Mebourne City

Old Melbourne Jail

We traveled through the city by bus this morning. We passed a lot of historic buildings from the center of the city out to the beaches. Along the way we made a couple of stops. First was the Royal Exhibition Hall which was built for an 1880 international exhibition Our most interesting stop, however, was the Old Melbourne jail built in 1854 and closed in 1924, though it was used as a military prison during World War II. The bottom floor was used for the worst offenders. Here everyone had solitary cells and silence was observed. They wore a silence mask when out of their cell which prevented other prisoners from knowing who they were. They exercised outside for an hour a day, but even then they were separated from other prisoners. The upper floors had communal cells and here you participated in some form of labor. Men would pound rocks to gravel and women would work in the laundry. The ratio of prisoners here was 60% men and 40% women. Why such a large population of women? Largely because orphans had to exist by stealing or prostitution, ending up in jail. Corporate punishment for infractions was caning for the woman and children, and flogging with a cat of nine tails on the lashing triangle form men.

Ned's armor modeled by John

The most famous occupant of the jail was Ned Kelly. Kelly was originally jailed for three years for stealing horses. He fled to the bush in 1878 after he and his brother shot three policemen. When Kelly’s attempt to derail and ambush a police train failed, Ned and his gang dressed in homemade suits of armor. All but Kelly were killed, but he was severely wounded with 28 bullets in his exposed arms. He was captured nursed to health, put on trial, and then hung in the prison. His last words are reported as “such is life”. The gallows were right in the prison, and the trap door was rigged to bang into the walls, making it clear to all the inmates that a prisoner had been hung.

We toured St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the largest church in Melbourne. The Catholics, who were mostly Irish, often built larger churches than the Church of England throughout Australia. Our final stop was the Shrine of Remembrance, originally built as the State of Victoria’s World War I memorial. Over 300,000 Australians volunteered to fight in World War I, and over 200,000 never returned. The big battle served by Australians and New Zealanders was Gallipoli in Turkey, an attempt to open up supply lines to Russia. The memorial is designed to light the word “love” in No greater love hath a man… at 11 AM on November 11^th, Armistice day.

Shrine of Remembrance

In the afternoon we had a cultural experience: we attended “Aussie Rules Football”. The game was played in the Melbourne Cricket stadium, it’s designed to keep cricket players in shape out of season. Most of the rules are pretty simple. The primary methods to move the ball are running (but you have to dribble the ball every 10 steps), hand-balling (like a volleyball hit) or kicking. You cannot throw the ball or get caught holding the ball. The key play, called the mark, is to kick the ball to another player, if he catches it without it hitting the ground, he gets a free kick. This allows you to approach the goal posts. A kick through the center posts is worth 6 points and on either side 1 point. We had such fun, we stayed for almost the entire game between Carlton and Collingwood.

On to Melbourne

Shot Gun Tower, Melbourne

We flew from Launceston to Melbourne. Melbourne was founded in 1835 by John Batman who ‘purchased’ land from the Aborigines for a village. The town grew tremendously after gold was discovered in the 1850s. The city has the most Victorian buildings in the world, next to London. Melbourne became the Australia's major financial center. Today, Melbourne has a population of about 4 million. For the last 5 years, Melbourne was voted the world’s most livable city. It’s easy to understand with lots of parks, sports complexes and trams running everywhere through town.

After lunch we took a brief walking tour around our hotel, the Somerset, right in the heart of downtown. The Somerset has an apartment style room including a washer/dryer for laundry. The city is an interesting mixture of historic buildings and brand new towers. For example, the Shot Gun Tower (now a museum) is housed inside a shopping center. The tower was used to turn led to musket shot by dropping the lead from the 50 foot tower. We toured the Victoria library with its LaTrobe reading room. Then headed down to Federation Square with the 1910 Railway station across the street. Our group expanded to 15 today, 5 men and 11 women. Wayne hosted a wine and cheese party in his room and then we headed to dinner. I had kangaroo for dinner – it tasted like sweet beef. 

Flinders Railway Station

Launceston

We woke to intermittent rain, but that didn’t stop us from taking a 2.5 mile walk through Launceston to Cataract Gorge. The trail we took was originally built in 1890. The portion we took was relatively flat but the walls of the canyon rose above us with the trees in their fall colors. We stopped at a nice park area with wallabies and peacocks and peahens in the gardens, then across the suspension bridge to find the bus. 

Cataract Gorge

We headed off to Platypus house which is a research facility for monotremes, the two marsupials that lay eggs. Platypus must be the strangest animal in the world, webbed feet, fur, duck bill, lays eggs, and the males have venomous spurs. The venom won’t kill an adult human, but they will be in pain for almost a year, with no relief from pain-killers like morphine. The platypus eats worms and cray-fish which they detect by electroreceptors on their bill (when they dive they close their ears, eyes and nostrils). They typically dive a thousand times a day. The females lay 1-3 eggs in a nest burrow. After the eggs hatch the young drink milk which is secreted from the mother. Then she will continue to feed them for another 2-4 months in the nest after which they are pretty independent. The young need to ensure that they get far away (10 km) from their father, who might kill them as competititors.

