First Taste of Tasmania

Tasmania was the destination in Australia I was most excited about, and my ~5 days in Hobart were a brilliant introduction to the island. The coastline, wildlife, and seafood were all highlights, but it was the pop-up markets that really took the cake. I went to four separate markets in one weekend! Here’s the play-by-play of this uniquely Tassie adventure.
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From the airport, I took the SkyBus to downtown and dragged my heavy checked bag uphill to the historic Battery Point neighborhood. My lodging for the first two nights was a boutique bunkhouse called Montacute, housed in a brick building with a garden, carpeted stairs, and squeaky wooden floors. I stayed in a 4-person room, and quickly met a friendly Frenchman named Antony who was wrapping up a working holiday in Melbourne. The Montacute drew a diverse range of clients, and while I sat in a cozy armchair in the hallway, I heard many languages being spoken – Korean, French, German, Russian. Between the funky layout of the rooms and the eclectic visitors, it felt like the kind of place where a murder mystery would take place.

​I sat in the dining room for several hours, waiting for check-in to open, and exhausted from my 3:00am wakeup in Wellington that morning. The fast-talking host dealt with the queue of arrivals; the orientation speech got shorter and shorter every time it was repeated. I dropped off my bags and set out for groceries and dinner. It was just a few minutes’ walk to the Salamanca Plaza, a major shopping area with art galleries and restaurants. Across the street, a major section of the wharf was sectioned off for the setup of an event called “Taste of Tasmania.” My own first taste of Tasmania was a hearty bowl of laksa, a delicious Asian curry noodle soup.

​The next morning, I was up bright and early for a day trip to Tasman Peninsula and Port Arthur. The company was called Pennicott Wilderness Journeys, and their office was in a prime spot by the harbor. The charismatic bus driver Phil gave us local insights on the bus ride out of Hobart. He pointed out burn scars from previous wildfires, marine sanctuaries off the coast, and the hometown of Neil the Seal. Neil is an internet-famous elephant seal, known for playing with traffic cones and blocking driveways. We only caught a glimpse of Neil, but his hilarious videos are worth checking out!

Not my photo, but this is Neil!

We crossed the Eaglehawk Neck, a thin strip of land and the only connection between the Tasman Peninsula and the rest of Tasmania. The Eaglehawk Neck was fiercely guarded with a line of dogs during the convict era, making the Tasman Peninsula a natural prison. We stopped at a café for breakfast while Phil herded tourists. The Pennicott company had a dizzying number of versions of the day trip – some that started in Hobart, some that started in Port Arthur, some that went to a lavender farm or a Tasmanian devil sanctuary for the afternoon activity. As a result, the group was merged and split and rejoined several times throughout the day, an impressive feat of logistics. On one of the bus rides, I sat next to a psychiatrist from Melbourne and had a nice chat.

The first activity was a boat cruise along the coastline of Tasman National Park. We were given red ponchos and a ginger pill to help with seasickness (it seemed to work pretty well!) The boat cruise was spectacular right from the onset. The striated sedimentary cliffs were carved in every way imaginable – from cubical blocks, to archways, to tower-like columns. And they were tall! They were the most impressive sea cliffs I had ever seen.

​The day became even more dazzling when a large pod of a hundred dolphins joined the cruise. They rode the waves created by the boats, swimming alongside us, and showing off with impressive leaps. We also saw fur seals, basking on the rocks and frolicking in the water, and several enormous lion’s mane jellyfish, ominously orange against the dark water.

​We continued to Cape Pillar and the island across, very creatively named “Tasman Island” (sensing a theme?) The lighthouse on Tasman Island was an elaborate project to maintain, requiring supplies to be hoisted via crane and then carted up the mountainside with a horse-powered crank. It’s also one of the landmarks used in the annual Sydney-to-Hobart yacht race, scheduled to start in just a few days. On the way back, we spotted a few albatrosses and black-winged shearwaters on the open ocean.

​From the dock, we were taken to Port Arthur for a few hours at the historical site. Lunch was provided at the site’s restaurant, including salmon sandwiches and a surprisingly good flat white. Over lunch, I met a couple from Melbourne: a school music teacher and a restaurant owner. I mentioned that I was thinking of a restaurant job in Melbourne for my working holiday and asked some general advice. I think they were slightly shocked at my loose plan. I later looked up the restaurant, which turned out to be a fancy “$$$” French restaurant in the CBD – not the kind of place I’d be applying without any experience!

