Salamanca Market, our last day in Tasmania.

May 19 Salamanca Market

Our camp at Mt. Field was only a little over an hour from Hobart, so we took advantage of that fact to go into the special Saturday market there on Salamanca Street. It is down near the harbor.  Bob got to take more photos of sailing ships !! 

Salamanca Market is a combination farmer's market, arts and crafts fair, food court with lots of different kinds of live entertainment. Many of the crafts people are local with local products.

We loved all the wood. Bob bought himself several nice items from two different old Tassie woodturners. I was taken by all the local wool (no big surprise with all the sheep we saw) and other lovely handcrafted fare. We wandered through the whole thing buying gifts for family and friends.

Lunchtime found us over at the fish markets nearby sampling more of the Tasmanian oysters, we each ate a  juicy dozen. Two more stops, one for local whiskey available only on the Oz mainland(so smooth, ed.) and one at a bakery I had seen during our last trip to Hobart for dinner fare. It was time to head back to Mt. Field before it got dark and the pademelons came out on the highway. There is an amazing amount of roadkill on the roads here, Bob did not want to add to the slaughter.

Back at camp we grabbed our headlamps, which we could not use as we approached the bugs because it would turn them off thinking it was daylight, and headed for the short hike to Russell Falls. At night you can see glow worms, which are actually fly larva that are bioluminescent to attract their prey to their sticky webs.

On the way back we were treated to a new bird sighting, the nocturnal Tawny Frogmouth !! It was quite large.
Our food from the fancy Hobart bakery made a lovely last dinner in Tassie. Smoked salmon and caramelized onion quiche, asparagus and gruyere quiche and a roasted veggie and rice salad, yum !! For dessert I had a huge pistachio rosewater meringue.

May 20
Bob woke up early and went out to hunt for animals on our last day in Tasmania. As dawn he was treated to the serenade of a kookaburra. Their sound is truly unique and complex and they deserve their full name Laughing Kookaburra !! We did a quick hike back to Russell Falls to see it in the daylight.

It was bittersweet to turn in our camper and eventually arrive at the Hobart airport. We had one close call when the main bridge across the Derwent River was closed for a foot race of some kind. Luckily we could follow the flow of other cars detouring to another bridge that would get us to the airport. Hobart Airport was small and dingy.

Arriving in Melbourne was a bit of culture shock after the wild and wonderful national parks of Tasmania. We took a shuttle to our hotel right next to Victoria Market in the city center. After a refreshing shower we headed to the market in search of dinner.

Queen Victoria Market has been around since 1878, it is mostly enclosed halls of seafood, meats, dairy and prepared foods. Roofed but open air structures hold both organic and commercial fruits and vegetables and beyond them were halls of trashy clothes, souvenirs and other stuff all probably made in China.
We started with a dozen oysters to fortify us before we walked the rest of the market and eventually we purchased some tasty deli fare, tabouli, marinated mushroom, stuffed peppers, cheeses and bread and sweets( great almond macaroons and a fudgy brownie).

We took this back to our room then headed out to find a park with a view called Flagstaff Park, near our hotel. Besides the view we found a large lawn bowling club and enjoyed watching a dozen folks play.

Final bird list update from Taz:

Wedge Tailed Eagle
Brown Falcon
Tasmanian Native Hen
Galah
Green Rosella
Kookaburra, Laughing
Tawny Frogmouth
Pink Robin (not our kind of robin)
Flame Robin (yeah, not the same family as ours)
Scarlet Robin (yet again, not a thrush)
Dusky Robin
Satin Flycatcher
Yellow Wattlebird
Little Pied Cormorant
Magpie Lark
Black Currawong
Grey Currawong
Tasmanian Magpie
Common Blackbird

From North to South, Port Sorell to Hobart

May 11
We awoke to another  clear but cool day in Port Sorell. After some discussion with our charming host, Bob decided on an adventurous route down the middle of the island  to our destination of Hobart, capital of Tasmania. The road took us over a mountain pass with rain and even slushy snow at the highest point, it was full of huge fern trees, eucalyptus and views of the Great Lake. The road was slow and windy but very scenic, we were very hungry by the time we came to a town with any amenities. Bothwell seemed promising and a cute place called the Bothwell Grange had a sign offering lunch.

 We should have turned around an left as soon as we entered this pathetic excuse for a pub. Two young women stared at us as we entered, giving single syllable answers to our questions. We looked at the menu board, how bad could a "Grange burger" be ???....very bad. When our "burgers" arrived we could not determine what they were, chicken, fish, something very dead and very deep fried. I managed a few bits , Bob choked down most of his out of desperation.

Back on the road we were treated to beautiful rainbows as it continued to shower off and on. We reached Hobart, check into out our hotel with it's great views and immediately headed down to the old harbor to explore.

To Bob's delight there were ships of all kinds, including a huge orange ice breaker.
 Turns out all the Antarctic explorers began their journeys in Hobart.

The wind made it feel like the Antarctic as checked out the area that would the next morning be the site of Hobart's famed Salamanca Market. The Salamanca Fruit Market had me salivating and excited to be shopping there the next day for provisions for our camping trip. We walked around looking for a dining experience to erase the bad taste of lunch.
Bob was drawn to one place called the Drunken Admiral, it looked touristy to me and sure enough as we headed over there later to try our luck a huge tour bus  had just dis-engorged it's passengers there. Instead we headed back to a more subtle looking place call the Mill. It was empty when we first got there but soon filled up and it's menu was both fun and intriguing, dishes of different prices that came in no set order. We enjoyed a smoked fish chowder, fish in butter sorrel sauce, spinach salad with roasted pumpkin, a tender mussels cooked in a dark ale and a strawberry sundae made with crisp meringues and sheep milk vanilla ice cream. Yum, this meal made up for the disaster of our lunch experience.

May 12
This was a day of transition for us, we were turning in our little rental car and switching to a camper van for the tassie camping experience. It was not the smoothest of transitions as the camper place by the airport was tough to find and under staffed, the weather windy, rainy, bitingly cold and the van, a manual transmission. Eventually we were on our way up the eastern coast after a smashingly good lunch at a bakery in Sorell. Bob ordered a hamburger with "the lot", turns out it had a fried egg, bacon, sausage patty, as well as the beef patty,tomatoes, lettuce and bun. I chose the featured curried scallop pie, very tasty.

We slowly wound our way up through the countryside to Mayfield Beach Conservation Area for the night. The beach was picturesque, the sound of the waves thundering and the sunset beautiful. After a chilly stroll along the beach we spent the evening getting acquainted with our camper van.