This past weekend from May 12th-16th, I was in Hobart, Tasmania! It was another amazing weekend touring another place in Australia. I went with two friends, Katie and Jessica, and we packed so much into the 4 days that we were there. Enjoy!
Thursday, May 12th:
We landed in Hobart around 6:45 p.m. and headed straight to our hostel. On our way, we noticed that nothing in the city seemed to be open! We realized it was a Thursday night, but there should have been something open in the capital of Tasmania. When we arrived at the hostel, we got upgraded to having our own room for the entire 4 days! After putting down our bags, we went to dinner at Subway (since it was the only place open) and then headed to a pub next door for a drink. Since there is not much nightlife in Hobart, the pub ended up closing at 10 p.m., so we had to head back to our hostel for the night. The 3 of us ended up playing cards in our room, and then went to bed because we had a big day ahead of us on Friday!
Friday, May 13th:
We woke up at 8 a.m. and then headed out to breakfast at a local cafe near our hostel. Upon stepping outside, I realized how cold it was! The average temperature the entire time we were there during the day was about 50 degrees Fahrenheit, and at night it got down to 40 degrees Fahrenheit! This was without the windchill though, and the entire time we were there it was pretty windy, meaning it was a lot colder than 50 degrees during the day, and 40 degrees at night. Being in Huntington Beach from December to March, and then in Sydney for summer from March to May, it was the first time the cold really hit me! I am used to freezing weather from going to school in Boulder, but this was the first time in about 5 months I came into contact with the freezing weather. The weather luckily did not affect our trip or what we decided to do.
After breakfast, the 3 of us went to the Travel Center to see what kinds of things we could do in Tasmania and all of the tours we wanted to book. After talking to someone at the travel center, we planned out our entire weekend and booked the necessary things that we wanted to do.
Since there is no public transportation in Hobart, we had to take taxis, boats, and shuttles everywhere we went. At 11 a.m. the 3 of us got on a boat that sailed from Hobart to about 30 minutes north to where the Cadbury Factory and the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) is. The boat ride was relaxing and we also saw different things along the way that the captain pointed out. The first thing he pointed out was the Tasman Bridge:
Before the Tasman Bridge was built, there was a bridge called the Hobart Bridge that was a floating bridge. Since the Hobart Bridge faced increasing difficulty in managing the larger volumes of traffic that started to happen to due the population growth, it was decided that the Tasman Bridge was going to be built to support the load. It took 4 years to build the Tasman Bridge, which opened in 1964. Then in 1975, a ship was sailing towards the bridge and crashed sideways into the Tasman Bridge, damaging a huge portion of the bridge. They are not sure if it was due to the captain being drunk, or if he got so far off the path that he was going on that he got confused and thought that the ship could fit through the pylons. Another bridge was built in its place while it was being restored, which let traffic cross the Derwent River. Here is the replacement bridge, that is not used very much anymore now that the Tasman Bridge is fixed.
The captain pointed out a path the the Aboriginal people used to use to get around the River. It went deep into the cliff and had hiding places, but is not used anymore.
The scenery was beautiful while being on the boat, and at points it reminded a little bit like New Zealand. There were houses on the sides of the mountains that faced the river, with trees and wildlife all around.
When we got there, we were told that you cannot go inside the center of the factory anymore due to commercial and health restrictions. They still let you go on a tour and teach you about the steps they go through to make the chocolate, but not see it in action. We still decided to do it, and upon walking in, they gave us a huge block of Cadbury milk chocolate!
