So the weekend just ended up being one night. Well, two nights because I went down Thursday night with Sam and stayed in the city Friday night. That gave me a day and a half of wooden boats. That is quite long enough 🙂
It was rather same-ish this year. Nothing new (although the bullocks were cool, not so much for themselves as being in the city) and some other little things, but overall, nothing really interesting stands out. I guess it doesn’t help that they lost some of their drawcards, but then if Endeavour had been there, I wouldn’t have had time to look around anyway. Weather wasn’t favourable either. OK it was favourable in that it didn’t rain but it was much too hot to walking around a lot.
Friday morning I went through the Mawson Huts Replica Museum, which is interesting. Although I don’t think it’s quite worth $12. (Although now if I got back in the next 12 months with someone else, I can get in for free.) At midday I went over to Kangaroo Bluff to watch the Parade of Sail but that really needs a large square-rigged ship or two (and the wind from the right direction) to be effective. Maybe next year. Back to the city in the afternoon, and booked into room.
Imperial Hotel Backpackers has retained its place at the bottom of the list of places to stay in Hobart. I only stayed there because they claimed to have upgraded. I guess “upgrade” is relative. They do provide bed linen now. That is, a fitted sheet and a quilt. That’s all. In the middle of bloody summer and they provide just a quilt. Stupid. Room was tiny, with just a bed, locker and a chair of the metal framed sort. Also a portable heater and a blue bucket with a broken handle that is apparently the bin. I assume this because it had “BIN” written on the side. Still, with water added it made a handy cooler for my drink. I have stayed in places with less furniture (i.e just a bed) but this room felt bare. Maybe because there were no floor coverings (just floorboards). Maybe it was a tiny room at the top of a maze. Maybe because other places at least make some sort of effort. A north facing room, so it was hot. And noisy due to a dozen air-conditioning units on roof outside window and in the other room. I would not stay here again unless it was the only place available in the city, and then I’d look seriously at suburbs first. Unless they dropped their prices by half. I can’t think of any other reason to stay there.
On leaving the room, I checked out the bookshop in the adjoining arcade This was a bad idea. They have a lot of books. Floor to ceiling and then more stacked on top, and narrow aisles. A lot of books and a lot of interesting ones. Meh. Anyway, after that went down to the Festival and mostly looked at the market place end of the festival and got something to eat.
Saturday started at the Market. Was low on cash but the tea place had a card machine so I bought two packets of tea. Also a handful of apples. It was far to busy though, and already getting warm. Headed back over to the Festival and walked to the other end where the Shipwrights thing was. This is where the bullocks were, but they took a while to turn up so I’d walked up to the street to look for them, which turned out to be a good idea, as it was the most interesting part. Also, they move faster than I thought. That is, at a fast walk I only just kept ahead of them while I was heading back down to where they were to unload. Left bag in museum lockers, then went upstairs to check out the huskies they had there, and also some of the temporary art exhibitions. Because they were there, and sometimes they turn out to be interesting. After that, went back over the road to look over the <I>Julie Burgess</I>. I’d looked over the other ships before, more than once, so I wasn’t interested in them. I did go and look at the model boats, which was in a small room that was far to crowded, hot and noisy. The models themselves where interesting, especially the <I>Victory</I> one, but not a pleasant room. On leaving there, I went back to look at Shipwrights ends of the Festival, which is where all the people doing demonstrations (e.g. splitting shingles, making lobster cages). Took some photos. Again, much the same as usual. It was after midday by then and I’d Had Enough. Went over to the museum to get something to drink in the cafe (iced chocolate and a lovely cheesecake with a dollop of cream beside it) with intention of finding something to do there to kill time until I had to go to bus, but a market research lady came over and I spent some time doing a survey on her iPad, for which I got a card reprinting one of Beattie’s photo. Rather nice. I did head up the middle floor of the Bond Store and check out the exhibition there because I hadn’t really had a good look at it before. I thought. Actually, I had, it just didn’t have much to grab me. (Nothing wrong with it, it was just not as interesting as their other exhibits). Then over to catch the bus, which now leaves from outside the Hydro building (and I got the best seat, at the front on the left). Was a easy trip home as I read all the way.
Overall, a pretty good weekend but more tiring than fun.
Now I should see if there are any decent photos.