We went for dinner at a Japanese izakaya named Bar Wa. We started with their house made pickles.
Next we savored kingfish and trout sashimi.
Bar Wa Izakaya was Pete’s favorite meal on Tasmania, including the skewers of pork belly, chicken and asparagus.
The four of us reminisced about our 2013 trip to Japan where we had enjoyed several delicious okonomiyaki, savory pancakes, like this one.
The next morning we explored Hobart. The Tasman Fountain is a monument to Abel Tasman, the Dutch explorer who “discovered” the island in 1624 and named it Van Diemen’s Land (after the Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies who financed Tasman’s voyage). Tasmania’s name was officially changed in 1856, and the Aussies like to shorten the names of everything, so they call it Tas or Tassie.
Sealers and whalers settled around Hobart in the early 1800s, and convict transportation from England also increased the population.
Hobart is known for its well-preserved historic architecture, much of it dating back to the Georgian and Victorian eras.
It was fun to wander around, looking at the buildings and parks.
Tas was about ten degrees cooler than Melbourne, giving Patty the perfect reason to buy a new cute wool hat.
Hobart is the capital of Tas and the most populated city on the island state, but it felt small with its population of 225,000.
We had lunch in Hobart.
In our rental car we drove north to Launceston, the second largest city on Tas. We stopped close to the center of Launceston, at the Cataract River Gorge.
We skipped the disappointing chair lift and instead took a nice walk. This is the Alexandra Suspension Bridge.
Kristina put on her NZ possum and merino hat to keep her head warm as we strolled.
The pathway dates back to the 1890s and runs along the South Esk River as well as through Cataract Gorge. The lake is 36 meters deep and was formed by erosion of two intersecting faults.
We were impressed by the enormous Dolerite boulders we saw lining the lake.
This is a red spider lily, which is in the amaryllis family.
Cataract Gorge was a good spot for wildlife viewing too. This red-necked wallaby was calmly eating as we watched.
Pete was even able to get a selfie with the wallaby.
We also saw this pair of black swans.
And this is a masked lapwing.
The next day we drove on the Great Eastern Drive to the southern edge of the Bay of Fires and stopped at Binalong Bay.
We all loved the gorgeous beach, with its white sand and turquoise water.
Patty thought Binalong Bay was gorgeous in the sunlight. Bill noticed that the sand squeaked when we walked barefoot on it and it felt soft.
The granite boulders on the beach had orange colored lichen growing on them.
For lunch we went to nearby Lichen Cafe and had wonderful salad topped with blue-eye trevalla fish that had been caught off the southern shore of Tas.
We saw cyclists enjoying the Great Eastern Drive too, and were impressed that in Tas the law is to give cyclists 1.5 meters to pass, which is 50% more space than California law specifies.
Our Melbourne friend Paul had told us about Middle Aged Men in Lycra (MAMILs) and we learned there’s a movie about them too.
The next morning we spotted a galah across from our B&B. Galahs are in the cockatoo family.
We also spotted a few noisy miners, which are a type of honeyeater that's endemic to southeastern Australia and Tasmania.
We drove to Freycinet National Park, which was founded in 1916 as the first Tas national park.
In this photo Pete was looking at Coles Bay from atop a huge granite boulder. He was surprised to learn that Tasmania is the 2nd driest state in Australia (after Adelaide).
Orthoclase, a pink felspar, gives the mountains their characteristic pink tint. Black micas and white quartz are also found in Freycinet NP. Famous features of the park include its red and pink granite formations and a series of jagged granite peaks in a line called The Hazards.
The rock about to crush Pete sure looked like a hazard.
Oh no, what happened to Pete’s head?
No worries, mate!
Our goal was to hike six kilometers up and over to secluded Wineglass Bay and back, so we set off with water and sandwiches. The well-maintained path alternated between dirt and stone steps.
By the end we would climb the equivalent of 83 flights of stairs.
These seed pods are on a Banksia marginata tree, which is in the heath family.
Kristina took a break on this comfortable bench entitled Saddle Seat. It was designed in 2000 by two architecture students.
From the top we got our first view of Wineglass Bay.
We climbed down to it.
It was a lovely beach, and we appreciated it even more since we had to hike in to see it.
It wasn’t that hot, but Pete jumped in and swam in Wine Glass Bay.
After relaxing and eating our sandwiches we hiked back up to the top.
And down the other side.
Patty asked us to sit on this stone bench “throne” for a photo.
This pile of sticks represents a white-bellied sea eagle nest. The rangers had built it using the walking sticks left by people at the end of the trail, to make the point that humans are making it harder for the sea eagles to find nesting materials.
We celebrated our hike with dessert at Kates Berry Farm.
The next day we drove to Port Arthur, the former convict settlement 1830-1877 on the Tasmanian Peninsula that is now an open air museum. This building was the penitentiary.
We learned that at its peak there were 2,000 repeat offenders housed at Port Arthur, and that there were beautiful gardens for the people who ran the prison.