The factory:
The huge bin that held the chocolate blocks that we received:
On the tour, I learned a ton about the way chocolate is made. During the entire tour, they kept giving us samples of different chocolate, and made sure we always had some in our hands to eat. By the end, I felt so sick from eating so much chocolate! The chocolate making process is very complex, because there are so many steps. First plantations produce cocoa pods, and then the pods are harvested by hand. The cocoa pods are then split open to collect the cocoa beans, which contain about 20-50 beans per pod. The beans are fermented for several weeks, and then sent to the factory. At the factory, the beans are cleaned, roasted, cracked, refined, and then stored in a tank. After they are stored, sugar and milk are mixed into the cocoa mass, and then refined and then inspected. After this process, the temperature is controlled to ensure that the fat in the chocolate crystallizes in its most stable form to give the gloss and snap of the chocolate. The chocolate is then deposited into a mold, shaken, and then cooled in that mold. After this is done, the wrapping is completed and the chocolate is ready to be distributed!
I learned that cocoa butter is added to the chocolate to make white chocolate, while cocoa mass is added to make dark chocolate. A mixture of both cocoa butter and cocoa mass is added together to make milk chocolate. The beans are sent to Singapore where they are roasted, and then sent back to Tasmania for the processing. I learned that dark chocolate is indeed the healthiest chocolate! The average Australian eats about 5 kilograms of chocolate a year, which is half of the chocolate bar that we are holding in the picture below!
The country that eats the most chocolate in a year is Ireland (11 kilograms, which is more than the bars we are holding above), followed by Switzerland. Australia ranks 13 on the scale of the most chocolate eaten in the country (they eat 5 kilograms). I found it interesting to hear that when the chocolate is molded and some of the pieces are not perfect because of air bubbles or something else, it is sent to farmers who feed it to their cows! Since Cadbury cannot use broken pieces or chocolate that does not have the correct consistency, they figured the cows would enjoy it! Here are some of the machines and things they use to make the chocolate at the Cadbury Factory:
At the end of the tour, they let us try different consistences of chocolate in a little cup. I got a mixture of dark and milk chocolate!
At the end of the tour, we went to the chocolate shop. They had every kind of Cadbury chocolate there, but for super cheap! They had chocolate bars for 20 cents, and other things for 5 cents! Even though I am not a huge chocolate person, I still had to buy some to try.
The factory was decorated really cute, because it had huge chocolate bars and different things hanging on the walls.
The factory was very delicious, but we were so full from the chocolate that we could not even eat lunch! We then took a taxi back to the site where we got dropped off from the boat, and went to MONA.
We were told by the man at the travel center that MONA is on a list of the top 100 things to go and see before you die. We were not planning on going there because we had not heard about it, but decided to go since it will be off the list of the top 100 things in the world to see. This museum was the WEIRDEST museum I have ever been to in my entire life. On a scale of 1 to weird, I would have given it an extremely weird. I guess some people look at art different than others, but some things I did not understand how it was considered art. Some of the things in the museum were interesting, such as they had this huge "fat car" that was made. Everything was blown up in it to make it look obese.
There was a contraption that you put your hands on these medal poles, and the lights above your head flickered to your heartbeat.
There was a wall of over 16,000 pictures that were colored by this one artist over a series of time that were posted on a wall.
This circle spun around and made an optical illusion when staring at it.
This may seen like a normal museum, but there was some stuff that was definitely not normal. For example, there was a fish bowl sitting on a chair with a knife in it with a bunch of fish swimming around. There was a dead horse sculpture hanging from a rope, and a picture of a close-up bullet wound in someone's head. One artist made artwork with the remains of a suicide bomber cast in chocolate. These were just a few of the weird things in the museum, but there was so much more. We were only there about an hour and a half because the 3 of us could not take it anymore. Some of it was so sick and disturbing, that I could not believe how people called it art.
After leaving, we took a shuttle back to the city and walked around. There were a few shops that we went to and got new clothes! We then headed to a pub for dinner, and had a drink while listening to a live band play. The nightlife is nothing like Sydney, but we had a fun time hanging out and relaxing.
The day was not only delicious, but interesting as well spending our first full day in Hobart!
