Discovering tassie, Part 1 - Hobart, Australia

Australia's Backdoor


Very little Indian queue
Family returns home after a diverse walk along the waterfront of Hobart.
boxed art
A street artist awaits his turn to perform at the Salamanca Square market.
Salamanca Square Market
It's Saturday morning, and a crowd scans the stalls at Hobart's most famous market, Salamanca.
Kodak moment
Classic buildings against more modern ones, on Elisabeth Street, a pedestrian street in Hobart.
improvised bench
Perched man holds a child.
Adjustable reflex
Hat seller at Salamanca Square market holds a mirror to a shopper.
Safe from the Tasman Sea
Vessels anchored in a Hobart dock.
Scotland in Oceania
Detail of the kilts worn by a group of pipers performing Saturday morning at the Salamanca Square market.
mako sea food
Sailboats moored next to one of the many seafood restaurants in Hobart harbor.
virtual mascot
Illusory painting on a Tony Haigh Street facade.
"Tassie" design
A woman passes in front of a stand of creative "tassie" products.
Infinite Breath
Piper plays during the Salamanca Square market.
improvised trio
Teenagers play on a street in the middle of Salamanca Square market for a few Australian dollars.
Horizontal Property
Villas occupy an entire hillside around Hobart.
Salamanca Style "Tassie"
Rare for a restaurant at the entrance of a peculiar alley that leaves Salamanca Place.
El Diabolero
A street artist performs his act, surrounded by visitors to the Salamanca Square market.
Double Decker Elegance
Friends contemplate a London double-decker bus adapted for Hobart city tours.
Apple Island Vegetables
Shoppers stock up at the Salamanca Square market.
Along with Kelly Steps
Passersby cross in front of the historic buildings that delimit Salamanca Square.
Hobart, the capital of Tasmania and the southernmost of Australia, was colonized by thousands of convicts from England. Unsurprisingly, its population maintains a strong admiration for marginal ways of life.

Sammy doesn't look like someone who enjoys much of the outdoors and sun.

Even so, it cautiously celebrates the already long period of good weather in the Tasmania and from Hobart, the capital.

“It's been fabulous, but don't think this is always the case, the teenager assures us, under the little round glasses, while we share a fish & chips oily. “Antarctica is already down there and, even from December to February, we have periods of rain and wind that lead us to despair”.

The esplanade we live on occupies part of one of the docks in the harbor of Hobart and holds us back with a view of hundreds of sailboats and other boats moored in their shelters.

Hobart Docks, Tasmania, Australia

Vessels anchored in a Hobart dock

Sydney-Hobart: A Deadly Regatta

The competition takes place every year on the 26th of December, on the Anglophone Boxing Day holiday.

As the name implies, its route of almost 630 nautical miles (almost 1200 km) starts in Sydney, continues south along the Tasman Sea, continues along the coast of the island and ends at its capital.

Classic buildings against more modern ones, on Elisabeth Street, a pedestrian street in Hobart

The competition is known for its toughness and the amount of dropouts and accidents.

In the 1998 edition, for example, the participating vessels encountered a storm brushing against hurricane status. The winds passed 70 knots and generated huge waves.

At the same time, even though it was midsummer, it was snowing in southern parts of the big island. Of the 115 sailboats that set sail from the Australian continent, only 44 managed to cross the Bass Strait and reach Hobart, five boats sank and six crew were killed.

This was just the worst case.

Sailboats moored next to one of several seafood restaurants in Hobart harbor

From Tasman Discovery to Exile

Also Abel Tasman, the first European to sight Tasmania, in 1642, must have faced adverse conditions. And with the same fury of those southern seas they would have aggravated the suffering of the thousands of convicts who, from 1803, were first exiled to Risdon Cove – the second British colony in the Australia – later to other parts of Tasmania.

In just a few years, Hobart replaced Risdon Cove and stood out from other pioneer towns. It became the second oldest city in the country (after Sydney) and the southern Australian state capital.

Horizontal Property

Villas occupy an entire hillside around Hobart.

Its houses are squeezed between the steep slopes of Mount Wellington (1210 m) and the wide estuary of the River Derwent where the maritime structures of Battery Point – the historic heart of the city – and Constitution Dock extend.

Salamanca Place: An Old Fashioned Market

As we walk through these riverside areas organized around Georgian warehouses built to support the trade that has developed in the meantime, we discover the architecture inherited from those old times when, until the announced extinction, the aborigines were forced to give up the land they held.

