Tasmania - Part 1 - Hobart

I wanted to get out of Melbourne for the Easter holidays, and I decided Tasmania (or Tassie as its generally referred to), would be a splendid destination. As a kid I always associated it with the tasmanian devil (which I did a report on in elementary school, on the animal, not the cartoon character, although I liked Taz as well), and just thought of it as some sort of strange, isolated, exotic place, and living in Melbourne, I'm now just across the Bass Strait from this mythical wonderland of screaming rodents and poisonous snakes. Tassie gets a fair amount of rainfall, so that they haven't been in a drought for the last 11 years like the rest of Australia, and therefore there is more vegetation. It has a population of about 500,000 humans, and judging from what I saw while riding on buses across various parts of the state, I will venture the guess that sheep population outnumbers that. I am not trying to poke fun; they're cute to look at, wool is a useful fabric, and I enjoy eating their children (although I feel a little bad about it).



Originally, while making my plans, I attempted to get Simon to come along with me, but since he hadn't been saving up money for a foreign excursion, as I had been, he wasn't able to afford it. His girlfriend Tomomi is an exchange student from Tokyo, and was going to be headed for New Zealand for the break, which meant Simon would probably be alone on his birthday, laying in bed, suckling on a goon cask and playing the occasional Fifa soccer on his computer. To make up for my betrayal, I went daytime partying with him the day before I left (not that I didn't want to anyway), which mainly consisted of drinking in various pubs and alleys, and the occasional pool match. We met an old dude in a suit from the former Yugoslavia who randomly sat at our table to smoke a cigarette. After getting back to Unilodge, I threw the essentials in my backpack and headed to catch the bus to the airport around 11pm. The flight to Tassie is only a little over an hour, but I got a cheap flight at 6am in the morning, which was too early to get a shuttle from my house. My choices were to either skate to the train station at 4 in the morning (which looking back I kind of regret not doing), or sleep at the airport. The only benches I found at the airport were hard and wooden, and the janitor kept driving by for awhile in a little cleaning cart that made a lot of noise, and even after that stopped the escalator was squeaky. Also, my hangover started kicking in sometime around 1 am, but I managed to get a few hours of sleep.


As I walked down the stairway off the plane outside the tiny Hobart airport (the old fashioned way), I knew I had chosen a great destination. The sun was still low in the sky, and we were surrounded by beautiful mountains. Everything was peaceful and calm, and I was at that point were after staying up all night you start to feel rejuvenated as the sun comes up, but in a delirious sort of way. Looking back on it, it reminds me of coming out of the studio back in Santa Cruz after a long night of painting, and looking out over the meadow towards the ocean, except now I was looking at mountains, and I felt like it could have been New Hampshire. I picked up my luggage; all I brought was a sleeping bag (that I ended up not using), a backpack stuffed to maximum capacity, and of course, my skateboard. I had almost considered making Tassie a strictly hiking trip, but after seeing a photo and reading a short description of the West Hobart snake run, I knew I had to make it a skating trip as well, if only just for that single spot. And besides, whats the point of traveling if you don't bring your skate? I stood on the curb for a bit, with some other travelers, sort of looking around, figuring out how the hell I was going to get into the city from the airport. I joined up with two Aussies (graduates of Melbourne Uni) and a girl from California who were doing the same thing and shared a taxi. The driver was nice and talkative. He made it clear he wasn't Australian; he was Tasmanian. Sixth generation Hobartian to be exact, which could mean his lineage goes back to the convict days. Hobart is the second oldest European settlement in Oz, behind Sydney, both of which were created as places for the British to send the petty thieves when the jails were too crammed full. I got dropped off at the Old Hobart Hotel, which was now a hostel. It was almost 8 in the morning by this point, and I couldn't check into my room yet, but I was able to drop off my bags and head up the hill in search of the West Hobart snake run that I was so anxious to skate.


The picture is a panorama, you'll have to click on it to see the whole thing. Its also only the lower half of the snake run, and the bowl it spills into.

I have a little guidebook I bought at a skateshop in Melbourne that has every skatepark in Australia, with the address, cross streets, a rating, description, etc. The park was in walking distance to my hostel (walking because it was mainly uphill). I took a detour to bomb a hill. Being in Hobart made me realize how flat Melbourne is. Hobart reminded me of the Bay Area a bit, especially Berkeley, with its hills, laid back medium sized city vibe, and cooler weather. It sort of reminded me of the Northwest as well. All this partially reminded me of my homesickness, but it also made me real stoked. Melbourne is cool, its a way bigger city with lots of stuff going on, but I really enjoyed how chill Hobart was, and its probably my favorite city here so far.

