Tidbits from Tasmania

Our last port of call in Australia was in Hobart, Tasmania.  Tasmania is an island about a 10 – 12 hour fast ferry ride from mainland Australia.  Lonely Planet rated Tasmania the 4^th best place in the world to visit – my guess is it’s one of the least known of those places, as I know I hadn’t much thought about it before this cruise!

We arrived early in the morning, which is typical for this cruise, as well as the others we’ve been on.  The sky was very gentle and the water in the harbor matched it.  It was sort of a nice way to ease into the day.  Tasmania is about the size of the state of Rhode Island, and about 40% of the land is set aside for parks, public lands, etc., so it’s a great place to explore nature.

Hobart is the largest city in Tasmania, with a population of about 200,000.  The entire island of Tasmania has only 500,000, so the majority of people live in Hobart.  It’s interesting to note that Hobart is sort of a retirement city, with most of the residents retired.  We’d been told that retirees like it because it has a much more relaxed pace to it, and a sort of small town feel to it.  

This is the main bridge in Hobart, and we crossed it twice going to/from our excursion here.  There is an interesting story about the history of this bridge.  It was opened in the 1960s and about 10 years later, there was an incident.  A large cargo ship, much like the one in this image, was heading out and needed to travel under the bridge.  The captain of the ship traveled the river often, and felt he didn’t need a tug boat and/or pilot boat to keep him on track.  Well, that might have been true for the captain, but he left his second in command in charge of getting out of the harbor, which included passing under the bridge.  Too late, the second in command realized he wasn’t headed for the center part of the bridge (where the cargo ship is in the image).  Instead he was headed for a pylon off to the right of center, where the black star is in the image.  He tried turning on the back thrusters to stop the ship, but that only succeeded in turning the ship sideways, and it crashed into the pylon that used to be where the black star is and took it down, along with a chunk out of the bridge.  Interestingly, it didn’t knock out the entire portion of that bridge, so the other half of the roadway was deemed safe to use while the bridge was being repaired.  You will notice that the pylons are not evenly spaced on that side of the bridge, however.  Due to the weight of its cargo and the weight of the pylon and concrete from the bridge that fell onto the ship, the ship sank right there, under the bridge.  Apparently, the waters of the bay are very deep, so it was determined that the ship, pylon and bridge portion would just remain there.  We didn’t hear that any of the crew’s lives were lost, so our assumption is they all got off the cargo ship ok.  And, regulations were put in place that require a tug or pilot ship accompany a ship wherever it crosses under the bridge. They aren’t visible in this image, but they were there with the cargo ship!

More about our day in Tasmania in my next blog post! 

Enjoy!