Tassie

January 11-12, 2002-Hobart
(photos:Battery Point, Tasmania,
Port Arthur,
Tessellated pavement)

Thank you one & all who sent us good wishes & mazel tovs for us & for the expectant parents, Daniel and Vikki.

This is a reminder I have not forgotten the rules of punctuation. I’m trying to avoid using apostrophes. Some of you have said that when we send mail from Internet cafes, you get garbage where the apostrophes should be.

Here’s a hint from someone who gets these emails. He has looked up some of the sites I’ve told you about on the Web & says they’re really good.

We took off for Hobart, Tasmania on time. It was only an hour flight so we had the whole day to explore. Tasmania has an exotic sound to me. It’s still a place where some of the wilderness hasn’t been seen by whites. There are no aborigines left here, & all the snakes are guaranteed to be poisonous.

Hobart is a lovely town & much larger than I expected. There’s a harbor at its foot & it climbs gently up to Mt. Wellington. It’s said that at one time there were so many whales in the harbor it was hazardous to bring a ship into port. Picturesque will not do justice to the old section. I believe I used “yech” to describe the new area of town. Our hotel, the Hadley, is across the street from St. Davids Cathedral. David has always wanted a t-shirt that said, “Rabbi of Christchurch.” This runs a close second. The hotel dates from the 1800’s. The rooms are totally updated, but, like the Craig in Ballarat, the charm remains.

We found a street today called Arthur’s Circus. It’s just one roundabout with a treasure of original cottages that are still inhabited. We took a tour of the Tasmanian Museum & got a good foundation of the history. Unfortunately we also went to the Antarctic Museum. It was poorly done & we may have to see the one in New Zealand when we go. The good part was that there was a planetarium & we finally saw the Southern Cross. The bad thing was that we’d been looking at the wrong star group in the wrong part of the sky. The Cadbury Factory tours were fully booked, but we have seen a candy factory at home. This entire town smells like chocolate.

There has been no laundry drama to tell you about since the last two hotels had guest coin laundries. I feel fulfilled.

We went to services tonight at the oldest synagogue in continuous use in Australia. It was founded in 1843. Some of the founders were convicts & some free settlers. The governor wouldn’t grant land to the Jews for a synagogue. He said it would be used for an “un Christian” purpose. Judah Solomon donated part of his garden for the building. Ironically, his house has now been restored & is being used by the police department. Donations came from all over the world for the construction of the synagogue. We were happy to see that a Henry Horwitz was an original trustee. There are only 35 families who belong now. The building is shared with the orthodox community.

The bimah (pulpit) is in the middle of the sanctuary with the seating on three sides. The bimah faces the ark on the 4th side. The backless benches used by convicts are still there. Each seat in the pews has its own fold-down book rest. On one wall is displayed a bronze plaque with a prayer for the royal household of Queen Victoria. David had emailed the president of the congregation to say we’d be visiting & to ask about a tour of the building. She invited him to conduct services & give a sermon. He declined the former, but accepted the latter. Somewhere in cyberspace there was a misunderstanding. The service ended & there was no sermon, his or otherwise.

January 12, 2002-Crime Past and Present

We woke up extra early this morning so we could take in the Saturday market at Salamanaca Place. This is an amazing event & unlike any market we’ve seen before. It’s huge & has all the usual funky & over-priced open-air market items. But then it has things I’ve never seen elsewhere. There was a busker playing a harp. One stall sold lettuce, tomatoes, & used books. The most quirky & unique stand was the one selling items particular to menstruation. I won’t go into the details. We ate breakfast at the market & ended up ordering Irish Breakfast tea only because we didn’t know how to order the kind of coffee we wanted. After thinking about it, I think I wanted a short decaf black & David wanted a decaf flat white. I bought earrings made from broken china & stocked up on cheese, bread, kiwi fruit roll, & raspberries for a picnic lunch.
Just a reassuring note, even in Tasmania, no market is complete without socks for sale.

