Hobart

Thoughts on Location No 27

Hobart, South Coast, Tasmania

After spending six nights in Hobart, I’m surprised the time flew by so fast.  It seems that we didn’t do much during our stay, but looking back, we did fit in a lot.

• I did the shopping, grocery shopping that is, to stock up on supplies.
• We went to the movies to watch the latest Avengers instalment.
• Took a day trip down to the South Arm as well as a trip up Mount Wellington.
• We had a couple of days where we sat in our mini home freezing while the temperature plummeted and the weather turned nasty.
• We visited the Cadbury Chocolate Factory and the whole time I had “Wouldn’t it be nice” go around and around in my head, and
• Dean went for a surf – see the report on the Surfing page.

Taking all of that a little further: 

Shopping for groceries was a treat after being in St Helens without a major food chain for eight weeks.  Some of the items on offer were what I can only describe as ‘questionable’.  Overpriced fruit and vegetables and no butcher in town, it explains why the St Helenians prefer to drive over 160 kilometres to Launceston (99.7 miles) to buy their groceries.  Shopping at Woolworths in Hobart, I felt like royalty.

It was lovely to sit in a theatre and watch a movie.  Dean and I have always been big movie buffs and this was the first time we’ve been to the movies since January.  We used to go once a week or so (depending on what was showing).

Our day trip down to South Arm was interesting and Dean revelled in the chance to gaze upon some of the surfing beaches in the area.  South Arm itself is well-known.  Walking in the snow on Mount Wellington was exciting and exhilarating and the view from Phoenix Rock was terrific. Phoenix Rock was a 20 minutes walk from where we left the car.

Sitting in our mini home during the wild weather was not exhilarating and because the weather turned nasty, coupled with the predicted second cold front due to follow, we made the decision that we wouldn’t venture any further south.

Visiting the Cadbury Chocolate Factory was a different experience as it would have been nice to tour the factory. Tours stopped eight years ago, so our $4.00 entry fee enabled us to sit a watch a video about the chocolate making process.  I did buy a pen and a Cadbury cap, both equally as purple as a Dairy Milk Chocolate wrapper and love both of them.

There was the opportunity to buy cheap chocolate, but Dean said it wasn’t that cheap after adding the $8.00 in cost us to enter the Visitor Centre.  That didn’t stop me buying a few bars.

As for Dean going for a surf.  I thought he was absolutely crazy, but he said it would have been a shame to be there and not get into the water.  The water was freezing at 13.4° C (56° F) and simply standing on the beach taking photos was cold enough for me.

If I could choose one word to sum up our stay in Hobart, it would be “Rainbows”.

Now I know that a rainbow is “merely an optical and meteorological phenomenon caused by reflection, refraction and dispersion of light in water droplets resulting in a spectrum of light appearing in the sky that usually takes the form of an arc“. But there is something special going on around Hobart.

Perhaps it’s the right amount of moisture in the air – there certainly was enough rain about, or perhaps it’s the low trajectory of the Sun at this time of year – it currently rises slightly north of north-east and sets slightly north of north-west, but every day, every corner we turned, there was a rainbow arcing across the sky with a promise of brighter days to come.

But we left Hobart behind yesterday (Monday, May 11, 2015), too impatient to wait any longer for better weather.  We are now only a short drive up the Derwent Valley at New Norfolk.  Stay tuned for an update on where we went as soon as we arrived here. 

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We stayed at the Barilla Holiday Park in Cambridge on the north side of Hobart, just a short drive away from the city centre.  Not that we spent much time in the city, but we felt close to everything, away from the noise of traffic and other sounds associated with being in the ‘city’.

The park was nice enough with hedges grown around the sites to add an element of privacy, though they were only waist-high, and the staff/owners were very friendly.

I’d recommend the park to anyone looking for somewhere to stay in Hobart.

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