Hobart, Tasmania: MONA, New Friends, Death, and Life: What’s Not to Like?

I knew Padre could sleep anywhere but didn’t know he could snore away, tucked inside MONA’s big white egg with me while a pulsing, hallucinatory light show closed in from all sides. The thing was on the ‘hard’ setting, even. I guess the guy really likes his sleep.

Padre finally made it to Tasmania’s famous MONA (Museum of Old and New Art), a long-time travel goal, and he was so not asleep before we entered the egg. You better not be, or you’ll fall into a deep dark pool or be lost forever in the labyrinth of Escher-inspired staircases and dark stone passageways throughout the museum’s subterranean levels. Is it a carnival set in a cabaret, complete with fun house mirrors? (yes.) Is it the Louvre on steroids? (yes.) Is it a chaotic maze of incredible objects, fantastical beasts and wonders? That too.  Best of all, MONA absolutely lived up to Padre’s expectations – mine too – and we survived the Death Gallery just fine. 

And I must install all-glass corner windows back home in the Puget Sound beach house, exactly like the ones we enjoyed in our view-saturated Oyster Bay vacation rental. I also photo-stalked a Wineglass Bay beach wallaby, but stopped before I tossed him my apple core since feeding wildlife is a big no-no while bushwalking here in Tasmania. More on glass houses and bushwalking in the next post, but let’s just say for now: Tasmania is AMAZING.  

We arrived in Hobart after a Sydney layover including thunderstorm weather, almost-flight delays, and a desperation meal (our only choices: KFC or McD’s (the one good restaurant nearby was closed. What would you do?). I chose a discount hotel next to Sydney’s domestic airport since all we had to do was sleep to catch an early flight, but I forgot about food. Good thing McD’s does salads, but when we finally reached Hobart’s waterfront and tucked into some yummy battered flake at the Fish Frenzy chip shop, we knew we had landed in a better place. Waaay better, if the floating takeaway seafood punts lined up at Hobart’s Constitution Dock were any indication. 

And we went from a sad McDonald’s meal to the finest Tasmanian-sourced local fare imaginable, perfectly prepared and presented by our new Tasmanian travel friends and dinner hosts, Mike and Di. A rare cut of lamb, in a convivial dinner setting enjoyed with Mike and Di’s lovely friends, at their home on the outskirts of Hobart. More on how we met later – Cruise Critic and our online travel connections come through again.

Our first stop in Tasmania? The sprawling Salamanca Saturday Market, 100s of stalls filled with organic produce, locally crafted hand goods, Tasmanian honey, jams, woodcrafts, scads of people, and inevitably, a rare pickpocket or two. The two pickpockets we met worked their ploy to access my backpack with the old ‘stand in her face, stare in her eyes, and distract’ strategy, but a watchful local lady alerted us to their scheme before they were able to open my backpack.

The scoundrels would have walked away with only a pack of gum and cheap sunglasses, but hey – it’s unsettling to be accosted anywhere, but especially so far from home. We had to remind ourselves that even in bucolic Tasmania, pickpockets can emerge in crowded situations such as markets and train stations. Of course they can.

After that, I asked Padre to clutch my pack tightly under his arm so as not to tempt the artful dodgers so I could shop unimpeded. The stalls were bursting with tempting one-of-a-kind treasures, but we mostly window-shopped due to limited luggage space. My shopping reticence did not survive one of Hobart’s best bookstores, where I finally found a title I’d been looking for: Hobart, by Peter Timms. Even though he wrote it back in 2009 (updated in 2012), Timms addresses many of Tasmania’s current issues, such as how to balance an influx of world tourists without sullying Tasmania’s pristine natural island environment. 

This issue has only grown more urgent 10 years later, as the world flocks to Tasmania’s doorstep.

Today Tasmania has morphed into one of the latest ‘it’ destinations for the world’s foodies and outdoors enthusiasts. Until recently, the island hung out at the bottom of the earth, used to being ignored, and sometimes the butt of cruel Aussie jokes. Aussies who, by the way, now flock here in ever-growing numbers – be careful what little island you mock, rest of Australia. This little island is definitely growing up, in a very classy way.