The other monotreme is an Echidna, which looks like a cross between an ant-eater, and a porcupine, but is not related to either. These animals wandered around our feet as they were fed, their tongue is quite long to carry their food through their snout. The animal likes to climb and swim. On our way back we stopped at Brady’s lookout, where a pirate used to target ships on the Tamar River. 

Echidna

Then Mary and I went to the Queen Victoria Museum. This is a small museum with a variety of exhibits. Most interesting was their historic bike collection from the original bike, a bone shaker, to the modern variants with multiple gears and brakes. The other key collection was of the variety of unique animals to Tasmania and Australia. Most of the mammals are marsupials with a few exceptions, there are also a lot of birds unique to this area, like the Kookaburra, a form of Kingfisher. 

Cradle Mountain National Park

Along the Enchanted Walk

We woke up a dusting of snow next to our hotel in Cradle Mountain National Park. We started the day by walking the Enchanted Walk through a Myrtle Beech tree forest. It follows a stream bank with a variety of trees and mosses everywhere. A better name might be the Emerald walk since everything was so green – ferns, mosses, lichens everywhere. Then we took the short walk to the Pencil Pine Creek falls. We continued along the walk to discover a wide variety of plants, most of which only exist in Tasmania: Pandani, Pencil Pines, Celery top pine, pink mountain berries, and button grass. Most of us then hiked the Cradle Valley Boardwalk. The highlight of the hike was spotting a pair of Wedge Tailed Eagles, one perched on a nearby tree and the other soaring above us.

Wedge Tailed Eagle

We caught our first glimpse of Cradle Mountain along this trail. The mountain came in and out of the clouds as we walked. We drove on to Dove Lake just below Cradle Mountain. Finally, we stopped at the Gustav Waldheim Cottage. He was one of the key leaders to create this National Park and lived in this cabin year around, guiding visitors to the area.

Cradle Mountain Lake

As we left the park, we traveled a road to Wilhelm, here the tourist draw was mail boxes – a variety of them from a yellow submarine, to cows, plows, and wind mills. We ate lunch in Devenport along the coast and then headed to Launceston. We hosted a party in our room with cheese, crackers, beer, and wine, and then went out for pizza in a nearby restaurant.

Hobart to Cradle Mountain National Park

We spent most of the day on the road, but that was fine – it was windy and raining most of the day. Wayne told us about the slaughter of the aborigines on Tasmania. Even though the island supports over 500,000 people today, when Hobart was founded in 18—only about 5000 Aborigines were on the island, and most of them died soon after of European diseases. There is some speculation that the population may have been higher in the 18^th century, but whalers and sealers accidentally introduced the European diseases. Some of the early settlers actually helped feed the aborigines since they were taking away their land. But as more settlers came, they would kill the natives. Finally, the last 150 were rounded up and sent to a nearby island where the state took care of them, but most died anyway. There are no pure blood aborigines left on Tasmania. We stopped in Ross for some coffee. Here we saw the third oldest bridge in Australia. This town like all Australian towns has a World War I memorial, with a list of the people who died in that war. Remember that World War I was mostly a European war, but the Aussies volunteered to help fight with the British.

Railton World War I Memorial with topiaries

We’re on our way to Cradle Mountain National Park. Each small town along the way tries to attract tourists. For example, in Railton, many of the yards have topiaries: dragons, giraffes, lions, etc. Even the World War I memorial in this town has the usual stone monument, but soldier topiaries next to it.

Reflections of Time mural

Lunch was in Sheffield, a town with murals on the buildings or the best mounted in parks. I particularly enjoyed the park with the theme: Reflections of Time. We arrived at Cradle Mountain about 3 PM. We had planned to take a hike on the Enchanted Walk, but the rain was pouring and the wind blowing, so we cancelled to try tomorrow morning. We still did the animal night tour. It was still raining and it took a while for us to spot anything.  We eventually discovered several wombats, followed by two types of kangaroo like marsupials: the Bennett;s wallaby and Pademelons. It was fun to see them, particularly the little ones hopping away from our spotting lights. 

Pademelon

Tasman Island Cruise and Port Arthur

Wayne did not recommend the OAT tour because it was too expensive compared to what we could arrange locally, due to the strength of the dollar. We chose to do the Tasman Island Cruise and Port Arthur. After yesterday’s rain, today was partly cloudy, good weather for our boat cruise. At the start, we had cliffs of mudstone, and the wave action created numerous sea caves with names like the Tasman Arch, and the Devil’s Kitchen. As the boat approached some of these formations, the seas gave the illusion that we were going uphill. Tasmania has been dry, so dry that the waterfall we saw today hadn’t flowed in over 12 months. As we headed down the coast, we saw numerous birds: a white bellied Sea Eagle, Albatross, and Australian Gannet. The coast changed from the horizontal formations of mudstone to the vertical volcanic formations of Dolomite. Here we saw the 70 m tall totem pole and candlestick spires and then the  1000 foot Cape Pillar cliffs right next to Tasman island. Tasman Island itself has 3 light houses, but no real landing for ships, so they used a cable system to load people and cargo off the ship, and then a steep track up the mountain. The wildest part of the trip was the return trip to the harbor, the wind was strong, and our boat slammed down between the waves.

