Port Arthur

We were up bright and early and some of the first through the doors of Port Arthur Historic Site. We wandered along through the old buildings, soaking up the history. There are little plaques throughout the site that tell the stories of various inhabitants. Mia was particularly taken with the story of “Lizzie” the wife of the commandant – legend has it that she was so beautiful that people woud come just to gaze upon her beauty. However, the man that did most of the portrait paintings at that stage also had a very pretty wife, who was quite jealous of Lizzie, so being a good and sensible husband, the portrait of Lizzie is not so beautiful as the one of his own wife!

We ate our lunch sitting up at the scorpion tail lookout. There is a park bench up there almost big enough for our four petite little bottoms. So, we squeezed in and ate all the odds and ends that needed to go before we flew out.

We finished up at the gallery, where Mia and I tried the leg irons. Those things are heavy! There would be no running, and it is very obvious why anyone that fell in the water in leg irons drowned. Even if not in leg irons, most people in that time could not swim so their chances weren’t that great anyway!

We stopped at Sorrell to give the hire car a quick once over at the carwash, because we had gotten it filthy and didn’t want to be landed with an extra cleaning fee.

Seven Mile Beach

With a bit of time to kill, we popped into Seven Mile Beach which is right next door to the Hobart airport. It is a beautiful beach, and we were very impressed at the beautiful shells we found. We also played beach shenanigans, such as who could jump highest (making them tallest?), who could go the furtherest in 20 steps, and bullseye on the sand with rocks. Just some general running and moving about before having to sit on the plane for a couple of hours.

Goodbye Hobart and Tasmania, it has been beautiful! Time to go home and unpack, wash, reorganise and pack for our next adventure.