Saturday, May 14th:
Today, we woke up at 7:30 a.m., because we were headed to the Salamanca Market. This is a huge market that is open every Saturday from 8:30 a.m. until 4 p.m. in Hobart. I asked the tour center if it was like the Queen Victoria Market I went to in Melbourne, and he said that it was way different. This market had different things at each booth, while the Queen Victoria Market after a while would repeat certain things over and over. When we arrived, it was so overwhelming but awesome at the same time. There were so many different stands of things that were so unique from one another. It stretched from one block all the way down the street.
There was a place at the market that sold bugs in different key chains!
I walked by a stand that had a husband and a wife dressed up in cute little pink outfits because they were selling things from their bakery. It was adorable.
At the market, I ended up buying different things such as a scarf, dress, and wool socks. The best purchase I made that day was buying a kangaroo cookie cutter! When I get back home, I will make kangaroo cookies for everyone! As we were leaving, there was a man standing by an old milk truck giving out milk and cookies. It was delicious, and of course I had to take a picture because it is not something that you see on an everyday basis!
We spent about 3 hours at the market, which was outside. It got pretty cold at times, but was definitely worth going to. It let me live the lives of many people who travel from all over to go to this market every Saturday to get their produce and food items for the week. We had to leave because we were headed to the Cascade Brewery for a tour and tasting! The Cascade Brewery is the oldest brewery in all of Australia. We decided to walk to the brewery because it was nice outside and would let us explore the city. The walk was about 50 minutes, which was not too bad. The night before, it snowed on the mountains and made me so happy to finally see snow again! The last time I saw it was in December in Boulder, and since I missed winter time in Boulder this past year, it was good getting the view of the mountains.
Upon arriving, the brewery looked exactly like a haunted house. The building was beautiful with trees surrounding it, especially because the leaves were changing color.
There was a garden you could walk through in the back of the brewery, so we decided to walk through it since we were early.
We arrived about 45 minutes early, so we went to the cafe and got tomato and vegetable soup, which was amazing! Since it was cold outside, the soup could have not hit the spot even more than it did. Before we started the tour, they gave us 3 bottle caps from the Cascade beer bottles, that let us taste 3 different types of beer at the end of the tour. I am not a beer drinker at all, but realized that it would be a good experience going to a brewery that made the famous Cascade Beer.
I learned a lot about beer on the tour, but it still did not convince me to like beer any more. Since it was Saturday, the brewery was shut down, but we still got to see every place that contributed to making the beer. I learned that the Tasmanian Tiger is the symbol of Cascade Beer before the tour even started because there were these tigers everywhere!
Before the tour started, the group had to put bright yellow safety vests on and these huge plastic glasses.
We learned about the products that produce the beer, and why every part of it is necessary in making a good beer.
Before we entered the factory, the tour guide told us that a while ago, the men were allowed to drink on the job and drink as much beer as they wanted. Of course, now that is not allowed, but the workers get to take home about 50 beers a month for free. There was a bell outside that was rung 3 times a day a long time ago, signaling when the breaks were and when the men could drink as much as they wanted.
The brewery had a fire while back too, that almost demolished the entire brewery. Luckily, it was not demolished, and the brewery still stands. Throughout the tour though, we saw fire stains on the walls of the brewery. There were tons of kegs everywhere, which made it look like a fraternity house!
There are so many different phases in the process of making beer, which I did not realize. Here are some of the machines used in producing the Cascade Beer:
I learned that Hop is used in beer as part of the fermentation process. Hop is made from the marijuana plant, and is used for people who have insomnia. We got to sniff a box of Hop, but were told not to breathe too deeply because it could actually put us to sleep.
During the fermentation process, the leftover wheat at the bottom of the barrels are sent off to farmers to feed to their cows. The cows in Tasmania must be the happiest cows on earth because they get to eat the leftover Cadbury chocolate, and the wheat from the Cascade Brewery! The last part of the tour before the tasting was seeing where the bottling process takes place. The contraptions looked so intense, but the tour guide said everything runs really smoothly.