It was raining off and on during our visit. We took a boat tour to see the remaining buildings from the water.
The church was completed by the convicts in 1837, and it was used for compulsory religious services for the inmates.
The shell of the building was quite beautiful.
We finished our road trip around Tas by visiting the Museum of Old and New (MONA) near Hobart to see their Skyspace.
Designed by James Turrell and built in 2015, Amarna Skyspace is ideally experienced at sunrise and sunset.
Both Pete and Bill tried lying down and watching the sky change in relation to the lights and the setting sun.
This was the view from their vantage point.
After viewing Amarna we had dinner at the MONA restaurant. Bill was surprised by the variety of restaurants and quality of food we had on Tas, given that it felt relatively rural and not cosmopolitan.
We enjoyed Amarna so much that we returned at sunrise to watch the light show. This was Kristina’s favorite thing we did on Tas.
We flew from Hobart to Sydney. Our Airbnb was located on a small one-way street with trees beginning to show their autumn colors.
We were welcomed into our Airbnb with this sign and cool photo of a koala bear.
The building had been a tram workshop in the 19th century, and was recently converted into residential condominiums.
It was a comfortable place to stay, and we made breakfast and dinner most days.
We went out for great meals while in Sydney. Patty’s favorite meal was Mercado for the nice atmosphere and oysters.
We all liked the baked carrots served with rotisserie chicken and chard with chick peas.
We visited the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia and saw the 21st Biennial exhibit. This is Shellworked Slippers by an Australian Aboriginal artist named Esme Timbery.
Here’s a close up of the slippers.
Philippines artist Maria Taniguchi’s sculpture entitled Runaways was made of Java plum wood.
And in Waiting Game the Hong Kong artist Nicole Wong used a 20-sided die to determine the size of each circle.
We went for lunch at Long Chim. The restaurant has cool art celebrating Thailand on its walls.
We had eaten at David Thompson’s Nahm in Bangkok, so we were looking forward to trying his home country restaurant.
The dishes were spicy and delicious, making it Bill’s favorite meal in Sydney.
Patty liked Gelato Messina’s raspberry and chocolate sorbets. She’s holding Bill’s pistachio and chocolate fondant cone, too.
We went to Bondi Icebergs Pool to swim right on the beach.
At high tide the waves crash right into the pool, which was thrilling and made it challenging to swim.
Patty’s favorite thing we did in Sydney was Bondi Icebergs because she got to swim in the ocean and the water was not too cold. In this photo she’s waving by the ladder while the waves were buffeting her.
Bill opted out of swimming and instead enjoyed looking at Icebergs and Bondi while we swam. He took some nice photos like this one.
Then we all hiked the Coastal Trail from Bondi beach to Tamarama beach.
The sandstone rocks carved by wind and waves were wonderful.
Next we shared fermented potato bread with trout roe and kefir cream.
The green lip abalone was first tossed with different sauces, then eaten with hand cut noodles.
We loved how they roasted the cauliflower then served it with wattle seed and mint.
The grouper tail was roasted on the bone and served with smoked whey butter. It was amazing.
Our favorite meal in Sydney was at Ester.
The four of us took a Sydney Harbor Cruise and the weather was perfect.
There was just enough breeze to keep us cool.
It’s always interesting to see a city from the water, and Sydney has a big harbor. We got lots of different views of the Harbor Bridge.
The bridge is nicknamed "The Coathanger" because of its arch-based design.
Another iconic view was of the Sydney Opera House from the water.
Toward sunset we walked across the Sydney Harbor Bridge.
The views of the opera house were fantastic.
We took a tour of the opera house. We were excited to see Danish architect Jørn Utzon’s modern expressionist design close up, with its iconic shell roofs.
While the shells appear uniformly white from a distance, they actually feature a subtle chevron pattern and are composed of 1,056,006 tiles in glossy white and matte cream. The tiles were manufactured in Sweden.
Utzon’s design had been chosen in 1957, but it took until 1973 for the building to be completed. The architect also had the vision to have as much glass as possible, to allow for views of the harbor. Utzon won the Pritzker prize for Architecture in 2003.
The cast concrete shell shape is visible in this photo of the interior. The Sydney Opera House was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2007, and it’s the 100th UNESCO site we’ve visited.
The Opera House tour was Bill's favorite activity in Sydney because it enabled him to hear interesting stories about its history. Apparently during a performance of the opera Boris Godunov that featured live chickens, their on-stage pen was accidentally opened and the birds were roaming around the stage until they got scared by the cymbal crashes and one chicken even landed on top of a cellist! This is why nets were installed above the orchestra pit in the Joan Sutherland Theatre. Pictured below is the Concert Hall, the largest performance space in the Opera House.
What a wonderful time we had traveling for three weeks in Australia with Kristina’s folks!
Next Patty and Bill fly back to San Diego, and we fly to Kyoto.