Day 34 – February 18, Hobart, Tasmania

After a good nights sleep, courtesy of Captain Scala, we were up early for our Port Arthur and Wildlife Tour.  We first drove to the Bonorong Wildlife Park to see Tasmanian animals in an up close and personal way.  Fred and Jan had been here in 2004 and it has only changed a little.  We were the 3^rd bus to arrive (several tours had this park included) so it was not crowded yet.  You walk through the park and the Wallabies/Kangaroos roam free around you.  They have buckets of food placed around the trail and you can feed the kangaroos.  Some of them would take food but most of them were not interested.  Jan did get to feed one and Fred got a picture of it.  One of these mornings when we have good internet, I will try and upload some pictures.

The main change to the park from 2004 was the number of Tasmanian devils.  There are now several enclosures of these animals.  We got really good pictures of them including one laying all sprawled out like some dogs do, i.e. with hind legs stretched out behind him.  They were not very devil like today!  We also got to see a Koala Bear and a Wombat close up. 

After leaving the park is was a long 1.5 hour drive through the countryside to Port Arthur.  Our bus had a very talkative guide and a bus driver who thought he was the guide.  At first it seemed they were competing to see who could talk the most.  Then they seemed to get into letting each other talk but the result was there was never a single moment one of them wasn’t talking.  They did have a lot of interesting things to say but some on the bus thought it was very irritating.

We stopped at a small restaurant and hotel, the Fox and Hounds, for lunch.  For once, it was not a buffet but served at the table.  We had a chicken schnitzel with roasted potato and steamed vegetable.  It was fine but nothing special.  The description of the lunch in the tour brochure cleared said it would be a hearty lunch but not gourmet.   The desert however was very, very good.  I’m not sure was it was, some kind of cake/pudding in a caramel sauce.  Two glasses of wine or beer were also included.  It took about one hour for lunch.

When we finally arrived at Port Arthur, our time was going to be limited.  There were two buses from the ship and the entire group was assigned to a single Port Arthur guide.  He did have a microphone but it was still difficult to hear and he was trying to give too much detail.  Since we only had 1.5 hours at the site, it was very rushed.  We were given tickets that allowed us to go on the 3:00pm boat ride around the bay and the small islands with more narrative about Port Arthur and it’s history as a prison.

Fred and Jan decided to leave the group and explore on their own.  Port Arthur is a beautiful site now with green grass and gardens.  Most of the buildings were destroyed at one point of another in the large brush fires that sweep Australia from time to time.  They are doing a lot of reconstruction work on some of the larger and more important buildings.

We visited the Separate Prison where they put the really worst offenders.  It was a place of solitary confinement for 23 hours locked down in a small cell every day.  In the chapel, which had compulsory attendance on Sunday, there were even walls between every seat and the prisoners were brought in one at a time with masks over their faces so there were unable to identify each other or to communicate in any way.  The theory of the prison was that this kind of punishment was preferable to the physical punishment, i.e. flogging, that was prevalent at the time.  The result was more mentally ill prisoners.

We walked through some of the other buildings and back across the green to the Visitors Center at our own pace.  Port Arthur is a site worth visiting but you need at least a half day.  Interestingly, there was a Holland America ship anchored in the bay that was tendering its passengers into and out of the site.  That would have been a good way to focus on Port Arthur for a cruise stop.

Then it was back on the bus for the 1.5 hours ride back.  We took a slight different route back and mercifully the guide and driver didn’t talk the entire way…just most of it!  One good thing the guide did was that after we got back on the bus at Port Arthur she asked for feedback and the bus really gave a lot of suggestions.  Most of us wanted more time at Port Arthur and less time at lunch.  We even made the suggestion to have a small snack type lunch on the bus to save the time.  She took all the feedback very well and hopefully the ground operator will change this tour to concentrate on this very interesting site.

We were invited to the Captains Table tonight.  We met Dana and the other three couples outside of the Voyager lounge.  Two of the couples were full world cruisers and the other couple knew them as well.  All were interesting to talk with.  The Captain had sent word that he would be late and to go ahead and order.  He did arrive a bit late but we had not been served yet.  During the appetizer, the Captain excused himself to make a phone call and then came back to the table.  Because the wind had begun blowing from the east, he decided to go around the west side of the island instead to keep us protected as much as possible from the wind.   We enjoyed the dinner.