Maritime Museum of Tasmania, Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery
Going back to the east of Australia, I wanted to visit Tasmania and see what it’s like on that island. I got to the hostel in Hobart, and after getting some rest I was able to go out and explore the city.
As I was pretty close to the Maritime Museum of Tasmania, that was the first place I visited. After buying a ticket I was given a pamphlet with some details about the history of the building itself and was told I should start my tour upstairs, in the main part of the museum. Knowing basically nothing about the museum, I listened to the staff and made my way up.
Maybe not very surprisingly, it reminded me of the Shipwreck museum in Fremantle. Although here the ships were not wrecked, there were quite a few items on display, mainly tools and miniature boat models. Each boat had its own story to tell, the journey it has been through and the crew who sailed it across the seas.
Some stories were about European colonization and the different nations that sailed from Europe to Tasmania. Others were about the Aboriginal communities and how they lived in Tasmania before the Europeans came over. Some ships were used by convicts as they tried to escape their sentence, to varying degrees of success, while other ships were used to hunt whales. Next to each display were signs with pictures, detailing all those different stories of both the ships and the people.
When I had my fill of the stories and displays on the top floor, I headed back downstairs where there was another gallery. There were more stories there, and a few more items on display. In this section, it was mainly some journals, newspapers articles, and drawings. It seemed to be more about how the ocean inspired people in different ways.
Next to it there was some kind of artistic display which I didn’t really understand, and at the very end was a gift shop. As I didn’t want to buy anything there, I took one more quick look around and left the museum.
From there I made my way to the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens. As there was no public transport available from where I was, I had to embark on a half hour walk in order to get there. It was a bit boring, but not too bad.
I walked through the gate and immediately came across a split in the road. Not sure what would be the best way to go, I followed a few other people down a path that led to a restaurant within the botanical gardens. It seemed to be a central location, from which there were different paths going in multiple directions.
I just picked a random trail and started walking along it. Pretty much immediately I was surrounded not only by grass and trees, but plenty of flowers and plants in different colors and textures. As I walked along the path I looked all around me, enjoying the colorful scenery. Then it started to become more dominantly green, but not too much green to that point that it was boring and lifeless.
Then I got to the first garden in the park. It looked like some sort of a conservatory, with a bunch of different plants being housed inside it, and in addition to that there was a little fountain in the center. I found it nice to look at, although the place wasn’t very big and it didn’t take me a long time to go through it.
That pretty much set the tone for the botanical gardens. There were a few gardens inside the park, each of them with a different theme and design, housing different flowers and plants. Between each of those gardens there was a clear path surrounded by grass and trees, which was a bit less interesting to look at, but I kept wondering what I would find at the end of the next path.
Although there were several gardens to walk around, it didn’t take me long to go through them. As I made my way back to the restaurant, which was the starting point of my visit to the botanical gardens, I noticed a sigh leading me in another direction. As I pretty much forgot that the park had more trails to it, I was glad to keep exploring the place.
There were more signs on this side of the park too, but short of following the road to a lily pond I didn’t pay much attention to them. I passed a giant clock, some kind of stone arc, and a few more new plants before I finally got to the pond. Just like the rest of the botanical gardens, it was a nice sight to look at in a very calm place.
When I felt I had enough for a day, I made my way back to my starting point, which didn’t take as long as I expected due to all the splits in the road. I was able to make my way back rather quickly, and with one more look around me, I left the gardens behind.
After my visit to the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens there was once more place I wanted to visit- the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. After I went inside the main building I was told by one of the staff members I can go out through another door and into a smaller building where there was an “audio poem”.
Curious to see what it is all about I went through a little garden into an old house. It was bare and almost completely empty, short of a couple of chairs and speakers in some of the rooms. I didn’t hear anything as I got close to the speakers, so I just wandered around and made my way up the stairs to the second floor, where I could hear something. I followed the sound until I got to another speaker. As I could hear it going up the stairs, I wasn’t sure that the volume was a problem, but rather the audio just sounded muffled and muddy, so I was not able to understand much of it.
After about a minute or so I noticed that next to the speaker there was a note marking it as speaker 3. Hoping it would make more sense to start from the beginning I went back down, tracking speakers 2 and 1, but they were silent. I didn’t know what made them work, but the speakers seemed to be turned on at random, and by the time one was starting, I could also hear the other speaker. I rushed into the other room but by then the recording was over. I couldn’t figure out when I should be in each room, and when I did get to a working speaker I struggled to understand the audio, so I just went back to the main building to have a look at the exhibits there.
The first gallery I entered, on the ground floor, was very much about the history of the people. It was all about the aboriginal communities of Tasmania, their lives, customs, and traditions. It was combined very well with the European, and mainly British, colonization. Once more, it was a reminder of what the British had done to both the country and the people, how much they destroyed and disturbed the life that already existed on the island. It was also the first museum where I saw an apology to the aboriginal people.
The second gallery was about some of the animals of Tasmania, of land, air, and sea. It wasn’t as big as some of the other galleries I’ve seen in other parts of Australia, but there was still variety in the animals and the signs provided some details about them. It also included a small section about extinct animals. Predictably, one of the reasons for that extinction was the British settlers.
Up on the second floor of the building were a few more galleries. The first one was about art. It was mainly portraits of different people, painted by different artists. In addition to that was some furniture on display.
Another gallery on the floor was about the exploration of Antarctica and the subantarctic islands in the area. On display were different animals and equipment used for exploration. It was not something I expected to see, but then again I wasn’t completely sure what to expect from this building.
The last gallery that I went into on the second floor was talking more about history, this time the history of coins that were used in Tasmania over the years, as well as some medals that were received by war heroes. There were some signs talking about their significance and the stories behind them, but I did give my full attention to that part of the museum.
Going back down, I went into the “epoch” gallery, didn’t understand what it was about, and after taking a quick look around the artistic pieces I quickly left the museum.