 Even Abel Tasman disdainfully noted when he sailed past the place in 1642: ““Too far south for spices and too close to the rim of the earth to be inhabited by anything but freaks and monsters.” Abel didn’t deserve to have Tasmania named after him, but he lucked out despite being wrong, and being mean. And by the way, he made his judgment without even bothering to go ashore. (Poor excuse for an explorer you were, Mr. Tasman.)  

The historical record supports that Tasmania incurred two significant black marks, first of which was its ‘ convict stain’ since Tasmania began its modern existence as England’s gulag prison island for convicts. And then there was the nearly complete (not quite!) extermination of Tasmania’s indigenous Aborigine inhabitants by British settlers. 

There has been lingering shame over Tasmania’s historical black marks, and Timms also notes that in the past, “Tasmanians…had assumed, right from the beginning of their history, that important things happened elsewhere.” But things have changed, partly due to the impetus that David Walsh’s startling MONA museum has had on the island: “MONA makes people realize that what they do matters, and is admired by others….MONA has done a lot more than just rescue a flagging tourism economy. It has changed the city’s body language, teaching it to stand up straight and look others squarely in the eye, even putting a swagger in its step.”

Swagger away, Hobart. We instantly fell in love with this small, walkable city, and if you don’t make it to Hobart on a Saturday for the famous market, no worries: Converted sandstone warehouses dating back to the 1830s whaling days burst with local handcraft shops and open-air sidewalk cafes. Nearby Salamanca Square, a former quarry behind the warehouses, now serves as a city center of sorts.  Café life buzzed as Saturday afternoon melted into Saturday evening and local live music filtered out of various bars and restaurants all over Hobart’s downtown spaces.

We stayed at Lenna of Hobart, perched above the Derwent River wharfs and a few steps from Hobart’s Salamanca shopping district. A bit faded but still elegant old gal, this 1880s Grand Italiante stone mansion also sits just steps from the picturesque 19^thcentury cottages and cafés of Battery Point, making it a perfect location for car-free Hobart visits. 

So we parked the Suzuki Swift and boarded MONA’s quirky museum ferry first thing in the morning, along with sheep, a cow, cool graffiti, and a serious crew dressed in grey military jumpsuits and heavy jackboots. Hmm. 

Upon arrival, we ascended a long stone stairway to the museum’s entrance along with the rest of the crowd, much as ancient Greeks and Romans might have ascended to visit an ancient temple. Walsh planned that effect, I read – very clever. Builds anticipation for a grand experience, impressive art, all that.

But wait. At the top of the grand staircase, we had to cross a tennis court to get to the museum entrance. Tennis court? Huh? And at the entrance, we met up with images of ourselves in a funhouse mirror. Of course we stopped to snap a photo, since the mirror made us look skinny and cool (well, sort of. As cool as an old couple with Eddie Bauer backpacks on their backs can be, I guess). Walsh wanted us to do that, too, I’m sure. More clever. But is it art? We were asking ourselves that question already, and we weren’t even inside the building yet. (Spoiler alert: Our answer to that question is ‘yes’ most of it is. Some of it is not. But who cares?).

Once inside, we descended a spiral staircase several floors down to the subterranean level, spinning out to be deposited smack in front of a line of sparkling liquor bottles lined up at the Void Bar, with one rack labeled ‘unholy water’ perched prominently above. Next, a ‘Moo Beer’ vending machine – no, you don’t get to choose your beer – take your chances! Fitting, since MONA’s creator, David Walsh, amassed his wealth through gambling winnings.

Soon we stood entranced as we tried to read a towering waterfall of falling words, culled by an algorithm of statistically significant words in news headlines. As soon as a word appeared, it faded away into waterfall droplets as the next word formed and our eyes moved to the next word. The waterfall artwork creator, Julius Popp, noted in 2009 about new technology that, “People are not really able to position themselves in a way that they can think about what’s happening, and their surroundings. Human brains have a specific speed….we are getting too much information.”

