Before summer vacation ended, we took a long weekend trip to Hobart, Tasmania. Hobart is the capital of  the island state of Tasmania- just a quick 1 hour flight for us. We visited the northern part of Tassie (as the Aussies say) when Clay and his family were here last year, but Brent hadn’t visited Tassie yet, so we took the weekend to explore.

As you may know, Tassie is pretty rural, but even so, Hobart is known for a it’s good food, wines and gin. Here is the rural landscape just before we landed…

We flew down on late Thursday and were up bright and early on Friday morning to hike Mt. Wellington. Mt. Wellington sits just behind the city of Hobart and reaching the summit (~13oom) allows for beautiful views of the harbor and surrounding coastline and islands.

Afterwards, we drove about an hour inland to visit a brewery (of course!). It was a very unique one that is operated by a man on his farm called Two Metre Tall Brewery which specializes in ciders and farmhouse ales. They were too unique for me to even like. Brent enjoyed them as well as hearing the man’s stories about his brewing processes. The kids enjoyed playing outside and watching the cows.

As we were driving, we saw the oldest pub in Australia!

That evening, we booked into a nice restaurant which we were determined to do even with kids. (It was recommended by a couple that didn’t have kids!) I selected the earliest booking which put us at the communal table. After deciding to walk there, which took longer than expected, we rocked up to a full restaurant (only about 25 cosy seats) and were seated at our our table with no one under the age of 45 years old …so folks interested in a lovely evening and enjoying their chef’s menu and wine pairing. I told Brent that the only way we could go was to feed the kids first and just let them nibble there… rather than dealing with crazed, hungry children that refused to eat. And, it worked! We had a lovely dinner with well-behaved children that managed to stay seated. Amazing- it is possible! But, we basically ate and left quickly not to ruin a good thing.

The next day we ventured on the ferry to MONA, the museum of old and new art. It’s the largest privately owned museum in Australia. The owner earned his wealth as a professional gambler (gambling is legal here). He had a small museum, then closed it and underwent $75 million in renovations to open the current museum in 2011. It is a fascinating place. It not only houses very unique art, but it also is the site to several restaurants, a winery and villas to stay. It also has two musical festivals a year, which one (MOFO) happened to be the weekend we visited.

Even the ferry to get there was funky- the kids got to ride on sheep as their seats.

Here is the exhibit- Cloaca Professional which represents the digestive tract. It is fed at 11am and 4pm and poos at 2pm. It smelled bad as you can imagine.

This is Tim. An artist tattooed his back as a work of art. He sits on this podium everyday from 10am-4:30pm (for a few months this year) and doesn’t move any more than blinking. Once Tim dies, his tattoo will be preserved as art…

Here was another fascinating one… hopefully I can explain it. You walk into this room (one person at a time) where you see black and white on the floor a the bottom of the picture. The walls come up to about your waist. The attendant said to make sure you do not touch anything. Here there is motor oil that is filled to the top of this waist-high wall which is hard to tell this is the case since it creates a reflection of the square wall that’s behind it. Even after she told us that it was oil, it was really hard to even see… but you can see a vertical line in the picture on the back wall  (about 3 1/2 squares down) where the oil line is located… so the lower section is the reflection. Believe me- it was cool.

Yep, it’s the same Donald as you know.

On Sunday morning, we just went to the farmer’s market and walked around some sections of town that we hadn’t seen. Greyson demolished a box of fresh cherries….

And, I thought that I had seen it all… I’m hoping these were for dogs, not humans…. Yes, “roo” means kangaroo.

As all of our vacations seem to include these days… last stop at the park.

I really wanted to do was this scenic cruise, but time didn’t permit, and I didn’t think the kids would have lasted that long on a boat as I was afraid there may not be toilets!… Anyhow, check out the amazing views and wildlife.

Tasman Island Cruise Video 

Next up, we finally visited Sydney the other weekend, so I’ll post about our time there soon….