Tasmania Part 2

God, I am so far behind writing about all the stuff me and my Mum did (considering she has already been back in Canada for a couple of days after 3.5 weeks with me here, and I’m only just writing about our first week touring Australia). I choose to blame it on the shittiness of Australia’s Internet (quality and price) as well as the psychotic heat (+39 degrees in Melbourne today) and not on my own laziness!

Our third day out on the road in Tas, we went to Cradle Mountain for what was supposed to be a very nice 2 hour hike around Dove Lake at the bottom of the Mountain. Well, the day was a tiny bit of a disaster b/c about 8 minutes into our hike, it started pouring rain, and I mean pouring cold rain, and it never stopped! The walk was quite beautiful, but only for so long, because when you’re that wet and cold, it’s hard to give a shit about the views/landscape/plants around you. 

It sort of took me back to tree-planting in that you were soaking wet and really uncomfortable, but you had no choice but to keep moving, knowing that it was going to be a long time until you were dry again. Actually, a lot of Tasmania gave me tree-planting flashbacks b/c a big part of the island bush is re-planted trees due to the huge amounts of de-forestation that occurred in 18/1900’s. Seeing re-planted forests and tree saplings always gives me both a sickening nightmarish feeling of panic (at the thought of planting) and pride and happiness (at the thought of planting)—but that’s tree planter life for ya. We spent that night in Lanceston, the second biggest city in Tas and took ourselves out for an Indian dinner and a much needed (and deserved?) glass of vino. The one thing I say you can always rely on is that no matter what country you’re in, or how small a town is there will always be a good, reliable Indian restaurant to eat at. We saw a bad ass rainbow too!

The next day, we headed back to Hobart and then spent the afternoon at MONA (the Museum of Old and New Art) which was incredible. So here’s the deal with MONA: it is this wild art gallery built by an eccentric millionaire, David Walsh, in a really poor suburb of Hobart, one of the lowest socio-economic communities in Tasmania. This guy grew up there, pretty poor, but is some kind of genius--he has Asperger’s and is really good at counting cards (how he became a millionaire), so good in fact that he has now been banned from every major casino worldwide. Tassies refer to him as the “Great Gatsby of Hobart.” So, now that he has all this money, he built a huge elaborate art gallery with his private collection of art and opened it to the public. To get to the gallery, you take a camouflage-coloured ferryboat. 

The building itself is phenomenal—it looks like a huge bunker made of solid rock. It is actually built into the side of the cliff on the peninsula, and most of the gallery is underground with a glass spiral staircase taking you to the different floors. 

And the art collection inside is wild--they had one of Marina Abramovic’s--the Serbian “grandmother” of performance art--early video installations! I LOVE her! I wish that I could describe all the amazing installations and pieces in the gallery, but it’s so difficult to put into words b/c a lot of it is so conceptual. 

One of the coolest pieces was a water installation that rained down specific popular words taken from the news cycle. 

One room was full of 25 different television screens all with different people singing the entirety of Madonna’s “The Immaculate Collection” album. 

My favourite pieces were a room filled with 40 televisions and old couches with 40 different people all from the same small village talking about the best and worst things that have happened in their lives.  

I know that modern art installations aren’t everybody’s cup of tea b/c they usually don’t have the same aesthetic beauty that classic art does, but some pieces can be so moving and poignant and have such an intellectual impact on the observer, ugh, I just love it! Seriously, I could have spent days in that museum (especially since I realized once we were leaving that I had some how missed the room that had a number of working stomachs!) One of the coolest things about the space was that they gave you an iPod touch with all the installation/artist info on it and through the GPS on it, it would tell you what was near you and tell you all about it, and then at the end of your visit, the device would email you your own personal tour you did with all the info on the pieces that you had viewed. Such a great idea I think.

Our last full day in Tasmania, we ventured off to Wineglass Bay on the east coast, which is probably the most popular site/attraction in Tas. It is a beautiful bay at the foot of a range of mountains, and if you do a short climb up to one of the lower summits, you get a fantastic view of the crystal blue waters and white sand of the bay. 

Apparently it’s called wineglass bay b/c a long time ago, Euro settlers went about killing a whole bunch of whales in the bay and all the blood turned the water red, so the bay itself looked like a huge glass of red wine. I know, disgusting, and shameful. Don’t get me started on the fact that the Aus. Government lets Japanese whalers enter their water to murder whales. Repulsive. Sorry, rage attack side-track.

The walk up to the lookout point was full of huge round boulders, some of which were practically suspended in the air and looked like they were going to come crashing down on you (very Indiana Jones-esque) and were formed during the last ice age. 

Probably the best thing I saw though was this big ass boulder called “Sad faced rock man” which, you guessed it, looks like the face of a sad man. If you know anything about the weird sense of humour my best friend Norah and I have, you’ll know that I was immediately obsessed with this and had to document it and send it to her right away! Look at that sad faced man!

After Tas, Susie Mrk and I headed to Melbourne. Over the Christmas holidays when I was trying to pack and get everything organized, there was a part of me saying “why the hell am I doing this again?” referring to going overseas for 7 months and being away etc. (and my family probably wanted to punch me in the head). But arriving in Melbourne made all of those doubts melt away. Melbourne is such a cool city, and getting here brought me back to the feeling I got 3 years ago when I passed through this city, fell in love with it, and decided that I needed to figure out a way to come back and live here. I think my favourite thing about Melbourne is its mix of old and modern—such beautiful old architecture mixed with uber modern buildings and spaces. It is also a city of about 100 neighbourhoods, each with its own feel, which reminds me of Toronto. I love that. It was so nice to be able to show my Mum where I’m going to be spending the next few months of my life. We went to the Queen Victoria market, the State library, ate glorious food, drank amazing coffee (and went to the Australia Open and Philip Island-but that is for next post!)