Doctors Rocks - I Return To My Childhood

This post was written on the day it describes, but not posted until now as I was almost entirely in places with no WiFi as we drove around Tasmania.   I have left it as I wrote it on that day...................

This morning I had an experience that for me was unique.   

I am 74 years old, have lived in about 10 countries, went to some 14 schools, had a large collection of professions and lived in rather a lot of towns, villages and so forth, and in all of that I have so far never, ever, been back to a place I lived in, a place I have worked in, revisited an old profession or in any manner or way gone back to any earlier experiences.

It has always been my policy that once left, is always left, and so far that policy has worked well for me, even if it has made the business of regularly having to make new friends a bit exhausting.  Though the advent of Facebook has changed that last somewhat.

So what was this revolutionary experience I had this morning?  Simple enough.   We are currently driving around in Tasmania, a country where I lived for a few years back in the late ´40s of the last century, and one of the places I lived in was a farm about 15 km to the west of Burnie at a place called Doctors Rocks.

The actual Doctors Rocks is a small rocky headland just opposite the entrance to the track up to the farm and the house we used to live in.

The entrance to the farm track

This is the small headland in question, and this is the beach were at about the tender age of 7 I trod on a sting ray....

So, as we were driving past this place, I had no excuse not to stop and have a walk around and revisit for once part of my earlier life - a part that I have always remembered with affection.

It is a simple enough place, a farm at the end of a track (now sealed, but in my time, simply a dirt track) going off at right angles to the road.   Now it seems to consist of several wooden houses and a lot of modern barns set in a rather attractively wooded and up and down bit of countryside.

I am not sure if the houses that are there now were there when I lived there, as they are wooden houses, I suspect that they are not the same ones, but they seem to be in roughly the same positions relative to each other that they were in my time there.

What is possibly the house we lived in all those years ago - but if it isn't, then it is more or less identical.

The farm itself was about 2000 acres (some 800 hectares) and stretched in a relatively narrow strip back from the farm and up into the hills behind the farm.   

When we lived there, my father was working as a dentist in the nearby town of Burnie, and my mother, my 2 year old sister and my few months old brother happy passed our days in that house - well actually, I passed most of my days in a school in Burnie - more about which later in this account.

For a kid such as I, the life there was superb.   All the space in the world to run around in, small creeks to go fishing in (never caught anything apart from leeches of course), friendly farm labourers with whom to play ¨ẅho can piss higher” and rabbits to shoot every day before going to school.

On this rabbit killing bit, at that time rabbits were a major problem in Tassie, there were millions of them, as they had no natural enemies and simply bred like, well,  rabbits.

So the government had put a bounty on them, so if you turned up at a police station with their tails you were given money for each tail (I seem to remember it was a shilling per tail, but I am not sure of this).   Anyhow, what most of us kids who lived on farms did was before going to school we would go out with a .22 rifle and shoot a few rabbits, cut of their tails and sling the bodies into the chicken run and then head off to school with those tails to get our pocket money that way.

Typical Gin Trap

Whilst I was happy enough to kill rabbits, I hated the way the rabbit traps worked.  These were Gin traps that worked by a sort of spring loaded pair of heavy serrated metal jaws that closed when the rabbit (or once, my pet dog) walked on them, and grabbed the poor creature by some part of their body.   If they killed them at once I would be OK with them, but they often grabbed them by their legs, their faces, their ears or some other painful but not fatal part of their bodies… and there they were stuck until many hours later the farm labourer came around, broke their necks and took them away.

So I often went around with the guy setting these traps, so I knew where they were, and then later went around with a load of sticks and sprang as many if the traps as I could - horrible things!

And the getting to school part of the day was fun too.   What I had to do was walk down the dirt track to the road, cross it and there was a railway line (narrowish gauge) and a sort of construction for milk churns to be placed upon.   When the train duly came chugging along, I would hold out my hand the way you do for a bus, and the train would stop, I would clamber on board and off we would go to Burnie, where my school was.

Me standing on the track where I stopped the train each day....  strong wind as well!

In the afternoon, it was the reverse process.  Board the train at the station in Burnie, and when the train was almost at the place I wanted to get out, I would lean out of the carriage, wave my hand and the train would stop, I would leap down and off the train would go - to the next farm and so on…  Great fun.