We also discovered a market faithful to the atmosphere lived there in the first decades of the colonial era. It's Saturday morning and the streets and garden of Salamanca Place come alive once again.

Salamanca Square Market, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia

Shoppers stock up at Salamanca Square market

Despite being a weekly event, the event makes Hobart hot and attracts people from all over Tasmania.

Hundreds of stalls succeed each other in a rectangular space where shoppers and visitors huddle together and wander over and over again.

Some display natural and homemade products, such as the most eye-catching fruits on the island and the sweets and jams they gave rise to. Others promote crafts, the typical and the creative, designed and executed in the homes of local artists. Others still suggest eccentric pieces of clothing and decoration or propose addictive skill games.

The atmosphere is mystical, with remnants of a XNUMXth century era that the distance from the big Australian cities continues to validate.

A woman passes in front of a stand of creative “tassie” products.

The yellowish sandstone walls of the old warehouses, once at the hub of Hobart's whaling and commercial activity, stand out from the crowd, now transformed into restaurants and bars that concentrate the city's nightlife.

There is more history in the name of the place and the market that honors the distant victory of the Duke of Wellington at the Battle of Salamanca, fought in 1812, near the Castilian city.

It's Saturday morning and a crowd scans the stalls at Hobart's most famous market, Salamanca Square

A Band of Pipers in skirts. Hobart's Scottish Heritage

A group of formally dressed pipers play with determination in the garden.

Pipers. Hobart, Tasmania, Australia

Piper plays during Salamanca Square market

Next to it, dozens of buskers vie for the time and attention of passersby.

While some act, others wait their turn and rehearse or mess with whoever passes by to disguise their anxiety.

Musicians and jugglers, poetry reciters and contortionists appear. The more versatile ones bring together a little of each art and, when reconciled with humor, are boasted by ecstatic audiences.

improvised trio

Teenagers play on a street in the middle of Salamanca Square market for a few Australian dollars.

We stop as long as necessary each time a new buskers announces itself and shows off to the crowd. Using unicycles, diabolos, maces and even chainsaws, the talented beggars entertain the fair's customers without haste.

In return, they fill their hats and shoeboxes with Australian dollars.

One of them – El Diabolero – is still in a good mood to play with those who leave without contributing. "You guys down there who don't have change, don't worry. Just come here to the ATM!".

El Diabolero, Salamanca Square Market, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia

Street artist performs his act, surrounded by visitors to the Salamanca Square market

There is spontaneous generosity among the population of Hobart and Tasmania in general. And an unconditional admiration for alternative ways of life.

The British Condemned Who Condemned the Aborigines

Of the first 262 Europeans to inhabit the British penal colony, in 1863, 178 were convicted. For many, the adventure in the antipodes represented an extension of the violence, thanks to the permanent clashes with the semi-nomadic aboriginal tribe Mouheneener.

As in other parts of the Australia, the firepower of the settlers reinforced by the biological devastation perpetrated by the diseases they brought from the Old Continent quickly demobilized the indigenous people.

In addition to ceding their territories, between 1829 and 1834, they were moved to a reserve on the island of Flinders where they were to be converted to Christianity and civilized ways.

Almost the entire indigenous population died of disease and despair, and by the end of the XNUMXth century there were no longer any natives of fully Aboriginal blood in Tasmania.

improvised bench

Perched man holds a child.

Although their culture has almost completely ceded to the European, the genes are present in mixed communities generated since 1798, when some seal hunters formed families with aboriginal women and settled in Flinders and other islands of the Furneaux group.

Three hundred and sixty-eight years after the Dutch navigator Abel Tasman Having discovered the island to the West, several thousand of Tasmania's 500.000 inhabitants are descendants of these communities.