When the tour was over, we went to the bar for our beer tastings. Since I was at a brewery, I had to try at least a glass of one of the beers. The tour guide told me to try the "Pure Cascade Beer" because it goes down smoothly and does not have a beer taste. It was not too bad, but nothing I would ever order at a bar because I do not like the taste. The second drink I got was a cider, which tasted a little bit like apple cider with a beer taste. The third drink I got was a non-alcoholic drink that Cascade makes that is raspberry soda. We sat around at the bar for a while drinking our drinks and hanging out in the warm room. Overall, the tour was interesting and I am glad I decided to do it.
On our way back, we stopped at the Cascade Female Factory Historic Site. A long time ago, the site used to be a woman's prison where the women had to make blankets.
Women were sometimes placed in this jail if society did not like them, or if they had some mental problem they could not control. This was written on one of the walls explaining the jail:
"Crimes for which she might be imprisoned after her arrival were generally further minor offenses like petty theft, being drunk or idle and disorderly, and using obscene language. Substantial terms of imprisonment for such trifles were used to remove awkward women from an increasingly intolerant society."
The bedrooms that the women lived in were this small, and about 6 women would live in this area:
A model of what the blankets these women made looked like:
The sun was starting to go down, and we wanted to make it back before it got too cold. The 3 of us walked back quickly, and made it back right when the sun went down! Since we were full from all of the beer tastings, we got sandwiches for dinner and then headed back to the hostel to get ready to go out. Jessica had friends that went to school at the University of Tasmania in Hobart, so we met them at a pub that night. They took us bar hopping, where we went to about 5 different places. Saturday nights are the only nights people go out in Hobart, which is why we met her friends then. It was a really fun night out in Hobart!
Sunday, May 15th:
We slept in until 11 a.m. because we were out pretty late the night before. The 3 of us got breakfast/lunch, and then Jessica and I had to meet in front of the tour center to take a shuttle to Zoo Doo. Katie decided not to come, but Jessica and I really wanted to go. The shuttle ride was about 30 minutes long, where we got to see a lot of the surrounding city. Zoo Doo is Wildlife Park, where there was a large range of Native, Agricultural and Exotic animals. Upon arriving, the place looked kind of like a dump and there was not much too it. When we walked in though, it was like heaven. The entire wildlife park is outside, but there are huge fields with kangaroos, wallabys, deer, goats, sheep, llamas, etc. roaming around freely. We got the chance to buy food for $1, and then get to feed all of the animals roaming around! It was probably one of the best days of my lives :). I got to hand-feed kangaroos and wallabys for the first time in my life! The kangaroos would jump over to you, and then put their arms on your arms to brace themselves, and then eat the food out of the palm of your hand.
When I first entered the pin, I was one of the only people in there besides Jessica. I walked towards 3 huge kangaroos, and the next thing I knew all 3 of them were jumping towards me really fast. I freaked out because the sight of seeing 3 huge animals jumping towards me scared me to death. I started to run away towards the exit, but of course the kangaroos caught up. Jessica said she was laughing so hard because all she saw was me running away from 3 jumping kangaroos screaming at the top of my lungs. At the moment it was not funny, but now I think it is hilarious. After about 20 minutes, I got used to the kangaroos and wallabys and was scratching them under their chins because they seemed to love it!
The deer and other animals there did not get any food from me, because I liked the wallabys and kangaroos better. Sometimes you just have to play favorites! I could not tell the difference between the wallabys and kangaroos at first, but later asked my friend in Sydney who is Australian, and he explained it to me. The most obvious difference between the wallaby and the kangaroo is size. As a rule, the kangaroo is generally much larger than the wallaby. The kangaroo has more height between its ankles and knees, which makes its legs seem out of proportion to its body. The kangaroo's legs are built for speed on open terrain. The wallaby's more compact legs are built for agility in forested areas. Although there are many different species of both wallabies and kangaroos that span a wide range of sizes, wallabies only tend to weigh between four pounds and 53 pounds and grow a mere 12 inches to 24 inches (30 cm to 104 cm) tall, not including their tails. Kangaroos, on the other hand, can grow to heights of 8 feet and weigh as much as 200 pounds. Another way to tell a wallaby and a kangaroo apart is by their coloring. A wallaby's coat is usually brighter with two to three different colors. The kangaroo's coat is usually less splashy and more uniform, with muted colors like brown or gray.
