PART ONE. Not sure about this time travel stuff, but we left El Mirage on Thursday afternoon and got to Tasmania on Saturday afternoon.  A whole bunch of that time was spent in various airports, but the entire flight was in darkness.  We arrived over Australia at dawn.

When we got to Tasmania we had time for a shower and went to a local bistro for dinner, then hit the sack.  Who knew a person could sleep so well, so long.

With the morning came our first big adventure to Bonorong Animal Preserve.  Apparently there are a lot of car/animal mishaps here and this shelter takes care of the survivors.

We met a koala, a wombat, a Tasmanian devil, kangaroos, and an emu.  All these animals except the emu are marsupials.  When the mother gets run over you are always supposed to go out and check the pouch and make sure the “Joey” is alive and if so you take it to the shelter.  Who knew.

On a walk around Hobart we learned some of the area history.  Convicts were sent here from England in the 1700’s. The usual sentence time was 20 years but they were supposed to bring their families with them and work off their time doing projects such as bridge and building construction.  Some convicts had special skills such as one man who knew how to run a printing press.  His sentence was commuted and he became the local printer and a pub owner and a man of high standing in the community.

This lax handling of prisoners came to a screeching halt in  early 1778 when a new Governor General was assigned to the colony.  This guy reversed the kindly treatment of prisoners and started a much sterner regime.  He had a gallows erected and would sometimes hang 9 at a time.  The folks of Hobart (Australia’s second city) revolted and wanted to declare independence as had the American colonies.  King George wanted no more of this so he sent a different guy to replace the one everybody hated.  This new Governor General was Lord John Franklin who reinstated the more relaxed handling of prisoners.  The colonists loved this guy who was to later go on to hunt, unsuccessfully, for the Northwest Passage.  Did any of you watch The Terror?  It’s about him. Sorta.

We also looked up into the night sky and saw the Southern Cross.

It is this formation of four stars sesembling a kite.  There are two lower stars and when a line is drawn through the two right handed stars in the cross through the two below the line points to true south.  The statue in the background is of Tasman after whom the state is named.  And above is the flag with six stars denoting the six states of Australia.  One guy in our group could name them all, but not me!  I had a pen pal once in New South Wales so I knew that one, but none of the others.

As our day wound up we went to the small town of Richmond.  It is very pretty and reminded us a little of the town of Niagara on the Lake in Canada.  There we saw this bridge built in 1823 by prisoners.  It is quite charming and we enjoyed a local lunch featuring “pie” which is a little individual quiche.  Mark had Shepard’s pie and I had cauliflower.  Very tasty!

The weather has been extremely windy and cold.  But we are carrying on!  Tomorrow we go to Port Authur to see the prison where many of the convicts lived.  Until then, g’day Mates!!