What a great day for a tour!

Ah, what a good day to be in Hobart!   Very comfy temps and we have a tour planned for today

Woke up to see the bridge in our view opening… Opens in a 90 degree sideways turn… hard to describe, but is different than what we normally see.  Got dressed, ate and headed for our tour meet up!  As soon as Jerry got on, he walked up to our guide and asked if he spoke English… Everyone got a chuckle out of that. Our guide, Adam, was a hoot and quite knowledgeable… I guess that’s why he must get the big bucks!  Learned lots about the area and saw lots.  We stopped a few times and probably got in about 2 ½ miles walking around different areas!  Love it when that happens…

Visited the Cascade Falls (not much of a fall, but more like a creek!) and then the Cascade Brewery.  It’s a working brewery and is not open to tours, but the park surrounding the building was public.  Saw a unique duck/turkey/who knows what?  You can see it in the pic…

Anyway, back on the trolley bus and off to the Women’s Factory…which was the Woman’s Jail.  Most of it has been destroyed during the years (and one group even built tennis courts over one of the ‘yards’).  Some areas they have now created paths, rocks, etc to show what was there.  There is one area where you can actually see the foundations of the cells.  These women came from England, and many of their crimes were crazy small, but they got ‘7 years’.  It was a disgusting part of history.  They would get preggers there (male guards all around) but then the women were punished for being pregnant…

From there, we headed to the Tasman Bridge, a gorgeous, long bridge, but known for a horrible accident in 1975.  A bulk ore carrier travelling up the river collided with several pylons of the bridge, causing a large section of the bridge deck to collapse onto the ship and into the river below.  Twelve people were killed, including seven crew on board the ship and five occupants of four cars which fell 150 feet after driving off the bridge.  Scary stuff... took two years to rebuild the bridge.  Now, whenever a ship goes under the bridge, they stop all traffic on the bridge before the ship can go under the bridge.  Got some pretty nice pics there.

We ended the journey at the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens.  Nice to walk through and enjoy the beauty Mother Nature creates!  When they first built the gardens, they surrounded the area with a large two walled brick wall.  They would like a fire in between the brick walls and then that would heat the area as some of the more delicate plants transplanted there could find it easier to take hold.  Eventually they could stop when the plants were strong enough!
Oh, and we got a bridge pic...kind of a cheat, but, oh well... you see we were in the Sub-Arctic Plant Exhibition.  IT WAS FREEZING and yet DAMP in the building.  But, we braved the elements just to get our pic!

Got back to our later in the afternoon after a nice lunch on the wharf.  The wind started to pick up just as we got to the room and then, bam!  a heavy squall came through... We, though, were nice and comfy in our room and could watch the mayhem, inside-out umbrellas and folks scattering everywhere!

The building below... those red dots were actually were the boats in the Harbor would tie up...  

Some of the housing in one of the pricier areas 

So, you pay taxes on the around of windows you have.  These folks bricked in one window to reduce their taxes! 

Look at the size of this Dandelion... with stickers! 

No one could figure out what this bird was hanging with the ducks... Turkey? 

The Women's Prison (aka Factory) was very sobering...

 Photo of the bridge collaspe

Now we're at the gardens....

This bee was burrowing into this plant

Maybe if I hold really still, she won't see me!!!!

Hard to get the stormy weather pic... was much darker than the picture makes it appear...

The view from a lookout for the bridge on the right, and then Hobart with Mount Wellington in the background (not really a mountain... more like a huge hill...)