At one point in the year the farm hands would burn off the grass in all the fields, which caused hundreds of scorpions and tarantula spiders to run out of the grass and onto the track, so all us farm kids would gather up a handful of these on our way down to the railway track, bung them into matchboxes and take them to school with us.

This we did as our teacher was terrified of these small (and relatively harmless) creatures, so we would agree on a signal, and at the signal we would release all of them at once - resulting in dozens of huge hairy spiders and scuttling scorpions rushing around the classroom in panic - and a teacher doing much the same.   Not kind but fun.

This school by the way I remember as follows - no idea if my memories are actually correct, but this is how I remember the state school at Upper Federal Street Burnie.

It consisted of two classrooms, and the students started in one of them, and as they progressed academically (!) they duly moved to the second classroom and stayed there until they reached the age to leave school.   There was a third room there, which was the Headmaster's office, which we only ever saw when our teachers sent us to him to be caned for some misdemeanour or other.

Not really at the cutting edge of educational thinking to put it mildly.

Anyhow, this place (Doctors Rocks, not the school) has always held a special place in my memories of my childhood, so now that I am finally back in Tasmania I felt I had to go and look at it once more.  To be honest I was concerned that it might be somewhat unnerving to be confronted with a section of my early life like this, a part that I have always looked back upon fondly.  Would the reality of the place be a serious let down?  Would it all be so much smaller and more boring than I remembered it to be?  And so on, many worries and concerns about seeing it again after some 66 years or so.

Farm seen from the road

Entrance to farm track

View from farm, this is the track I walked down and up every school day

Happily, whilst I did recognise the place totally, I found it interesting to see, and recall my life there, but in no way disturbing or unsettling.   Just curious to stand beside the now disused railway track at the spot I used to stand all those years ago, look at the bit of the beach where once, while paddling I stepped on a sting ray (it was as frightened as I was and hurtled off to sea, as I hurtled off to shore), contemplate the section that the farm labourers used to go to when they panned for gold (for beer money) and to look back up the track to where the houses nestled in their trees and remember how I learned to ride a bike up there (the daughter of another family who lived there taught me on her huge bicycle).  In passing I would mention that they lived on the other side of a small field from our house, and once when on my way to their house I managed to fall face first into a fresh cowpat…   Not to be recommended!

Standing in the rain beside that railway track all these memories and many others came flooding back in a manner that most people who do return to places they lived in earlier would find normal, but for me was a completely new experience - unsettling and a feeling of tristesse I think best describes it.   Odd and interesting.

Lotty wanted me to go and knock on the doors of the houses there, and introduce myself, but I found that I did not want to do this, that would have been going too far for me - my memories are enough, and have no need for other people's input or interpretation.

Roadkill - The Depressing Side Of Driving In Oz

One of the most distressing aspects of doing much driving in rural Australia - which includes Tasmania obviously- is the high rate of road kill here.  When driving outside cities or largish towns for every kilometer one drives, one will see probably two or three dead animals that have been hit by cars during the night.  

Every sort of wild creature that lives here is represented in this depressing parade of corpses - kangaroos, wombats, crows, ichidnas, wallabies and so on, literally every sort of wild animal will be seen sooner or later lying dead in the road or on the edge of the road.

As far as I can see, no one clears away their corpses, as one sees them in all states of decay.   From freshly killed to a bag of skin around a skeleton and all stages of putrefaction in between.

The crows are obviously very happy with this state of affairs, as it represents a continuous source of easy food for them to gobble up, and being crows they generally judge to a second how long they can stay eating as a car approaches, only leaping away at the last minute - or slowly stalking away in time for the car to pass harmlessly, before returning to their feast.

Even they miscalculate on occasion and end up as a sad bundle of disordered feathers lying next to their last meal - sad to see.

In the last few weeks we have camped in parts of Tassie that are famous for the high numbers of Tasmanian Devils that live there, and hunt every night, so we had hoped both to see and hear them while we were there - but nope, the only one we came across was a very dead one on the road..  Another victim of the car.

It is not for nothing that someone years ago produced a book called ¨Flattened Fauna of Australia¨, made up of photos of all the different types of animals and birds this amazing country has, but all as corpses on the road.