Perth to Albany, Australia

Across the Far West of Australia

Few people worship evasion like the aussies. With southern summer in full swing and the weekend just around the corner, Perthians are taking refuge from the urban routine in the nation's southwest corner. For our part, without compromise, we explore endless Western Australia to its southern limit.
Sydney, Australia

From the Exile of Criminals to an Exemplary City

The first of the Australian colonies was built by exiled inmates. Today, Sydney's Aussies boast former convicts of their family tree and pride themselves on the cosmopolitan prosperity of the megalopolis they inhabit.
Markets

A Market Economy

The law of supply and demand dictates their proliferation. Generic or specific, covered or open air, these spaces dedicated to buying, selling and exchanging are expressions of life and financial health.
Discovering tassie, Part 3, Tasmania, Australia

Tasmania from Top to Bottom

The favorite victim of Australian anecdotes has long been the Tasmania never lost the pride in the way aussie ruder to be. Tassie remains shrouded in mystery and mysticism in a kind of hindquarters of the antipodes. In this article, we narrate the peculiar route from Hobart, the capital located in the unlikely south of the island to the north coast, the turn to the Australian continent.
Great Ocean Road, Australia

Ocean Out, along the Great Australian South

One of the favorite escapes of the Australian state of Victoria, via B100 unveils a sublime coastline that the ocean has shaped. We only needed a few kilometers to understand why it was named The Great Ocean Road.
Alice Springs to Darwin, Australia

Stuart Road, on its way to Australia's Top End

Do Red Center to the tropical Top End, the Stuart Highway road travels more than 1.500km lonely through Australia. Along this route, the Northern Territory radically changes its look but remains faithful to its rugged soul.
Perth, Australia

the lonely city

More 2000km away from a worthy counterpart, Perth is considered the most remote city on the face of the Earth. Despite being isolated between the Indian Ocean and the vast Outback, few people complain.
Cairns to Cape Tribulation, Australia

Tropical Queensland: An Australia Too Wild

Cyclones and floods are just the meteorological expression of Queensland's tropical harshness. When it's not the weather, it's the deadly fauna of the region that keeps its inhabitants on their toes.
Perth, Australia

The Oceania Cowboys

Texas is on the other side of the world, but there is no shortage of cowboys in the country of koalas and kangaroos. Outback rodeos recreate the original version and 8 seconds lasts no less in the Australian Western.
Perth, Australia

Australia Day: In Honor of the Foundation, Mourning for Invasion

26/1 is a controversial date in Australia. While British settlers celebrate it with barbecues and lots of beer, Aborigines celebrate the fact that they haven't been completely wiped out.
Red Center, Australia

Australia's Broken Heart

The Red Center is home to some of Australia's must-see natural landmarks. We are impressed by the grandeur of the scenarios but also by the renewed incompatibility of its two civilizations.
Wycliffe Wells, Australia

Wycliffe Wells' Unsecret Files

Locals, UFO experts and visitors have been witnessing sightings around Wycliffe Wells for decades. Here, Roswell has never been an example and every new phenomenon is communicated to the world.
Atherton Tableland, Australia

Miles Away from Christmas (part XNUMX)

On December 25th, we explored the high, bucolic yet tropical interior of North Queensland. We ignore the whereabouts of most of the inhabitants and find the absolute absence of the Christmas season strange.
Busselton, Australia

2000 meters in Aussie Style

In 1853, Busselton was equipped with one of the longest pontoons in the world. World. When the structure collapsed, the residents decided to turn the problem around. Since 1996 they have been doing it every year. Swimming.
Melbourne, Australia

An "Asienated" Australia

Cultural capital aussie, Melbourne is also frequently voted the best quality of life city in the world. Nearly a million eastern emigrants took advantage of this immaculate welcome.
Cairns-Kuranda, Australia

Train to the Middle of the Jungle

Built out of Cairns to save miners isolated in the rainforest from starvation by flooding, the Kuranda Railway eventually became the livelihood of hundreds of alternative Aussies.
Melbourne, Australia

The Football the Australians Rule

Although played since 1841, Australian Football has only conquered part of the big island. Internationalization has never gone beyond paper, held back by competition from rugby and classical football.
Discovering Tassie, Part 2 - Hobart to Port Arthur, Australia

An Island Doomed to Crime

The prison complex at Port Arthur has always frightened the British outcasts. 90 years after its closure, a heinous crime committed there forced Tasmania to return to its darkest times.
Michaelmas Cay, Australia

Miles from Christmas (Part XNUMX)

In Australia, we live the most uncharacteristic of the 24th of December. We set sail for the Coral Sea and disembark on an idyllic islet that we share with orange-billed terns and other birds.
Discovering tassie, Part 4 - Devonport to Strahan, Australia

Through the Tasmanian Wild West

If the almost antipode tazzie is already a australian world apart, what about its inhospitable western region. Between Devonport and Strahan, dense forests, elusive rivers and a rugged coastline beaten by an almost Antarctic Indian ocean generate enigma and respect.
Residents walk along the trail that runs through plantations above the UP4
City
Gurué, Mozambique, Part 1

