The Silver Whisper arrived in Hobart, Tasmania on February 2 after two days at sea. I spent much of the time reading and finished Anthony Bourdain's "Kitchen Confidential". I also attended a number of lectures and another cooking demonstration, billed as a contest between the restaurant manager and the cruise director and the cruise consultant and the human resources director. It was funny and fun. The guest tasters even said the food was good.
The crossing from New Zealand to Australia can be very rough sailing. We had a relatively uneventful trip experiencing some heavy swell the first day. The weather stayed pleasant and guests reserved lounge chairs by the pool all day with their belongings even though this is against ship policy. The pool attendant will place a new chair on deck by the pool anytime someone asks. Either the guests don't know this or they are so selfish they do not care.
Michael had visited Tasmania twice previously, once in the late nineteen eighties and again about ten years ago. The first trip was by air. The more recent visit was by cruise ship from the direction of Melbourne. He was curious to see what changes Hobart had experienced in the past ten years. Aside from a tall building with a strange looking windmill on its top, Hobart had changed little in the past thirty, let alone ten years. We planned a walking tour combined with some shopping to take care of "infrastructure needs" and spend some of our Australian dollars.
Michael's first order of business was finding free Internet service. The whole downtown appeared to have it but connection times were way too slow to be usable until we reached the Salamanca Market. I wandered about the market and saw a combination of food products, nice craftwork, and tourist trinkets while Michael wrote e-mails and posted to Facebook. I did not find anything compelling although some of the things for sale were interesting.
We next walked up a steep hill to Arthurs Circus. The guidebooks said that original early Victorian houses lined a circular road that is the "circus". We met a fellow Silver Whisper guest on his way down the hill. He informed us that he didn't think there was anything there but a few old buildings of little interest. Michael and I found them lovely examples of early Hobart history, very English. Travel is totally wasted on some people. These are the same people who are constantly complaining that the weather is too hot or too cold, never right.
We continued through the Battery Point historic district and found it to have blocks of well-preserved buildings. Many have been repurposed as restaurants and boutique shops. The area has an up-scale neighborhood feel. Again, it all looked very English, except with palm trees.
We continued back toward the central business district, a longish hike. Hobart has a mix of architectural styles that will never win any prizes but it is a real living city. We searched out an enclosed mall for some Optician services (tightening screws on both our glasses) and a department store where I replaced my dead watch. We then walked to the other end of Hobart and climbed a hill to the Cenotaph Memorial to service members from Hobart killed in Australia's wars. We had never heard of some of the conflicts listed there. By then it was time to head back to our ship. A whirlwind tour indeed.
The Silver Whisper's visit to Hobart lasted hardly more than half a day. One of the ship's tours was an all day tour of the historic prison site at Port Arthur. We sailed at 2:00 PM to pick up the tour participants and arrived off Port Arthur later in the afternoon. Along the way, I photographed scenes of sailboats, dolphins and many wonderful vistas. The prison is in one photo, a yellowish institutional building near the shore. The area is now national park. Tours are given several times daily, showing the ruins of the prison where Australia's worst of the worst criminals were sent. Solitary confinement and other kinds of mental torture were supposedly invented there. The Silver Whisper anchored off shore and sent a tender to retrieve the twenty or so people who took the tour.
Perhaps the most memorable moment occurred as Michael and I were returning to the pier in Hobart. We met a local woman near the former jam factory, now stores, offices and restaurants. We exchanged pleasantries about the city. Michael mentioned that Hobart has not changed much in thirty years. She looked him in the eye and said firmly, "We like it that way."
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