21. Cruise Ports Melbourne and Hobart

Fed Square

Our first stop was Melbourne. Diane, my aunt and uncle, and my cousin Norm and his wife went into town with me to take photos of some of the hightlights. We started out with the Webb Bridge, which is super cool. The pics will show why.

Webb Bridge

Victoria State Library Reading room

From there we took the tram to the State Library of Victoria which has this amazing dome and reading room.

bulgogi at Korean restaurant

We grabbed lunch at a Korean restaurant and wandered down to a few more sights: the clocks at the train station (famous for “meeting under the clocks”), a graffiti street, and Federation Square with these odds buildings that look incomplete. From the we walked across Princes Bridge and along the water to get pictures of some nice pedestrian bridges.

At Rutledge Lane

Hosier Lane

Building with Bees on it

Evan Walker bridge with restaurant underneath

Melbourne train station clocks with times of different places

Crown Casino

The Crown Casino was at the end of this walk and we went in so I could buy some casino chips to collect. Afterwards Diane and I walked over to Princes Pier next door to snap a picture of the old wooden pylons which are all the remains of the historic pier.

Year of the snake in crown casino

Princes Pier in Melbourne

on Princes Pier with our ship in the background

Cool statues and live seagull

After another sea day we arrived in Tasmania. We took a bus tour here and our tour guide was quite entertaining. The most exciting part was spotting a couple of wallabies in the wild at the Botanical gardens.

Two wallabies in the botanical garden

Friends on the bridge in botanical garden

Cascade Brewing Factory

We visited the Cascade Brewery which was started by a man who originally was going to open a mill as those were badly needed. However, in buying the land he incurred some unpaid debts in England and was imprisoned for 5 years. When he was released, mills were no longer needed so he needed another way to make his fortune. It was illegal to sell distilled liquor, but not to sell brewed beer so he opened Cascade Brewing Company in 1832. The building was originally built in 1824 (for the mill) and used the cascading river for its water source. In 1927 they made it higher as they used a gravity method to produce the beer, which is why both dates are on the building.

open window facade in
Cascade Brewery factory

Townspeople complained about the ugly building so they built a facade over the front and you can see the open window on the top right has nothing behind it, just some scaffolding. In the beginning workers would just drink beer on the job as they liked but eventually they saw the danger of that so they started "beero" where 4 times a day (10, 12, 3, and 4:30) they would ring a bell and workers could come to the building on the left and drink as much beer as they wanted for 10 minutes. Labor safety laws in the 1990's stopped that but instead now every worker gets 24 cans to take home every week.

Statues commemorating the
impact of women convicts
brought to New Zealand

We also enjoyed hearing about the history of the town, which was built on the backs of free convict labor. Our tour guide told us how some men were able to make new lives for themselves upon release though most just fell back into their old ways and were imprisoned again. Unfortunately, they treated the women convicts quite poorly. If they “moved up” to being able to work in someone’s home they might be mishandled by the man they worked for and many would then commit a crime so they could be imprisoned again to get out of the situation. If they were raped and got pregnant, they would be put back into prison and if the baby died (only 20% survived the poor conditions) the mother would be convicted of murder and her sentence extended.

Plaque for Statue

names of all the women convicts brought here

Playing Farkle in our cabin

On the ship we had some fun times playing games: Farkle, Crew (a very fun cooperative trick-taking card game), and mexican train with Nancy's sister-in-law's brother who was on the cruise as well.

my cabin door...I finally remembered to bring magnets from my travels

Rainbow