Anyways, along the way I happened to pass by the other skatepark in town, which was a couple of blocks away from the snakerun. This park was more modern, and I decided to come back to it later. The snakerun is probably one of the coolest things I've ever skated. There aren't all that many possibilities, so you can only spend so long there, but its quite the experience. Its from the 80's, or even possibly the 70's, and is one of the gnarliest skateparks I have seen (warning to non-skaters, the next little bit here might be a bit confusing, understandably). Its fairly rough in the flatbottom, although you get going so fast you hardly notice it, and the walls are covered in graffiti so they're slick and smooth. There isn't really all that much flatbottom anyway, its almost a perfect U. Also, the transitions are kinked all over the place, but that just makes it more fun. Theres a big corner you hit before you ride down into the bowl at the end. Overall it is a 180 degree turn and in parts, probably has about three foot transitions with four feet of vert. When I'd ride through it, I'd be going fairly fast since the snake run is going down a hill, and this is towards the end, and I'd do one carve on the first part of the turn, come down then carve up the next wall, and be doing a frontside carve up on the vertical wall and then come down into this small transition while going downhill into the bowl. It was really fun and felt gnar, and I was super stoked. The picture below will give you a better idea of what the first part of that last turn looks like.


After the skatepark I wandered around through the town and by the waterfront, checking stuff out. I took a nap in a park (I still couldn't check into the hostel). I eventually went back to the skateparks. At the snakerun, I met a guy from Berkeley who was living in Hobart for a bit because his friend from Washington, where he had been living previously, had married a Tassie girl on exchange. The Berkeley guy asked me where I was from because I was wearing an Oakland A's shirt. At the other skatepark I chatted with some of the locals and skated for a couple hours. Afterwards I headed back to the hostel, chilled for a bit, and went to sleep really early. I woke up a couple of hours into my sleep because my roomate was coming in for the first time. He seemed apologetic for disturbing me, but it was still pretty early, so I tried to convince him it wasn't a big deal. His name is pronounced like Phone (he even made a hand signal like he was talking on a phone when he told me his name), I'm not sure on the spelling. He was from Hong Kong and had been in Oz for five months and I was the first American he had met, which he seemed excited about. He had been saving up money for a long time, working in a printing shop, and had really wanted to go to America, but couldn't get a visa. He had been to a rock music festival in Melbourne though, so he was pretty satisfied, because that was the thing he wanted to do most during his travels.


In my room, reading my Australia guidebook, trying to decide what to do.

The next day I lurked around town a bit more then went to check out the Tasmanian Museum. It was a mix of history, natural history, and art. I learned about the Tasmanian tiger that used to live there before going extinct (although some believe there are still some out there). The tiger now lives in memory as the state animal and on the label of Cascade Lager. They had a room dedicated to Charles Darwin's time in Tasmania as well. The had some really cool installations with taxidermied animals in an artificial environment. The strangest and coolest exhibit was the contemporary art section that was a series of silicon sculptures of imagined genetically mutated creatures by a Melbourne artist, Patricia Piccinini:







Afterwards I went on a really long walk that wasn't too eventful, but I took some photos of various parts of Hobart which you've seen above. I went back to the skatepark for a final session, and then went back to the hostel where I ran into Phone at the bar which was the ground floor of the hostel. I chatted with him for a bit. When he found out I was an artist he wanted me to draw him, and he ran off and came back with a ballpoint pen and a blank sheet of paper. The pressure was on, having to work in ink, but I came up with something that was visually interesting at the least, although it didn't look to much like him. The face looked fairly generic, but he was really happy I drew it on the spot like that considering I'd just met him, so he grabbed a deck of cards from the barkeep and showed me some magic tricks in return. I was actually quite impressed, and later he played a song on his guitar as well. The next morning I woke up early to catch a bus to the east coast, my next destination, a small port town called Bicheno, which was nearby to a national park I had read good things about, and Phone had told me there were friendly wallabies (mini-kangaroos) on the beach there (at the park). It was raining out, but I was nice being on the bus watching the countryside with the mountains and the rain. I saw some lightening too. It stopped raining right before reaching Bicheno as well, and I'll save that part of the trip for another post, probably this weekend. Expect cool nature shots.