Tasmania is the roadkill capital of Australia,” says Des, my taxi driver, as we head from the airport to downtown Hobart.
“RSPCA Tasmania reckons that around 30 animals are killed every hour on our roads. We don’t have many of the predators found on the mainland, such as foxes, and our native marsupial populations are incredibly dense.
“Possums, wombats, pademelons, wallabies and other animals emerge from the lush grasslands and forest close to our roads and come down to drink from the asphalt run-offs. It is often the last thing they do.”
It’s a somewhat cheerless start to my visit to the state’s picturesque and quirky capital, but ‘Des’ quickly follows up with more uplifting news.
Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary
“The flip side to this is we are also the animal rescue centre of Australia.
“Many drivers will stop if they hit a marsupial, to check if there is a baby joey in its mother’s pouch. If there is they will call a wildlife rescue centre, which will collect it.”
There are several such animal sanctuaries on the island and one that welcomes tourists is Bonorong, located around 30 minutes north of the city.
It is a facility that rehabilitates the injured animals and, where appropriate, releases them back into the wild. It is also a responsible place for visitors to view Australia’s native animals.
I meet a cohort of animal carers and guides, who are keen to stress they work in a rescue facility “not a zoo”.
They care for residents that include wombats, spotted-tail quolls, snakes, wedge-tailed eagles, cockatoos, owls and several others.
There’s also a mob of lively kangaroos – guests receive a bag of food to feed them from the palms of their hands. I tentatively hold out my offering, and a soft, fleshy tongue quickly laps it up.
But for most visitors, the headline act is the Tasmanian Devils. I watch as the creature – so named because of its late-night shrieks that so unsettled early European settlers – scuttles around its custom-built enclosure.
“Don’t be fooled by what looks like an angry scowl. They are shy and will always choose to run away and hide from humans – but you wouldn’t want to put your fingers or toes anywhere close to them,” advises my guide.
In 2018 Bonorong opened Tasmania’s first wildlife hospital and, through a viewing area with one-way glass, I watch the veterinary care team at work as it tends to a bandicoot that I am told was injured by a dog.
Leaving Bonorong, I head to another of Tassie’s star attractions: the Museum of Old and New Art, or MONA.
“Best climate in Australia”
On the way, Des enthuses about his island home so passionately that he leaves me eagerly anticipating my four days in what is the last of Australia’s states and territories I have to visit.
“We have the best climate in Oz. We enjoy a temperate climate and are cooled by the ocean – and we don’t have hurricanes, flooding or extreme heat,” he says, as we cross the Tasman Bridge.
My first impressions are certainly positive. This is a city that is defined by water: its 250,000 population is squeezed into a narrow slice of land, framed on one side by the deepwater River Derwent estuary, which connects directly to the Southern Ocean and is today dotted with sailboats and ferries.
On the city’s other extreme is Mount Wellington, which is splashed with houses that cling to the steep slopes.
Located in the suburb of Berriedale and sitting on a strip of land next to the water’s edge, MONA is one of the country’s most eclectic, provocative (and thus controversial) art museums.
The building itself is an architectural wonder, carved into a sandstone cliff.
Once inside, the random collection of exhibits – a mix of contemporary and ancient art, artifacts and memorabilia – is homed in a subterranean setting of caves and corridors.
I explore the various floors, browsing exhibits that include sculptures, paintings, manuscripts, historically significant letters and more.
In a small room, a film of the miners’ strike in 1970s Britain – a union-busting conflict between Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and miners’ leader Arthur Scargill – and the police’s no-nonsense (read violent) approach to ending it, is playing on a loop.
Elsewhere, there are explicit artworks that explore themes of nudity and bodily functions, sex and death. MONA sets out to disorientate and shock, and it does that in spades. I find it an interesting but at times jarring experience.
Needing a little respite from the challenging exhibits I head down to the bowels of the museum and lay back on a beanie bag as an Aboriginal guitarist-singer tunefully performs songs that visitors request by punching in numbers in a juke box.
I stay until he gets to my request and applaud after a fine version of Mr Jones by Counting Crows.
“I love that song. But you are one to ever to ask for it,” he tells me.
As I wait for the MONA ferry that zips visitors back to the city centre in around 20 minutes, I enjoy my first glass of Tasmanian wine, a crisp and dry Riesling from the on-site Morrilla winery.
There’s a queue for the tasting room at the cellar door, so instead I order a second glass from MONA’s al fresco bar and sit in its extensive gardens looking over to Hobart’s skyline.