​The Port Arthur historical prison site was a beautiful cluster of sandstone buildings and grassy fields right on the edge of the water. It had the mystique of Alcatraz but with the pleasantness of the Presidio. Through a combination of self-guided exploration and a 30-minute guided tour, I learned some of its history. During the convict era, repeat offenders from other parts of Tasmania were sent here to be punished and reformed. It turned into a mini civilization of its own, with convict labor being used to manufacture raw materials for export, and a tight-knit community of prison staff. The main building was an impressively large multistory Penitentiary. It was originally a flour mill with a wheel that was manually turned by convicts, and later was converted into jail cells. Another building was the Separate Prison, where prisoners were placed in solitary cells and largely deprived of human interaction. For church services, the prisoners were blindfolded and herded into standing pews with dividers. When the prison was gradually closed around 1877, many of the convicts had nowhere else to go and lived on the site as paupers on government welfare. But some ex-convicts became tour guides -- the site became a major attraction as soon as it closed.

​I’m glad I went to Port Arthur and learned about the convict era of Australia’s history. The site was thought-provoking about how the convicts were portrayed – were they victims of poverty and the harsh legal system, or genuinely terrible people who deserved incarceration? Were the methods of punishment cruel, even if they were progressive compared to other prisons of the era? It was fascinating and unsettling.

Back in Hobart, I pieced together a charcuterie dinner featuring a Tasmanian cheese sampler. One cheese included pepper berry, a local plant that added a spicy kick.
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The next morning, I went on a self-guided walking tour of the Battery Point neighborhood, admiring the beautiful brick buildings and decorative porch trimmings. My route followed the Battery Point sculpture trail, a series of giant numbers, hidden in quiet parks and beaches. Each number had a corresponding anecdote from the area’s history. For example, a floating “313” indicated a shipyard where 313 vessels were built. The trail passed by the site of an old jam factory and the finish line of the Sydney to Hobart yacht race. By coincidence, it also passed a state-of-the-art oceanography research vessel called the Investigator, funded by Australia’s CSIRO agency.

​I wandered into the center of Hobart’s CBD, an impressive array of restaurants, pedestrian streets, and shopping malls. A caroling choir and Australian animal holiday posters added a festive spirit to the air. I looked for a pair of binoculars at a camera store. The employee encouraged me to try them out on a large billboard several blocks away, which convinced me to make the purchase. I stopped for a wonderful lunch at a casual Vietnamese restaurant, including pork bao and an excellent bowl of pho. An underground Woolworth’s grocery had all the ingredients for my next meal.

​The next 3 nights, I stayed with an Australian couple that I found through Servas, named Daryl and Elsje (“el-sha”). They were incredibly friendly, generous, interesting, entertaining people and we had so much fun in a few short days. Daryl picked me up in Battery Point with a cheerful greeting and drove me to his home in West Hobart. I was introduced to Elsje and their two pets, a schnauzer named Lucy with a partial haircut and a Siamese cat named “Missy” (short for Miss Minoes, a reference to a Dutch movie about a woman who turns into a cat). After introductions, they let me loose with a guitar while they ran errands.

​Daryl’s background was in media, entertainment, and theater. Among his many pursuits were magic, comedy, music, acting, playwriting, ventriloquism, and “Santa-ing” for the local community. We went down to the basement, pulled out a briefcase of tricks, and had a magic jam session. He even trained Missy to participate in his routine, and for a treat she would put her paw on the queen. A ventriloquist puppet named Arty the Penguin sat on the sofa, from Daryl's days working at a local Antarctica exhibit. Daryl was full of energy the whole day, from offering me a coffee in the morning to his return from an evening of Santa-ing and theater engagements.

​Elsje was an excellent gardener, often sporting scratches on her legs, and took me on a tour of the yard. I was dazzled by the variety – raspberries, cherries, quinces, leafy greens, tomatoes, and so much more. The driveway was recently renovated, and she had grand plans for the front yard. She was a seasoned chef and a fellow sweet tooth, so we bonded over meals and desserts. I enjoyed hearing stories from her life and family history. She came from a family of Dutch immigrants who settled in Kingston, just south of Hobart. At one point, she brought out a history book about her father’s role in the Dutch resistance to the Nazis. During her career, she trained airport and hospital staff in crisis management and happened to teach a workshop just 4 days before the infamous Port Arthur massacre (a tragic shooting that led to Australia’s gun reform). Though not a morning person like Daryl, she was also gregarious, perceptive, and full of life.

