GFE Stumpes: Hobart, AU I (9/12/2025)

Friday, September 12, 2025

We left the hotel at 3:30 to give ourselves time to walk to the Southern Cross Railway Station. There we caught the 4:00 SkyBus to the Melbourne Airport. We had a 6:10 flight (1 hour and 15 minutes) to Hobart, the capital of Tasmania.

In Hobart, we bought a one-way ticket for the SkyBus,
which had a stop practically across the street from out hotel

The historic Customs House Hotel (1846);
a room was not ready this early in the morning,
but we could store our luggage as we started exploring

Parliament House (1835-1840, by John Lee Archer as the
Customs House, but was immediately put to use as the
parliament in 1841 when Tasmania achieved self-government)
it was built by the labour of convicts

The flags flying over parliament are (left to right)
the Australian flag, the flag of the state
of Tasmania, and the Aboriginal flag

Tasman Monument (1988, by Stephen Walker) has a
fountain and a statue of Abel Janszoon Tasman, the
Dutch explorer, first known European to reach the islands
of Van Diemen`s Land (now Tasmania) and New Zealand,
and to sight the Fiji islands (KSS)

Salamanca Fruit Market (c 1834)

The labour of convicts also built the row of sandstone
warehouses to store whaling products, wool and grains,
then later the warehousess became fruit factories

One of the warehouses is now the Salamanca Arts Centre
(est 1976)

The Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies (est 2010
in a 2013 building) of the University of Tasmania

Bust (1988 cast of the 1921 original by
Victor Lewis) of Roald Amundsen, the
Norwegian explorer who led the first
expedition to reach the South Pole in 1911

We followed the Battery Point Sculpture Trail (2010); with
numerical sculptures to tell the history of Hobart; 1833
was the time of ships unloading their cargo into the
warehouses, and the cages hold stone cuttings that flew from
the chisels of the convict chain gangs; it was windy... (KSS)

12.43' above sea level is the height of a
positioning point for a surveyor's staff,
which was the base datum point for all
levels surveyed in Tasmania (KSS)

The positioning point is behind the Tide House (1889)
that has a Huckson's metal float to measure the tide (KSS)

Harbourmaster's House (1829)

Leucadendron salignum/Conebush (KSS)

Spirit of Tasmania IV (2022-2024 in Finland) ferry

628nm (nautical miles) is the distance of the
Sydney to Hobart yacht race

The finishing box of the Sydney-Hobart race

Banksia sp with the blooms dried out

Tasmania auto license plate

Gift from the Earth (2001, by Keizo Ushio)

2,000 for 2,000 tonnes of fruit turned into jam at peak season
by the women who worked in the fruit canneries and jam
factories, and whose shadows are etched in the concrete (KSS)

A lemon tree (KSS)

1923 is the year when William Finlay proposed that this
land be open parkland down to the water's edge; instead
it was divided into 26 plots that were fenced or hedged

Now waterfront houses block the view

313 for the number of vessels built at Battery Point Shipyards

1,250 tonnes vessels could be hauled up this slipway that
has fragments of shipbuilding materials

15 Napoleon Street (c 1808?) somehow seemed to
fit the maritime theme of Battery Point

24 is a resin block that was supposed to have lights
within that showed as a red '24' to represent that fires
and later lights burned 24 hours a day

Echium candicans/Pride of Madeira (KSS)

We had to walk down a major hill to the next sculpture at sea level.

1909 is the year actor Erroll Flynn was born in the
next town of Sandy Bay; the numbers are in the style
of the Hollywood sign, where he would become
a "swashbuckling" star of the screen