Islington Hotel
Back in the city, I walk from the waterfront, past the popular Salamanca Place, with its Georgian sandstone warehouses filled with galleries, market stalls, gift shops and pubs, up to the southern suburbs that fan out from the centre.
My accommodation is the Islington Hotel, a heritage-listed property dating back to 1847 that is surrounded by lush, tropical gardens and provides an elegant escape from the city.
A member of Small Luxury Hotels of the World, it retains many of its original elements, such as the fireplace and cedar staircase.
Guests dine in a new conservatory wing, with dishes prepared by a chef who prepares locally-sourced ingredients in an open-plan kitchen.
The manager, Karen-Anne, tells me that a possum lives in the eave and roof cavity above my room and not to be alarmed if I hear him scurrying around.
Sure enough, just as I am dropping off around midnight, I hear the patter of tiny feet. Interestingly, I find its presence surprisingly comforting. It feels like I am somewhere different. It feels like I am in Australia.
“He is nocturnal and that time is the morning rush hour when he wakes up and starts moving around,” Karen-Anne tells me over breakfast.
Aboriginal history
On my last day in Hobart, I point myself downhill and stroll through an attractive and peaceful pathway that starts close to the hotel and winds along a small rivulet (creek) that meanders through lush forest.
There are signs that say “don’t feed the platypus”, a creature I remember from an early biology class as one of few mammals that lays eggs instead of giving birth to live young.
I stare down into the creek, but the creature remains elusive.
The path leads to the edge of downtown, where I meet up with Blak Led Tours, which runs walking tours of Hobart that discusses the city from an Aboriginal perspective.
Nunami is a passionate and engaging guide.
Aboriginal sovereignty over Hobart was never ceded…no treaty transferring land to the Crown was ever signed,” she tells my small group, by way of an introduction.
Over the next 90 minutes, she takes around the city centre, pointing out buildings, streets and monuments that have a place in the city’s Indigenous heritage.
Nunami describes “white settlement” as “an invasion” and narrates a story of exploitation and betrayal. She explains about the Black War, a violent period of frontier conflict (1824-1832) between British colonists and Indigenous Aboriginal Tasmanians in what was then called Van Diemen’s Land, which resulted in the devastation of the island’s ‘black’ population.
We visit Franklin Square, where 40 Aboriginal leaders once arrived in good faith to negotiate with the Governor of the day, but were seized, held and eventually shipped off to a prison on Flinders Island in the Bass Strait.
Outside the Museum and Art Gallery, Nunami points to a plaque. “Fanny Smith was a revered Palawa (Tasmanian Aboriginal) who preserved our language and songs. We celebrate her today as a resilient survival icon and continue her legacy. She was also my ancestral grandmother,” she tells us.
Scratchy recordings of Fanny Smith’s songs, along with two dedicated galleries that tell the Aboriginal story, are available inside the museum.
Nunam ends on an upbeat and determined note, telling us that over the last 15 years or so some Hobart place and streets names have been changed to Aboriginal ones.
“Tasmania was the first Australian state to say ‘sorry’ (for abuse of Aboriginals) and in 1995 the first lands were returned, including Oyster Cove. But less than 1% of land has been returned. Our culture is strong and gets stronger every year. We are playing the long game and will never give up. There is no end to our story.”
Convict history
There’s more nation-shaping history on offer at another downtown facility, the Cascades Female Factory Historic Site.
Operating between 1828 and 1856, it is the most significant site in Australia dedicated entirely to the history of female convicts. Over 7,000 women and their babies were imprisoned here under harsh and overcrowded conditions.
It is one of the 11 places that make up the UNESCO Australian Convict Sites World Heritage list.
With most of the complex long demolished, the story of this little known aspect of Australia’s colonial history is explained by a passionate guide who shows me around a series of walls, deserted buildings and what were once sandstone exercise yards.
We are introduced to some of the characters who passed through. These include a teenager called Julia Mullins, originally from Cork, Ireland, Julia was only 19 years old when she was sentenced to 14 years of transportation for stealing money.
The tour’s name, Notorious Strumpets & Dangerous Girls, comes directly from a 1826 report written by a deportation ship’s surgeon-superintendent who wrote: “She (Mullins) is a notorious strumpet and a dangerous girl. The trouble which she gave me is unaccountable. Repeatedly I have been obliged to put her into irons and confined her in the Coal-Hold.”
Julia survived her penal sentence and went on to raise a family in northern Tasmania. Today, her descendants still live in Australia.
Another happy ending for an island with so many stories to tell.
Tomorrow I am off to explore other regions of this special island – which is another story for another time.