So, as I said, seeing this mass of dead creatures when driving is deeply saddening, but a very typical aspect of this country - always has been and probably always will be.

Tasmanian Country Towns - Odd Places

As we have been driving around Tassie, we have obviously occasionally passed through or spent nights in a variety of small country towns - as opposed to Hobart which whilst it has a slightly provincial feel to it, is not a small town.

All these towns had a number of things in common we have found, namely they are extremely friendly to strangers such as us, they are all remarkably sleepy and they tend to have very wide and underused streets. By the last point I mean that one can wander around in the middle of the road with almost no chance of getting hit by one or other of the various Utes (flat bed vans) that are the main form of transport in these areas.

 

Another thing they seem to have in common is pie shop/bakeries. Pies, mainly beef ones, but there are a plethora of other types, form a very important part of Aussie public eating, and in all the small country towns we have stopped in, there would always be at least one pie bakery in the middle of the high street offering a wide assortment of meat pies cooked in the place and coffee.

We tried a number of these pies, and by and large they are delicious I have to say, My favourite being what is called a Chunky Beef Pie. The name says it all, it is filled with a delicious mix of reasonably large chunks of well cooked beef in a rich gravy with a variety of vegetables as well.. A total meal in one pie. As you will see from the photo, they are about the right size for a filling meal for one adult.

Funnily enough, those country villages we came across that seem to consist of nothing more than a single short main street with a general store/garage/news agent/pub all in one shop radiated a much more energetic feeling of being alive than their slightly larger counterparts and looked like they might be fun to live near to.
 

Actually, all over Tassie we found that those houses and farms stuck well away from any towns or villages all seemed to have a sort of friendly and chaotic feel to them, as well as often a very iconoclastic attitude to how gardens and houses ¨should¨ be, which appealed to us a lot. Not being too fond of neat, we enjoyed seeing such things as these two past their sell by date vehicles simply turned into sort of totem poles and simply stuck on top of large tree stumps (and in passing, noticed that their letter box was also a small vehicle stuck on top of a post).

We saw many examples of this sort of thinking all over Tassie in the country, and liked it a lot, obviously the independent thinking that Australia was famous for is alive and well in the Tasmanian countryside if not in its towns.

Mount Fields National Park - Our First Walks In The Forest

So, we had managed to drive our wobbly camper van to the camp site of the Mount Fields National Park, which is relatively close to Hobart - about a couple of hours drive, and we settled ourselves in and connected our 220 volt cable so that we could use all the amazing gadgets in our camper and settled back to enjoy our first night away from our hotel in Hobart..

.

When we finally awoke at about 8 am the following morning, we decided to start our day with the joy of a hot shower, which is exactly what we did.   All good so far.

We then decided that it would be a good idea for us to have a go at one of the walks offered in the forests all around us, so off we set on what was said to be a 6 km walk encompassing three waterfalls and a load of trees.

The general forest was superb, semi-tropical in nature, full of tree ferns and similar soggy ground plants, and also the most incredible gum trees, apparently the tallest flowering trees in the world (as opposed ot the California Redwoods which are pine trees, and thus not flowering, they have cones instead).    But these superb trees in this forest, reaching heights of up to 99 meters (over 300 feet for you who don't yet use meters) were astounding to gaze up at, and impossible to photograph as they were simply too big.    If you can imagine a normal gum tree, but about 250 feet tall, everything in the normal proportions, well that is what these monsters looked like.    Perfectly normal trees, just absurdly big.

The forest was a delight to mooch along in, nothing too strenuous for a couple of ancients such as us, almost no other walkers, so it was easy to completely lose oneself in the calm and gentle atmosphere of the forest.  A total pleasure.

And as the finishing touch, we had the three waterfalls, all of which were simply superb, not huge, but going like the clappers and making that wonderful noise that waterfalls make.

Then that night another joy was given to us, herds of a small version of Kangaroo, known as a Pademelon (why on earth they have this name is beyond me), which are basically a fox terrier sized kangaroo, with black fur, suddenly appeared grazing all over the place, and being a part of Australia, of course quite a few Possums also wandered around the place.

Many of the Pademelons had babies, either peering out of their pouches or if a bit bigger, dashing about the place feeding themselves happily…   A great sight to behold all in all.