​The first evening, Elsje made a dinner of chicken wings and a dessert of crepes with raspberries and ice cream. After we stuffed ourselves, Elsje took me for a wallaby spotting tour in the neighborhood. We hopped in the car and drove up the hill. It didn’t take long – we spotted one a block away, grazing in a neighbor’s garden. We walked along a dirt trail and spotted several more, including one that froze and stood still for a few minutes while I calibrated my new binoculars. Back in the car, she meant to take me up Mt. Nelson but we were distracted by a group of 15-20 wallabies congregating on a grassy field. We ended up in her hometown of Kingston, and returned to Hobart on a longer coastal route.

​Daryl kindly offered to drive me downtown for my next Pennicott tour to Bruny Island. To my surprise, he lifted up the cat and brought her into the car too! His van was modified for a road trip with pets, including covers on the seats and door handles – a pandemic project. On the drive, Missy jumped up on the dashboard and started the windshield wipers in the process. Somehow, Daryl managed to keep the car moving straight while picking her up and turning off the wipers in an impressive feat of multi-tasking.

​My day trip to Bruny Island was a food-themed tour with about 10-15 people. We hopped in a van with our guide and driver Kai. The van was able to drive onboard the Bruny Island ferry, so it didn't take long to reach the island.

​Our first stop was for cheese and beer at the Bruny Island Cheese Co. An employee with a thick French accent tried to explain the selection. I liked several of the harder cheeses, like the cryptically named “C2.” The whole operation was a bit puzzling, as their cows were on Tasmania rather than Bruny Island. During the tasting, I met a boisterous couple from Perth who said I looked like Roger Federer.

​Our second stop was at the Neck, a strip of land connecting the northern and southern parts of the island. A platform at the top of a staircase gave us the panoramic view needed to appreciate this unique landform. The Neck was my original inspiration to visit Bruny Island, and it didn't disappoint. As we continued the drive, we spotted a white wallaby! Bruny Island is known for having a small population of white wallabies, but it was still a treat to see one. The southern part of the island gets more rain, and for our third stop, we explored an old-growth fern jungle on foot.

​The Pennicott tour company was large enough to have their own restaurant at a spot called Adventure Bay. We were given two drink tickets, a plate of oysters from a local farm called Get Shucked, and a fish entrée. While many oysters are grown in oscillating tides (they close in air, and this strengthens their muscle), the Bruny Island oysters are grown underwater, giving them a softer texture. I’m a pretty adventurous eater, but these oysters were tough to get down. They were large – too much time to think while eating – and the creaminess felt out of place. After the first one, I waited for my drink to arrive before stomaching any more. Thankfully, the Whey Stout (from the Bruny Island Beer Co) made a wonderful chaser.

There were several other solo travelers on the tour, and we gravitated to the same table. One was Antony, the Frenchman I met at the Montacute hostel. Another was a lady from Sydney visiting her bucket list places, inspired by a friend with a terminal illness. Also in the group was a soft-spoken but confident Asian man from LA who was traveling off a generous severance package. We swapped travel advice over our fish & chips and Tasmanian wine.
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The next stop was a beautiful white sand beach called Two Tree Point. It was the first “real” Australian beach I had encountered. It was lovely, with rock pools and kelp to complement the white sand. Historically, this part of Bruny Island was prized for its timber, and explorers like Captain Cook had docked nearby. The name Adventure Bay came from the HMS Adventure, one of Cook’s ships.

The tour had two more stops – chocolate and honey. The chocolate tasting was a bit unusual. We were offered a bar of fudge, and then shown around the sculpture gardens of the eccentric chocolatier – a bit of a Willy Wonka experience. This included “the graveyard,” a set of fake tombstones with humorous quotes and a frog pond. The honey tasting was more straightforward, the highlight being a cup of delicious honey ice cream.
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There was a long line for the return ferry crossing, which gave me time to buy cherries from the Black Devil Tasmanian cherry stand. I thought that a kilo sounded like a good amount, but I was caught off guard by the enormous bag! I joked with Antony that it was an example of Americans not knowing the metric system. The cherries were so good that I snacked on a few, even after all the other food.

