Fires, Markets and Museums

Tasmania, like a fair bit of Victoria, has been on fire this last week. I mean forest fires, of course ("Bushfires" in the vernacular).

It hasn't been a problem too close to Hobart, but enough for us to have a haze across the city and a smell too, last weekend. The fires are much worse up on the north east - Scamander has had a few houses destroyed (I drove through there when I moved here).

The Haze last weekend - as seen from our kitchen:


The view from our house at night is great, too. It doesn't come out too well without a good long zoom, but you might get the idea from this photo:


Last weekend we had a look at the excellent Salamanca Market (walking distance from our house)


Then went on to the equally impressive Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, which had a great Antarctic exhibition.
When we left the museum I noticed the architectural variety on the doorstep ... this photo shows (left-to-right), late 20th century "government building", followed by a kind of New York pastiche, then 19th Century Colonial, and nearest the camera a classic Moderne/Art Deco. style newspaper press building. Interesting, eh?


We didn't get to do much walking, that's our big plan for xmas ... a long walk.

This weekend there will be mates of mine (Alec and Dave) arriving from the UK. Should be fun.

Here's a snap of me halfway up Mount Wellington a couple of weeks ago:


Ciao for now!

Settling in

We're settling into life in Tasmania very nicely. We moved into a 3 bed house a couple of weeks ago. Hobart is extremely hilly, and our place is near the top of one of the hills. This makes it a strenuous walk (or run) home, but affords a superb view of the City and the Derwent river.

Here's the house (north facing to enjoy the Southern Hemisphere sun):


Here's the view:

If you look closely you might see the Tasman Bridge that crosses the Derwent which is 1/4 mile wide at its narrowest point in Hobart. From Hobart it opens out into Storm Bay and the Tasman Sea. We can see the boats and ships coming in and out of Hobart.

I've been mostly getting used to work. I walk in (2.8km) and run home (most evenings), which is definitely keeping me fit. The temperatures fluctuate like it does on all good islands. We've had temperatures between 6 C in the morning up to 26 C in the afternoon in the past two weeks. Ella doesn't know if she's coming or going. There's an assumption from many mainland Aussies that Hobart is dark, cold and rainy ... ok it has daylight saving (it's light until 9pm at the moment) so it might be dark early-ish in the winter, but it only gets 600mm rain/year which is about the same as Lincolnshire, making it the driest State capital in Australia.

We've made the effort to go walking at weekends, Mount Wellington has loads of options, and we've tried a couple. Here I am next to an aqueduct on the "Pipeline Track" which runs to Mount Wellington Falls.



I've yet to see a living Tasmanian Devil ... just dead ones on the road, unfortunately, and signs:


Last week we had a nice house warming party with a few people from work. Comments were passed on the number of cars outside our house which had roof-racks ... mine was the only one without. This is because everybody here has a kayak or bike (or both) that they stick on the roof and take to beautiful places.

This Saturday night is the work Xmas do, which involves free alcohol all night - should be fun!

I'll try and get back soon to update with our Xmas plans etc.