And that was our day in the National Park…  More to follow in due time.

The Great Day Dawns - Off At Last

After our pleasant and relaxed few days in Hobart, it was time to go back to the airport and go and pick up our camper wagon from Hertz.

On arriving at Hertz we were shown our new home on wheels, a most unlikely and ungainly looking wee beast it was too.

Basically it was a Toyota Hilux pick up truck with a small caravan fixed onto its load tray by means of thick chains and bottle screws - as you can see in the photo below.

After a long discussion with the friendly Hertz lady about insurance and own risk and all the normal things that car hire places always hide in the small print when shouting about their hire vehicles costing only $39 a day, we got down to cases.  Which if we wished to avoid an own risk of - in this case - $5000 for any damage caused to the vehicle while we were in charge of it would cost us an extra $500 on top of the basic hire price of $1088 for the three weeks we wanted the thing for.

Oh well, no real surprises here.

So we agreed, signed on the various dotted lines, and were introduced to our new home.

We were given a sort of somewhat rough and ready run down of the most important things we needed to know about it - well, most of them, but not all as we discovered as we rolled along the roads later. 

And so off we went, to experience the freedom of the road that such a camper might mean...   

And discovered within the first 100 meters that it was a scary and wobbly thing to drive.   When we hit the first bend in the road I realised that it was certainly not a Mini, and as the whole thing rolled alarmingly as I negotiated the bend it dawned on me that I might well have chewed off rather more than I could handle..  

However, I slowly became comfortable with it, and learned how to handle it without too much worry.

More About MONA

Something else I forgot to mention about MONA is the astonishing fact that entry is free for all Tasmanians and anyone under the age or 18 - no matter where they come from.

Isnt that amazing?

MONA - Perhaps The Best Art Museum In The world!

Today we went to a museum that is known as MONA just outside Hobart, which translated stands for the Museum of Old and New Art and speaking as one who has been to modern art museums all over the place, I have to say that this one is probably the best by a heck of a long way of all the ones I have seen.

It has the most eclectic collection of art, and true to its name, it has objects ranging from ancient Egypt to things made a few weeks ago.

But curiously, it has almost nothing from the impressionists, or any of the various types of art that flourished in the 20th century - nary a Picasso or Surrealist in sight, nor any of the later 20th century artists... no Pollock, nor Warhol either.

But I actually found this to be a pleasant change, as to be honest, I had never heard of any of the artists whose work is in this incredible collection, which meant I was able to approach them without any preconceptions, which I found a very liberating experience.  I was thus able to judge each piece simply on how it effected me, and not be influenced by any baggage caused by knowledge of the artist concerned.

And what makes it even more amazing is the setting of this museum, which basically is all underground.   If you follow the link I shall be placing below, you will see what I mean about both the art in the collection, and the amazing setting too.

All that you see when you approach the front door of this museum is a low and rather unimpressive building of no great architectural value, but once you get inside this building and discover where the actual museum is placed, it dawns on you that you are about to have a serious experience.

There are four floors to this museum, the first being on the ground level, the other three being below ground. Basically what it is is a huge hole dug in the solid sandstone that the ground is made up of, so as you will see in the video, the walls are simply beautifully carved sandstone.   

The actual exhibition is spread all over these three underground floors in a very complex fashion, causing one to go up and down between levels, many of the actual ¨rooms¨ are in a series of black rooms that are interjoined in complicated ways, so wandering around is an experience in itself.

I shan't discuss the works on show too much, as the video shows a good selection of them, and gives a very good idea of how and with what the museum is made up of.   Also I can recommend that you read the text, as it also gives a very good idea of the atmosphere of this highly irreverent museum.    

The sign that you will see that says GOD, is the parking place of the Director of the museum, and next to it is a sign saying GOD´Ś MISTRESS, which is the parking space for the woman who is actually his wife, and one of the main curators of the museum...  This sort of sets the tone of this museum.

All good fun in fact.

We were both totally exhausted by the time we left, having arrived at about 9 am and left at 3 pm, a very intense experience.

Here is the link I mentioned, I highly recommend watching it as it gives a truly good impression of the place, and is fascinating too.  Link: https://mona.net.au/museum/introduction

To avoid confusion, you simply need to scroll down to see all that it has to offer.......

