Wonderfully warm weather greeted us when we landed in Sydney early Thursday morning 11.12. Great for a change, and even better, the ocean is now officially (according to SMH) 22,8 degrees, which is a pleasant an refreshing temperature. So off to Nielsen we went for a quick swim almost immediately after arrival. And in the afternoon we left for Hobart, Tasmania – Anca, Patrick, Carl, Filip and me – the Harding-Irmer-Frankenhaeuser family out on adventure!
For some totally incomprehensible reason it always (!!!) gets cold and rainy when we head further south from Sydney. It was +10 degrees when we landed in Hobart on Thursday evening, and hour late, and even colder the following morning! Snow on Mt Wellington greeted us when we headed into town from our very nice rented cottage. Exactly the same thing happened some years ago when we spent Christmas in Sydney and travelled to Queenstown, NZ for New Year. Then we had morning temperatures of +5 and snow on the mountain tops. What is wrong with us??
Fortunately the weather in Hobart quickly changed for the better, and we had a lovely time. We took the ferry to the private Art museum Mona, huge and very interesting, visited Port Arthur, a prison for convicts from England in the 19th century and now a world heritage site, went for a bush walk, drove up to the top of Mt Wellington and walked around Battery Point and central Hobart.
The view from Mt Wellington is stunning, and the area is full of lovely little native plants.
I had expected Tasmania to be green and lush, but it was very, very dry. Practically no water left anywhere out in the bush, and all the fields were yellow and brown. Doesn’t look good for the upcoming summer season = bush fire season. Signs of previous bushfires are everywhere. Charred trees close to the ground in the bush, some of them beautiful, like little sculptures, and dried out gum trees cover many hills, still standing, with new green leaves growing out from below. It is part of the life cycle in Australia, but scary when the fires become too large, happen too often and get totally out of hand.
Wildlife count: quite a few wallabies, lots of birds, kookaburras among them, a black snake (very poisonous, on Mt Wellington) two echidnas and a lizard. He refused to move from the path we were using, clearly of the opinion he was there first. He has a point.
O S M A F Frankenhaeuser 