1000 foot high Cape Pillar Cliffs

Then the bus took us to Port Arthur, where a British prison was built in the 1820’s. Remember that Australia was already a prison colony. Most people have been sent here because they were banished from England, but hadn’t committed a hanging offense (at the time there were 200 hanging offensesThe people sent to Port Arthur committed another offense while already a convict. The prison was considered a machine to “grind these men back to society”. But British justice during this period was being reformed. Historically, most people had either died in prison or the ones who were released were so hardened that they ended up back in prison. This prison was based on 4 principles: 1) Discipline and punishment. Port Arthur was the first British prison to stop flogging as a punishment, instead they used isolation in the “separate prison” as punishment which was similar to today’s maximum security prison. Prisoners were isolated and lived under rules of silence. 2) Separate and Classify – people with trades or who were literate were put into jobs that could use their skills. Also prisoners would get better or worse accommodations based on their behaviors from cells where they carried 20kg of chains to those where they were in a large common area with lots of sunshine. 3) Industry and training: most were loggers, hauling trees from the forest to the port, but they could be promoted to work in the workshops, learning a trade that could be useful in society and finally 4) Religious coercion. You had to go to the non-denominational services. What was interesting is that even though this was the bottom 20% of convicts sent to Australia, 7 of 9 never returned to Port Arthur. The prison looks more like a park today with remains of many of the prison buildings, But on higher ground, were many of the staff’s houses: the doctor’s the commandant’s, and the reverend’s quarters. While these were good paying jobs, the fancy houses were there to persuade the wives that this was a good place to live. 

The Penitentiary Cell Block

Hobart

Tasmania’s animals and Aboriginal population have been isolated from mainland Australia for nearly 10,000 years. The island was sighted by Dutchman Abel Tasman in 1642 and was originally named Van Dieman’s Land. Hobart was settled in 1803 as a penal colony by John Bowland who brought 49 people here, including 29 convicts. We did a walking tour of the harbor area of Hobart in the rain. St. David’s park was the original cemetery of the town. Some of the original monuments still remain like that of James Kelly, whose wife and all his children died before him. Or the tombstone of George Kearly who was the first white male born in Tasmania, but he only lived six days. Down the road was the Nortorious corner, with the police stations on one side and the jail and execution plaza on the other. The executioner lived 3 days away from the city, so he would only come to town when there were at least nine hangings to be conducted. We heard the story about Mary who was the first woman hung here. She was sent to Australia because she confessed to her husband’s stealing in England. Convicts were hired out to the local farmers, and Mary became pregnant by the farmer. Her baby was still born, but she was convicted of killing it, and so she was hung.

After our tour we went to the Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary, a home for injured and orphaned animals. Australia is a land of marsupials, until the introduction of the dingo. There were no mammals on the continent. Marsupials have their young born live and then they are nourished in a pouch. We started by seeing a wombat, the smartest of the marsupials. Full grown this hairy ball of an animal is 1 meter long and weighs about 40 Kg, it can run at about 40 km/hr. They live in burrows and use can use their butts which has 2 in thick cartilage to close up their burrow. For unknown reasons, their scat is actually cubic, so it doesn’t roll.

Mary, wombat, and keeper

Next we saw the Tasmanian devil. Most of the pictures of devils show them snarling, which is a behavior used to defend food from other devils.  They also like to bite each other, even while mating. The animals are timid, can only see 2-3 feet in front of them, and don’t run very fast, but they have a strong sense of smell, so they are scavengers with super strong jaws to bite through bone. They have 30-40 babies which are about the size of a rice grain, but only 2-3 will survive (and the mom may eat the rest). The Devils are threatened today, because of a virus which produces facial tumors, which leads to starvation.  

Tasmanian Devil

We also saw Koala’s, which are the dumbest of the marsupials. This is largely because of their diet of Eucalyptus leaves which has little nutritional value. An animal’s brain consumes about 25% of the calories it eats, so the Koala’s brain is only the size of a walnut. The Koala may be cute, but they spend about 20 hours a day sleeping, waking up every few hours to feed.

We ended our visit by feeding the Kangaroo’s by hand. I learned that Kangaroos can only move forward. The seal of Australia has both a Kangaroo and an Emu (which has the same characteristic) – implying that Australia can only move forward. Then we headed to Richmond, home to the oldest bridge and St. John's, oldest Catholic church in Australia.

On returning to Hobart, Mary and I toured the Tasmania Museum and Art Gallery. Here we got to see a stuffed Tasmanian tiger and some film of one of the last living Tiger’s. They were exterminated by the sheep herders, fearful that the tigers would eat their sheep. You can only see Tasmanian tigers on the state license plate. Upstairs was an exhibit about Antarctica, which explained many of the unique aspects of this continent.

Tasmanian Tiger (extinct)