We also took the time out to eat a very good meal in one of the restaurants there, delicious food well served and goodly in quantity.

The other thing that was remarkable about this day was how we actually got to the museum, we went on a gigantic motorised catamaran, painted for some enigmatic reason in naval dazzle camouflage colours.   A pleasant way to get from the centre of Hobart to the rather distant museum.

So that is how we have passed our third day here in the happy land of Tasmania, tomorrow we go back to the airport and pick up our camper and head off into the blue on the next part of our intrepid expedition into the hinterland of the world´s most southerly inhabited country.

So, watch this space for the next bit..........

Being Efficient In Hobart

It´s my turn now (Lotty), using Tony´s computer which is proving to be an experience in itself.  I am guessing Tony has heavy and acidic fingers :)

We have passed a pleasant day in Hobart: planning where to go for the first few days as we get used to our mobile home, writing and posting our Christmas cards.  I printed out 50, but if you don't receive one, it´a not because we don´t love you!!

We have also booked ourselves onto the ferry to take us to the MONA Museum tomorrow.  The final thing we achieved was some basic shopping ready for the camp van ....have to admit it did require a ´healthy´ discussion, but it is done and wasn´t tooooo painful in the end :)  Thanks Tony!

We have definitely joined a diverse throng of tourists here, everyone you can imagine!  Makes great people watching, including the Tassie natives.  Love it.  Strolling along, the buildings are a history book in themselves, but there are other sights that stop one too.

Great!! I have finally found a ´real´ one, rather than a FB posting:  

Donate to give someone a coffee or a meal!

As a country lass, I have revelled in the trees here .....there are enormous trees clearly growing in fertile soil and planted a long time ago judging by the width of trunks.  To my joy, I found linden trees in blossom - I stood under one and breathed deeply, oh bliss.  I always dreamed that the place we retired to would be shadowed by such a tree - not possible in the subtropics!!  I have also found, sweet chestnuts, horse chestnuts, enormous oaks, copper beech, graceful silver birch ..... magnificent elms! Could these have been planted by members of the First Fleet?

Linden tree

Blossom

Copper beech, and maybe a huge ash -
 though I am not sure they grow so 
large, the leaf is right

Silver birch

Sweet chestnut

We´ve drunk too much coffee these past two days, so Tony is a little fragile and will probably miss supper again, while I am sitting in the hostel lounge surrounded by tantalising supper smells wafting from the communal kitchen!  I will let Tony describe the hostel in due course.

Well, Day One Has Happened - We Are Now In Hobart!!!

After a very early start to the day, in my case (Tony speaking here) I awoke at about 4 am for some reason to discover that it was pouring with rain and lightening and thunder were making the start to the day more than a little alarming.

But all was well, and the weather settled down quite quickly and became another hot and sticky day.

We did the last few things had a decent and enjoyable breakfast and bid Jake and the boys a cheerful goodbye and in due time Elaine pitched up to take us to the airport - a really enjoyable and relaxed drive, non-stop chat and laughter all the way.

Duly arrived at the airport, bid Elaine a happy goodbye and went into the airport to check in and all such things..

All went smoothly until I was pinged by the metal detectors - my steel toe capped boots were the cause of that small alert.

And then we found ourselves on the plane, yet another 737-800 - I seem doomed to spend large sections of my life on this type of plane - especially when we flew domestically in Angola.

Anyhow, an uneventful trip, even if the landing was a wee bit hairy - very rapid approach and huge bumps on landing.

And then we were in Tasmania!!!!!!!!!!!!

Spent the afternoon wandering around Hobart, eating fish and chips, drinking coffee and getting tourist info - all this after checking into our friendly wee hotel.

Tomorrow we shall give some thought to what we will actually do while we are in Tasmania - we will be in Hobart until Friday morning, and then we will pick up our camper wagon and hit the road...

Watch this space........................................

Just Before We Leave

Two days before we depart.  A couple of lists made, nothing packed, though new socks bought. Aha, we have a lift to the airport on Tuesday morning - friends are so kind and generous.  Some of the housecleaning has started.  Will have to take the stack of Christmas cards with me ......no time!!
Am so excited!