​Upon returning to Hobart, I checked out two Friday night street markets that were in full swing. One was a “twilight market” right on the harbor, with crafts and food trucks. Another was the “Franko” market (held regularly in Franklin Square) that had even more food trucks plus live music. There were lots of tempting options, but I was stuffed from Bruny Island. Elsje was kind enough to pick me up. Later that evening, I made a coconut curry for dinner as a little thank-you for my hosts, and shared some chocolates from Bruny Island.

​I joined Elsje on her outing to walk Lucy at Sandy Bay, a dog-friendly beach in the evening. It was a bit chilly but it was nice to stroll along the beach while off-leash Lucy terrorized seagulls and greeted the other dogs. We stopped for gas and Elsje got us Valhalla brand ice cream drumsticks, which we ate on the couch while watching Wallace and Gromit on TV.

​It was Saturday morning and I had a whole unstructured day to work with. Daryl made a nice breakfast including eggs and bacon, then took me to his local café where we had coffee and practiced a few magic tricks. He dropped me off by the edge of the Salamanca Market, the premiere weekly street fair in Hobart. Multiple rows of tents had taken over the entire street, and it was packed! There was a dazzling variety of crafts, tasty food, and live music. It took an hour to browse from one end to the other. A few sights that stood out included: dog ponchos painted with the stripes of the extinct Tasmanian tiger, giant animal stickers for putting on garbage cans, a knife shop with a bird logo called Cockatool, a Mexican food truck offering wallaby burritos, and a seafood grill where all the employees were in pirate costumes. There were also an absurd number of craft distilleries. I tasted some pre-mixed cocktails including one with gin, sherry, and fernet. In between shopping rounds, I ordered a stuffed Turkish flatbread called gozleme, sat in the grass in the adjacent park, and watched the dogs playing at the Puppy Parking tent. Despite my efforts to window shop, I walked out with: a deck of Tasmanian devil playing cards, some stickers and postcards, jars of peanut butter and jelly, two cocktails, and a bar of fudge. It was a major highlight of Hobart!

​The rest of the afternoon, I needed to do some travel research and café hopped my way through the CBD. I started with a pot of tea from Sun Moon Lake at a cozy spot called Abel Land. When it closed, I moved to the local Banjo’s, a chain restaurant that evoked Panera. The "hopping" took a literal turn when I ended up at a craft brewery, called Shambles. My flight of beers included a Tasmanian blackberry sour, a red ale, a porter, and an IPA. From there, Elsje (and both pets) picked me up.

I mentioned to Elsje that I had a distant relative in Tasmania named Eva Zvatora, a Czech immigrant who worked as a dentist. Although she died in 2015, I was hoping to find out about her life and connect with any living relatives. Together we started an internet search and found a picture of a plaque dedicated to Eva near the town of Penguin. As fate would have it, Daryl’s relatives lived in Penguin, and Elsje started to have a hunch that Eva was in fact the relatives’ next-door neighbor. To be more precise, it was Daryl’s late brother and sister-in-law Bev who were the potential connection. Elsje immediately reached out to Bev, but didn’t hear back, so she tried Bev’s son Tony. We were eating a delicious dinner of lamb and pink eye potatoes when Elsje received a call back from Tony. She cleverly asked Tony if he remembered the name of the dentist next door without spilling the beans. From memory, he offered the name Zvatora. The hunch was confirmed! It was a magical moment.

When Daryl came back from his Santa obligations, we caught him up on the amazing Zvatora connection. Daryl happened to have some pictures of Bev’s house, Eva’s house, and their surroundings. The two houses shared a driveway, so it made perfect sense that the Peebles family would have known the Zvatora family. We started brainstorming the possibility of me visiting Penguin to meet the Peebles, but it wasn’t realistic to squeeze it in. Still, I was energized by this small-world coincidence. Think about it. My Servas hosts, picked out of an online directory, just happened to know my grandmother’s Tasmanian cousin. It was truly meant to be! Stay tuned for more updates on this plot thread…

Alas, my stay with Daryl and Elsje was over and it was time for the next chapter of the adventure. Daryl drove me to the rental car pickup and I bid him farewell. But before leaving town, I had to squeeze in one more market! The Sunday farmer’s market was just a few blocks from the rental car agency. I picked up fresh veggies, including Tasmanian pink eye potatoes, and a special type of berry called the Tayberry (a cross between a blackberry and raspberry). One other stand caught my eye – Soyoyoy, a.k.a Tasmania’s tofu company, where I bought some special tempeh for Rachel. I tucked this bag full of produce into the trunk and hit the road, bringing Hobart along in spirit.