On the water 2

First posted on March 10, 2013

Cruising to MONA took us north for 30 minutes, under the Tasman Bridge, past working docks, the terraced seating at the finish line of the Hobart regatta and Government House.

                      Regatta finishing line. 

      Cenotaph and Mt Wellington in the background.

                          Government House

But that was quickly followed by the industrial areas of Hobart – a fuel storage depot (no refineries here), zinc smelter, catamaran builders.

                             Zinc smelter

  Catamaran building yard, with smelter in background

Interesting, but this isn’t the part of town where I’d want to be living and hardly an attractive view from the homes on the opposite bank of the river. This industrial/working class part of Hobart is where MONA owner David Walsh grew up and came back to in order to establish his museum/gallery. What he’s done for Tasmanian tourism is a one-man miracle. MONA itself looks wonderful as you approach it by water. You can drive there, of course, but I can’t imagine that approach being so arresting a sight.

Approaching MONA

Leaving MONA - close to sunset

The chug boat –  what a contrast! It stayed closer to the shoreline and because it was going slowly I got a longer, better view of things I, relatively speaking, whizzed by earlier.

                                           Tasman Bridge

 with the remains of the last pylon of its ill-fated predecessor in the foreground

                       Under the Tasman Bridge

The pleasure of the trip was sitting outside at the front of the boat chatting to a young marine scientist who’d been at a series of CSIRO meetings in Hobart. She was from Colorado. When I said I’d sort-of visited there and described my train trip through the canyons of the Colorado River while travelling on the Californian Zephyr she said to me: “I live in one of those canyons.” Wow!!

            Antarctic supply ship “Aurora Australis”

                                 (R) The “chug” boat 

 (L) “SSS Brigitte Bardot”, a small boat from the Sea Shepherd fleet