Through the Mozambican Lands of Tea

The Portuguese founded Gurué in the 1930th century and, from XNUMX onwards, flooded it with camellia sinensis the foothills of the Namuli Mountains. Later, they renamed it Vila Junqueiro, in honor of its main promoter. With the independence of Mozambique and the civil war, the town regressed. It continues to stand out for the lush green imposing mountains and teak landscapes.
Host Wezi points out something in the distance
Beach
Cobue; Nkwichi Lodge, Mozambique

The Hidden Mozambique of the Creaking Sands

During a tour from the bottom to the top of Lake Malawi, we find ourselves on the island of Likoma, an hour by boat from Nkwichi Lodge, the solitary base of this inland coast of Mozambique. On the Mozambican side, the lake is known as Niassa. Whatever its name, there we discover some of the most stunning and unspoilt scenery in south-east Africa.
Amboseli National Park, Mount Kilimanjaro, Normatior Hill
safari
Amboseli National Park, Kenya

A Gift from the Kilimanjaro

The first European to venture into these Masai haunts was stunned by what he found. And even today, large herds of elephants and other herbivores roam the pastures irrigated by the snow of Africa's biggest mountain.
Annapurna (circuit)
Annapurna Circuit: 5th - Ngawal a BragaNepal

Towards the Nepalese Braga

We spent another morning of glorious weather discovering Ngawal. There is a short journey towards Manang, the main town on the way to the zenith of the Annapurna circuit. We stayed for Braga (Braka). The hamlet would soon prove to be one of its most unforgettable places.
shadow vs light
Architecture & Design
Kyoto, Japan

The Kyoto Temple Reborn from the Ashes

The Golden Pavilion has been spared destruction several times throughout history, including that of US-dropped bombs, but it did not withstand the mental disturbance of Hayashi Yoken. When we admired him, he looked like never before.
Aventura
Boat Trips

For Those Becoming Internet Sick

Hop on and let yourself go on unmissable boat trips like the Philippine archipelago of Bacuit and the frozen sea of ​​the Finnish Gulf of Bothnia.
Ceremonies and Festivities
Pentecost Island, Vanuatu

Naghol: Bungee Jumping without Modern Touches

At Pentecost, in their late teens, young people launch themselves from a tower with only lianas tied to their ankles. Bungee cords and harnesses are inappropriate fussiness from initiation to adulthood.
Dusk in Itzamna Park, Izamal, Mexico
Cities
Izamal, Mexico

The Holy, Yellow and Beautiful Mexican City

Until the arrival of the Spanish conquerors, Izamal was a center of worship for the supreme Mayan god Itzamná and Kinich Kakmó, the one of the sun. Gradually, the invaders razed the various pyramids of the natives. In its place, they built a large Franciscan convent and a prolific colonial houses, with the same solar tone in which the now Catholic city shines.
Beverage Machines, Japan
Lunch time
Japan

The Beverage Machines Empire

There are more than 5 million ultra-tech light boxes spread across the country and many more exuberant cans and bottles of appealing drinks. The Japanese have long since stopped resisting them.
Native Americans Parade, Pow Pow, Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States
Culture
Albuquerque, USA

When the Drums Sound, the Indians Resist

With more than 500 tribes present, the pow wow "Gathering of the Nations" celebrates the sacred remnants of Native American cultures. But it also reveals the damage inflicted by colonizing civilization.
Spectator, Melbourne Cricket Ground-Rules footbal, Melbourne, Australia
Sport
Melbourne, Australia

The Football the Australians Rule

Although played since 1841, Australian Football has only conquered part of the big island. Internationalization has never gone beyond paper, held back by competition from rugby and classical football.
Fruit sellers, Swarm, Mozambique
Traveling
Enxame Mozambique

Mozambican Fashion Service Area

It is repeated at almost all stops in towns of Mozambique worthy of appearing on maps. The machimbombo (bus) stops and is surrounded by a crowd of eager "businessmen". The products offered can be universal such as water or biscuits or typical of the area. In this region, a few kilometers from Nampula, fruit sales suceeded, in each and every case, quite intense.
António do Remanso, Quilombola Marimbus Community, Lençóis, Chapada Diamantina
Ethnic
Sheets of Bahia, Brazil

