Tasmania day 17 & 18

Day 17

MONA (museum of old and new art)

We had a bit of a sleep in this morning, got a little bit glammed up and headed over to MONA.  We arrived as they were opening the door at 10am.

This lace truck is about  ¾ of  the size of a full size truck, it was pretty amazing, it was parked out the front of the museum.

As we entered the museum we were handed an ipod and ear phones, provided with instructions for their use and directed to the staircase which took us down three floors. 

This museum was amazing, as you approached an art work, you can read all about it on the iPod, and some artwork even had a commentary that was often by the artist or the curator of the museum.

I loved this, the water was released precisely to spell out a word and the words are words that were found randomly on the internet, it was really interesting

These lights were amazing, the art enthusiast would walk up to a platform and put there hands on a metal plate, it recognized the pattern of the heartbeat, this was then shown in the flickering of the light globe, there were 50 something lights each flickering to a different heart beat…..

There was so much to see we didn’t emerge from the gallery until 1pm and probably could have stayed for a lot longer.

Day 18 …..Best day EVA…….

Today started early ( I think that is Marc’s preferred time) seriously though we had a bit of driving to do.  We headed down to the Tahune Forest in Geeveston .  you know how they say Queensland sunny one day, perfect the next, well in Tassie it rains then it’s sunny then it rains then it’s sunny in about 30min periods, seriously as we drove down it rained, was sunny and on arrival at the forest it was raining.

Not to be defeated we grabbed our umbrella’s and raincoats and set off, we had a short walk really to the beginning of the Tahune Air walk, it was an easy walk (just over 600m) along the steel walkway that slowly raised us up above the canopy of the Tahune forest, at the end of this walkway we were 37m above the forest floor and 50m above the river it was amazing, very scenic. Definitely worth the walk.

The end of the airwalk walkway

The airwalk from the ground

We then did the “swinging bridges” walk, this was about an 1 hour walk through the rainforest during which it alternately rained and was sunny.  During the walk we crossed two swinging bridges that spanned across the two rivers that flowed through the forest

The swinging bridge

After the walk we had a well-earned cuppa at the, lovely warm café. At this site, they also have hang gliding rides, our little daredevil Miss S was really keen to have a go, so we payed for her to have two go’s and headed down to where she needed to be, as luck would have it the park officer who runs the ride was heading down in his little 4WD (he calls it Kermit) so he gave us a lift, that alone was a thrilling ride. Anyway there was another family there as well, so we watched them have a go , then it was Miss S’s go then Marc had a go and so did I and it was fantastic…..the view was amazing. 

Marc coming back to earth

To top it all off we got another ride back to the café, in Kermit going flat out it was great fun. So we had a nice hot lunch at the café and then headed back to Hobart, as we drove back we passed all the Apple farms, so of course we stopped and picked up some farm fresh apples.  As we drove along Marc commented that maybe tomorrow we would head up to Mt Wellington to have a look, since it was sunny and no rain clouds in sight I commented why not go now?

So we did, as we drove up it was sunny, as we approached the summit it got cooler and cooler , Marc was telling us the temperature outside as it dropped.

 We could definetly tell that the vegetation was cold weather vegetation up there but as we rounded a bend and we looked out the front windscreen we glanced at each other in shock……it was snowing…..by the time we reached the top the wind was howling and the snow was constant, we jumped out to have a good look, it was freezing….my hand was shaking so much trying to take photo’s…..i was surprised that any of the photo’s worked out……

They did….love my Nikon….

panorama of Hobart from Mt Wellington

The Snow

It was so exhilarating up there and I think we all agreed that although everything has been fabulous here, this was one of the best days we had, even though we trudged through the rainforest in the rain and was nearly blown off the top of Mt Wellington…..it was a great day

Off to bed now

Catch you tomorrow

The Knights