We had quite a relaxed morning, answering email and surfing the Internet, and then decided to go out to various museums. What we didn't realise was that today is a public holiday in Hobart - it's the Hobart Show. Most places are shut, and there are hardly any buses. We are staying a mile or two outside the centre of Hobart. We eventually ended up waiting 40 minutes for a bus into the centre, which made us even later. Like yesterday, it was very hot, and it is uphill into the centre of town, so I didn't really feel like walking. We ate a picnic lunch in a park, then went to the Narryna Heritage Museum. This is a Georgian style house built in 1836 for a Captain Andrew Haig.
He did not prosper, and the house and contents had to be sold in 1842. So very little of the current contents belong to the original owner, but it is furnished with colonial furniture and other items of the correct period.
There were trapdoors in the floors of the downstairs rooms so that the occupants could escape through a side exit in case there were attacks by convicts, aboriginals or bushrangers. In spite of such concerns, people still tried to lead the kind of lives they had led in England, surrounded by familiar things. I particularly liked the kitchen, which was more or less original.
The nursery too was quite delightful. I was only sorry my photo of the inside of the wonderful dolls house was too bad to use - the glass across the front gave too many reflections. There was lots of lovely small furniture, and a whole cabinet of dolls tea sets.
Being built so early, there were no indoor bathrooms, but it still had some 'mod cons'.
There were lots of wonderful outbuildings too. There was a pantry containing butter-making implements - apparently they kept a couple of cows. One of the outhouses contained a penny farthing!
After that, we walked down to the centre of the town to the Maritime Museum, where they had some very interesting items, including this aboriginal bark canoe.
I had somehow failed to realise just how important ship-building was to Tasmania, they didn't just build ships for the island, but for use in Australia and internationally. There was an excellent source of wood here of course, particularly Huon Pine which resisted both ship worm and rot. This is a model of the Loongana, described as 'the last of the blue gum clippers'.
Another thing I had not realised was the importance of whaling. Many whalers were built here, and whaling only declined when the population of southern right whales had been decimated. I photographed some of the cruel tools used - whale oil ladle, bone cutting shears, blubber hook, mincing knife
and the try pot, used for boiling the blubber to obtain the oil.
By the time we left the museum, it was nearly five, and the weather had turned cold and wet again! We walked to the taxi rank via the harbour, where I spotted the Lady Nelson, a replica of an early ship mentioned in letters and pictured in a contemporary watercolour. It is used for sail training, tourist trips and the like.
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