We hopped into our hideous hued mustard gold Corolla & started out for Port Arthur, the penal colony. The weather here is very changeable, but that added to the beauty of the drive. The light was constantly changing as the sun & clouds vied for position. I even added to my road sign collection. I now have a photo of a wombat crossing & a “chickee poo for sale” sign. We were delayed a bit as two sheep dogs skillfully maneuvered a flock across the road & into a pasture. I could have watched them forever. We also saw some of the many natural wonders of this place. The coastal views of Devil’s Kitchen, the Blowhole, & an arch were glorious, but paled in comparison to those we saw on the Great Ocean Road. The Tessellated Pavement, however, was fascinating. It’s a rocky area of beach that looks like carefully cut paving stones. Somehow, the action of the expansion of the earth’s crust & the freezing & thawing of the salt water has produced a tile-like appearance to the rocky shore. You would swear it was an old Roman road.

The penal colony at Port Arthur was established in 1830 as a hard labor & punishment prison for men. It’s located on the Tasmain Peninsula. The peninsula is joined to the mainland by a narrow neck of land easily guarded by men & dogs. If an escape was made by sea, the next port was Antarctica. Women were never interned there. They usually went to the Female Factories to work or were servants in the homes of free settlers. Many women were raped. Orphanages were established to care for the results of this abuse. Since children could be tried & sentenced at age seven, an isolated part of Port Arthur was set up for boys. It was the first time youth were separated from the adult prison population. In 1853, the last prisoner was transported. In 1877, the prison closed. In all, there were 13,000 prisoners who served there. Of that number, 2,000, died & 20 escaped.

The setting for the prison colony couldn’t have been more beautiful. It overlooks the sea & is surrounded by forests. The landscaping then & now was exquisite. It’s hard to imagine the awfulness that went on. There was no capital punishment, but there was the cat of nine-tails. The men were forced to harvest & haul timber, make bricks, & build ships while wearing chains weighing about 12-26 pounds. We held a sample of these. It must have been hell. One way to escape was to the Isle of the Dead. We ate our lunch on a harbor cruise to that island. There are 1760 people buried there. The free settlers have a section of their own. Some of the dead include a former postman, Australia’s first novelist, & a seven-year-old prisoner.

Another way to escape was to be creative. Although he failed, one man killed a kangaroo, donned its skin, & tried to hop across the narrow strip to the mainland. A guard saw what he thought would be dinner & pointed it out to his mate. The prisoner jumped up & shouted at them not to shoot. He was recaptured & given 100 lashes. Since no one could survive that punishment, the lashes were doled out 25 at a time until the sentence had been fulfilled.

As the system became more sophisticated & penal philosophy evolved, solitary confinement came into vogue. This was a 24/7 solitary. Even when the men attended chapel or were exercised 1 hour/day, they had to wear masks that only had tiny slits for their eyes & were forbidden to speak. The theory was that they needed to reflect & repent to save their souls. As prisoners aged & older prisoners were transported, there was a need for geriatric care. With the number of men who had end stage syphilis, there was a need for a lunatic asylum. The guide quipped that the town council now appropriately meets in what was the asylum.

When the prison closed, the free settlers who remained wanted to blot out the stigma of the past. They renamed the town, Carnarvon. Many of the original buildings & those built after 1877, were damaged in the bush fires of 1895 & 1897. For a while, a resort was established & tourists poured in. In later years, they realized they had a treasury of history they’d had tried to hide. Tourists come once again, but now they leave enriched with a sense of the harshness of the past.

Tragedy struck in April of 1996. As a result of this event, all automatic weapons are outlawed in Australia as well as handguns. Special circumstances are required for permits. A lone gunman opened fire with an automatic rifle & massacred 35 people at a café on the grounds. A memorial garden was established for those who died & for the many staff members who were injured trying to help. The assassin was captured the next day. He was very lucky. There’s still no capital punishment in the state of Tasmania. There’s also no cat of nine-tails.

Toby