Tasmania

Getting here was a little adventurous. If one counts the drive from Dunedin to Christchurch on Tuesday (that took most of the day) and then the flight to Hobart via Melbourne with an 8-hour layover in Melbourne on Wednesday, and then difficulty finding our driver, and then no hot water in our hotel (ultimately we had it, but it took forever to get to the penthouse) and then not knowing that Woolworths was a grocery store and then not being able to operate the oven nor the microwave (we finally sort of figured out the microwave), then one might say it was not exactly a fun adventure but everything worked out!

But Thursday morning dawned bright and sunny . . . and the adventure continued. We were supposed to meet the Gray Line at a transit center . . . but there was no marked place to meet, nothing that said Gray Line, and the Transit Center didn't open until 30 minutes after we were to leave. After asking umpteen million people where we should be (some were close but most had no idea), we asked a young man having coffee if he would dial the tour line because our phone would not connect. He did so - very willingly - and soon we were on our way. I had to laugh when Micky told the young man to tell his mother that she raised a fine young man and she hoped that someday a young man would help his parents when they got to be our age. Anyway, we caught our bus and headed toward Mount Wllington which was about 30 minutes away. When we left Hobart, we could see the observation tower, but by the time we got there, it had clouded over. It was still an interesting place, but one of the more quirky things was a sign that mentioned a person with an electric car might have difficulty with interference from the towers, and if they couldn't get their car to unlock, or to run, instructions on what to do and who to call were given. We had never seen anything like that before. Because it was so cloudy we didn't take any pictures there, but on the way down, we stopped at a little cafe with REAL hot chocolate (the second time we have had that) and then took a picture of Hobart from a different observation point.

We drove by the Cascade Brewery, which has been in operation since 1824 (and Don tried some later in the day, and even I thought it was pretty good!). They use the spring water near the brewery, and although they have updated their brewing area, they still use the original building for administrative purposes. At the brewery is a path along a rivulet (a river can dry up but a ribulet doesn't), and sometimes platypus can be seen along the area. We happened to see a documentary about that particular phenomenon, so we were pretty excited to see the area.

Then that tour ended, and another one was to start . . . no rest for us!