Kangaroos:
Wallaby:
Male and Female kangaroo:
There were also albino wallabys!
Me with a wallaby and emu:
Me with an emu:
I also saw wombats for the first time too, which are native to Australia. We were not allowed to feed or pet them though.
I could have stayed in the pen forever feeding the wallabys and kangaroos and petting them, but there was more to see. We walked over to the lion and tiger cages, and found out that they were having a feeding at that time. The lion keeper told us that it is mating season right now, so the male lion is extremely fierce now because he is trying to protect the female (there was just a male and female lion in the cage).
He keeper said he usually could go in the cage, but if he went in now, the lion would kill him because the male would thing the keeper is trying to get the female. They are hoping in the next 3 months that the female will get pregnant, so by Christmas, they will have lion cubs (the gestation period of a female lion is 3 months). The female and male lions were very playful, and you could tell that it was mating season because the male lion kept trying to climb on top of the female!
The keeper let us come in a small part of a fenced of cage, and put meat on tongs to feed the lions. Since the female is trying to get pregnant, she does not eat much during mating season, so the male ate the entire time. It was a great experience getting to feed lions!
Next to the lions were the tigers. The tigers were not as playful and a bit boring, yet they were beautiful. I learned that even if you shave the lions fur off of him or her, there will still be the stripes on their skin! The keeper said he can never go in the cage with the tigers because they will kill him instantly. I also got a chance the feed the tigers the same way I fed the lions!
After the feeding, we went on a safari bus ride! What it is, is you get in a huge safari van and feed emus, ostriches, and camels. The emus and ostriches ran up to the van, and started pecking at the food we received in a paper bag. It was hilarious, because their faces were right next to ours and the food was flying everywhere! I held a bucket of the food at one point, and about 3 emus ran over and started pecking at the bucket that I almost dropped it. It was awesome.
Of course I had to go see the Tasmanian Devils too. I did not know this, but they are really shy and do not live people very much. We went to a feeding of them, but only got to see them for about a minute because they would run out of the burrow, grab the meat, and then run back in. I got to see them though in Tasmania, so that is all that counts. Although the Tasmanian Devil that Warner Brothers made looks nothing like the real thing, it was worth the try!
The wildlife park also had reptiles, birds, and animals such as roosters, mini horses, rabbits, and so much more.
Some of the animals were dyed a certain color, and I think it was leftover from Easter!
We got 3 hours to be at Zoo Doo, which was the perfect amount of time. Even though I could have stayed forever cuddling with the kangaroos, it was getting a bit chilly outside. The shuttle came and picked us up and brought us back to our hostel. Before getting back though, the driver brought us by the oldest church and bridge in Australia, which was pretty cool to see.
When we got back, we rested for a bit then went and got dinner. After dinner, we came back and packed up our belongings and then played cards and went to bed. It was such a fun day at Zoo Doo Wildlife Park!
Monday, May 16th:
We woke up at 6:30 a.m. to catch a shuttle by 7:15 a.m. to the airport. Luckily everything went smoothly, and I got back to my apartment around 1 p.m. that afternoon.
The entire trip was really fun, and I would recommend to everyone to go to Tasmania at one point. The state is so unique from the rest of Australia, that it is definitely worth going to. All of the experiences and adventures that I had in Hobart will stick with me forever.
I am back to Sydney for the next 2.5 weeks, and then head to the Great Barrier Reef for 5 days, then the Outback for 5 days. I only have 2.5 more weeks of classes too! I really want the time to slow down because my time abroad is going way too fast. As the saying goes, "Time flies when you are having fun."
Heaps of Love,
Heidi
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