Featured image is the Alexandria hotel which used to be the Hope and Anchor, Australia’s oldest existing hotel.

We have been told a few times that if you don’t like the weather in Hobart to wait 30 minutes, similar to comments heard in Melbourne, although today we have felt its extremes. This morning we had breakfast with Flick and Charlie at a North Hobart trendy cafe called ‘Rain Check Lounge’.  Our taxi driver has informed us that it is snowing at the top of Mount Wellington – good grief.   Ordering breakfast Evan noticed that outside it is snowing!!!   OMG is it not the middle of summer?  It is supposed to be!  Hobart is full of surprises.   The rest of NSW is battling extreme heat and bush fires and it is snowing in Tasmania.

[if you enlarge the next image you can see the tiny snow flurry]

Its day 6 in Hobart and it feels like we have been here for a long time.  We will be leaving soon so we battle plan what we still need to complete before leaving.   Food Shopping, posting some things overseas, buying a few items for the engine repair that we will do in Kettering and saying goodbye to friends who are here for the wooden boat festival.

After breakfast we wander to town to check out the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery.

We were stopped at the entrance by Colin Dean selling tickets to “Settlement Secrets” which is his theatrical journey through the buildings nestled in the centre of the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. These happen to be the earliest buildings still existing from the first European settlement of Hobart, 1804.  Colin has produced a truly entertaining and informative show where you are taken back in history and shown through the world as it was during convict times.  You can feel the ships unloading at the commissary and foreshore lapping in front of the custom house before the land was reclamation.  You get to meet 4 different characters who all happen to resemble Colin for some reason!  Yet the accents and mannerisms are convincingly different.  I loved the character ‘Rocky’ the escaped convict turned bushranger.   If you are visiting the museum I would highly recommend seeing his show.

[http://antipodeanentertainment.com.au/Settlement%20Secrets.html#]

Afterwards we said goodbye to friends who are departing for Sydney in the next day or so, did some food shopping and headed back to Nashira.   The weather is continuing to change every few minutes.  When the wind dies and the sun comes out it feels very warm,  the sun is sharp and burny, perhaps due to the reduction of the ozone layer, my guess.  Then the wind starts again and boy is it cold then it starts to rain then the sun shines again.  Over and over this cycle has continued all day.  You certainly don’t get bored.

Tonight we are looking at maps and working out where to go next.  The plan is still to depart on Wednesday and head for Kettering.  The weather over the next few days is pretty bad wind wise,  strong Westerlies with big swell so no chance to head off to Port Davey yet.   I dreamt last night that the weather is rotten for the next three weeks.  I sure hope that is wrong but if it is and we cant get to Port Davey its okay, there is lots to explore on the South East of Tasmania.

We are getting itchy feet and looking forward to moving on soon.

xoxo

Kelly & Evan