Port Arthur

 We started the day with a walk to a local pop-up café which had good reviews but sounded a) all vegan and b) only open Friday to Monday (meaning today was our only chance to go). It turned out to be great find with new owners (they have been there three weeks) set in a Pear orchard with great coffee, We shared a wonderful pork, apple and fennel sausage roll with crisp light pastry. Judging by the number of cars that had arrived during our visit, I think the locals like this place too! A great way to start the day.

Next stop was Port Arthur (about 20 minutes drive away). We had planned to just check out the prices and times before exploring other things in the area before 'doing' Port Arthur tomorrow. We hadn't realised quite how big the place is and the tickets cover you for two consecutive days so we decided to start here today and finish our visit tomorrow.

 

Another reason for doing it this way was that tomorrow there is a cruise ship coming in and there will be 3,000 visitors from early morning!! We duly paid for the 12pm guided tour followed by the 1:40 pm cruise out around the bay to see various related sites (like the Isle of the Dead) where they buried many convicts and free-people (in different areas).

After the cruise we headed around the bay to the dockyard where the convicts were employed building many ships. This was actually very successful until other shipbuilders of the time complained to the Government that they couldn't compete with convict (i.e. free) labour and the shipbuilding phase ended.

The following photo is of a commemorative sculpture at the site.





Popular posts from this blog

Remarkable Cave

Image
 We left Port Arthur around 3:30 pm and headed back to White Beach. On the way we made a detour to see Remarkable Cave. This is an incredible geological feature where the sea has eroded a cave through a dolerite sub-surface layer overtopped by sandstone. There are around 150 steps down a series of metal stair cases to where the cave breaks through to a large cavern with a collapsed roof. There are actually two entrances but you can only see through one out to the sea. The wave action was impressive but it was not a particularly stormy day so in rough sea conditions it would be even more amazing.
Read more

Auckland to Hobart

Image
Once again the flight was very smooth and we arrived in Hobart ready to start our holiday. The plane was only about half full. No wonder Air New Zealand don't have many direct flights from Auckland. When we were taxiing after landing I thought the terminal building was just a service area for the airport! Not much different from a rural airport like Gisborne or Napier. No air-bridge but at least the access stairs turned out to be a ramp rather than steps. Another long walk followed along the edge of the apron to the International Arrivals building. Once we were through immigration the next step was to get picked up by East Coast Car Rentals and collect the car. This turned out to be more of a challenge than I had thought. My plan to save on daily roaming charges was to keep our phones in Flight Mode and use local Wi-Fi to allow us to use Wi-Fi calling to make calls since we have free calls to NZ and Aussie numbers. Not so easy! It turns out that Hobart airport's Wi-Fi does not ...
Read more