No duh. We stood there for a long time, as the words continued to fall. and fall. and fall.  

And that was just the first artwork, so we were in trouble, time-wise. And soon, we were also lost, which we stayed the entire time we wandered around the museum, I’m sure by intent. Helpful museum attendants expertly directed lost patrons, I noted, so they were plenty used to lost people like us.

So we arrived a bit late to our first appointment at the Death Gallery, where only two people at a time (yay for travel togetherness) enter a black, water-pooled reflecting chamber to view the mummy and coffin of Pausiris. The mummy inside is revealed through a digital scan, which slowly appears and dissolves gradually, bringing the dead mummy to startling life – those eyes! – and then back to totally dead again. 

A noose hung next to the coffin. Why? Who knows? Maybe to make sure to let the visitor know that hey, this is about death, stupid! Got it, the line between life and death. But mostly death. Walsh himself concluded about the death thing, “So you’re dead if you could once undergo biological evolution but now cannot. Don’t tell grandma.”

It was one of Padre’s favorite exhibits. He also liked Cloaca Professional, a digestion machine that gets fed twice a day, and eventually poops, just like live people do. It’s one of the most hated exhibits in the museum, and the most loved. I hated it. Padre loved it.

My favorite exhibit was the one Padre fell asleep in, James Turrell’s Unseen Seen, which the museum guide describes as a place where you ‘take your neural battering lying down.”  Before we entered the egg we had to sign our life away, and agree on no touching or hanky-panky inside the exhibit, there on the elevated bed. Small chance, since I had to break the rule and thwap sleeping Padre a couple times, since I didn’t want him to miss the glorious light show. 

I found it absolutely mesmerizing, as the borders of my eye’s perceptual field kept growing and expanding. Or at least it felt that way – at one point, I could not tell if my eyes were open or closed, and I found the visual feast Turrell created for me to be magnificent and relaxing, despite the ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ warnings.

In the second part of the exhibit, called The Weight of Darkness, our attendant escorted us to a blackout chamber. Here, we groped our way to comfortable loungers in the pitch black, and simply sat in the enveloping darkness, as our perceptual fields adjusted to the egg’s earlier onslaught. Dreamy and relaxing, as long as you’re not claustrophobic or scared of the dark. If you’re either of those things, Unseen Seen is not for you.

And there was so much more. Needed three days to see it all, but we had been invited to dinner at Mike and Di’s lovely country home on the outskirts of Hobart, set on a Mt. Nelson hillside amid a lush English garden. I met Mike on Cruise Critic last year – we were the first two cruisers to join the Roll Call for our 2020 cruise, when we’ll travel to Southeast Asia, India, Egypt, and the Middle East. 

Mike and I share a love of travel planning, and his wife Di and I share a love of cats. They have three, in fact, plus an Australian sheepdog named Molly. Di also helped me see my first wallabies and possums, who were happily feasting on scraps she left out on the patio for them after dinner. When we found out Mike and Di leave the telly on all day because ‘the pets like it,’ I knew these were our kind of people. 

Mike the chef delivered a dinner showcasing the best of Tasmanian cuisine, as we chatted with a delightful collection of other dinner guests from the local area – a meal we’ll remember for a long time to come. Trish the librarian gifted me with a copy of The Term of His Natural Life, by Marcus Clark, an Australian classic set in Port Arthur’s 1800’s prison, which I hope to read before our visit there in a couple days. 

We already loved Hobart even before our dinner at Mike and Di’s, but now – well, we have friends here, so I guess we’ll just have to come back (force us, please!). I do so hate to encourage the rest of the world to visit here to add to the crowds, but I’d be derelict as a travel person if I didn’t. Hobart and Tasmania are not to be missed.

After Hobart, we head to Freycinet National Park, for hiking, oysters, and then the notorious Port Arthur prison, before heading back to Sydney to catch our cruise. I can tell already we need about another month to explore Tasmania adequately – not enough years, weeks, or days, to do all we want to do in this wonderful life. But we’re not mummies yet, not by a long shot – so on we go! 

Thanks everyone, as always, for following along.