D 20 Hobart to Triabunna

Another drizzly morning in Hobart.  It reminds me a bit of the Pacific Northwest. We decided to walk to the Botanical Gardens to stretch our legs and work off breakfast (about a twenty minute walk).  The Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens, established in 1818, is Australia’s 2^nd oldest botanical Gardens after Sydney’s.  The garden covers 14 hectares (whatever a hectare is- actually, I just looked it up so you wouldn’t have to- about 34 acres) and has native Tasmanian sections, subantarctic plants, a Japanese garden, a beautiful lily pond, and an orchid greenhouse.  Some of the plants were very strange but beautiful. The precipitation began to change from drizzle to frank rain as we got back to the hotel to pack up to leave. With all of the shopping from the Salamanca Market, we noted the car bulging a little as we closed the rear hatch.  Onward to Triabunna.

The highway leaving Hobart rapidly petered out to a two-lane country road.  We decided to make a small detour to visit the Richmond Gaol about 40 minutes north of Hobart.  The gaol (jail) was built up between 1825-1840 and was used to house both male and female convicts (in separate quarters).  One of the more interesting prisoners was Isaac (“Ikey”) Solomon, a Jewish transportee from England. Ikey was an English criminal who became a successful fence for stolen property.  He is thought to be the inspiration for Dickens’s Fagin from Oliver Twist.   He was sentenced in England and sent to Tasmania (then called Van Deimens Land) to the Richmond Gaol in 1832.  The jail had several solitary confinement cells (in which we locked Rhonda) for both men and women, and a “flogging yard” , complete with flogging post (tried unsuccessfully to get Rhonda to do another reenactment).

Richmond has two other major attractions, the Richmond Bakery and the Convict Bridge.  Richmond Bakery had a huge array of pastries, both sweet and savory, and Rhonda was dying for a Lamington, a white cake dipped in chocolate and covered with coconut. We decided to have our “morning tea” here. (morning tea is the calorie equivalent to a 30 mile bike ride).  The convict bridge is the oldest functioning bridge in Tasmania and was built by convicts in 1832 (Ikey was probably one of the bricklayers).

We pushed on through the rain to Triabunna, a tiny town that is the jumping off point for travel to Maria Island National Park.  Milt had booked a B&B here based primarily on location, and as we drove into the town, we were all having major reservations about the reservations.  We got to the end of the road, and our concerns vanished.  Milt definitely found a diamond in the rough.  The B&B was run by a couple originally from Great Britain who were expats in Hong Kong for 15 years.  They retired here and had to have a business to be able to emigrate, so thus the B&B.  They imported everything from Hong Kong (all appliance instructions are in Chinese) and they spared no expense.  There was also an indoor rec facility that had a 25 meter pool, 8 person hot tub, exercise room and sauna.  Showers in the rooms had steam and multiple options for water (shower spray, rain shower, or body shower), and built in radio.  Oh yeah, the view was spectacular overlooking the water and his beautiful gardens.  On top of all that, this was our least expensive room in Tasmania!

Dinner options were very limited, but our host, Robert, recommended a place called Scorches in Orford (felt at home) about 3 miles away that turned out to be our spot for the next two nights.  We got a decent meal with a lot of the local flavor.

We are praying for an improvement in the weather for tomorrow for the ferry to Maria Island and hiking, but not holding out too much hope (unless Tasmanian weathermen are as good as ours, in which case, we will need sun tan lotion.)