you are really into art, you can enjoy it truly forever.