The Swampy Freedom of Quilombo do Remanso

Runaway slaves have survived for centuries around a wetland in Chapada Diamantina. Today, the quilombo of Remanso is a symbol of their union and resistance, but also of the exclusion to which they were voted.
View of Fa Island, Tonga, Last Polynesian Monarchy
Got2Globe Photo Portfolio
Got2Globe Portfolio

Exotic Signs of Life

Maui, Hawaii, Polynesia,
History
Maui, Hawaii

Maui: The Divine Hawaii That Succumbed to Fire

Maui is a former chief and hero of Hawaiian religious and traditional imagery. In the mythology of this archipelago, the demigod lassos the sun, raises the sky and performs a series of other feats on behalf of humans. Its namesake island, which the natives believe they created in the North Pacific, is itself prodigious.
Cargo Cabo Santa Maria, Boa Vista Island, Cape Verde, Sal, Evoking the Sahara
Islands
Boa Vista Island, Cape Verde

Boa Vista Island: Atlantic waves, Dunas do Sara

Boa Vista is not only the Cape Verdean island closest to the African coast and its vast desert. After a few hours of discovery, it convinces us that it is a piece of the Sahara adrift in the North Atlantic.
Geothermal, Iceland Heat, Ice Land, Geothermal, Blue Lagoon
Winter White
Iceland

The Geothermal Coziness of the Ice Island

Most visitors value Iceland's volcanic scenery for its beauty. Icelanders also draw from them heat and energy crucial to the life they lead to the Arctic gates.
José Saramago in Lanzarote, Canary Islands, Spain, Glorieta de Saramago
Literature
Lanzarote, Canary Islands, Spain

José Saramago's Basalt Raft

In 1993, frustrated by the Portuguese government's disregard for his work “The Gospel According to Jesus Christ”, Saramago moved with his wife Pilar del Río to Lanzarote. Back on this somewhat extraterrestrial Canary Island, we visited his home. And the refuge from the portuguese censorship that haunted the writer.
Manatee Creek, Florida, United States of America
Nature
Florida Keys, USA

The Caribbean Stepping Stone of the USA

Os United States continental islands seem to close to the south in its capricious peninsula of Florida. Don't stop there. More than a hundred islands of coral, sand and mangroves form an eccentric tropical expanse that has long seduced American vacationers.
Mother Armenia Statue, Yerevan, Armenia
Autumn
Yerevan, Armenia

A Capital between East and West

Heiress of the Soviet civilization, aligned with the great Russia, Armenia allows itself to be seduced by the most democratic and sophisticated ways of Western Europe. In recent times, the two worlds have collided in the streets of your capital. From popular and political dispute, Yerevan will dictate the new course of the nation.
Flam Railway composition below a waterfall, Norway.
Natural Parks
Nesbyen to Flam, Norway

Flam Railway: Sublime Norway from the First to the Last Station

By road and aboard the Flam Railway, on one of the steepest railway routes in the world, we reach Flam and the entrance to the Sognefjord, the largest, deepest and most revered of the Scandinavian fjords. From the starting point to the last station, this monumental Norway that we have unveiled is confirmed.
São Miguel Island, Dazzling Colors by Nature
UNESCO World Heritage
São Miguel, Azores

São Miguel Island: Stunning Azores, By Nature

An immaculate biosphere that the Earth's entrails mold and soften is displayed, in São Miguel, in a panoramic format. São Miguel is the largest of the Portuguese islands. And it is a work of art of Nature and Man in the middle of the North Atlantic planted.
Characters
Look-alikes, Actors and Extras

Make-believe stars

They are the protagonists of events or are street entrepreneurs. They embody unavoidable characters, represent social classes or epochs. Even miles from Hollywood, without them, the world would be more dull.
Unusual bathing
Beaches

south of Belize

The Strange Life in the Black Caribbean Sun

On the way to Guatemala, we see how the proscribed existence of the Garifuna people, descendants of African slaves and Arawak Indians, contrasts with that of several much more airy bathing areas.

Jerusalem God, Israel, Golden City
Religion
Jerusalem, Israel

Closer to God

Three thousand years of history as mystical as it is troubled come to life in Jerusalem. Worshiped by Christians, Jews and Muslims, this city radiates controversy but attracts believers from all over the world.
Chepe Express, Chihuahua Al Pacifico Railway
On Rails
Creel to Los Mochis, Mexico

The Barrancas del Cobre & the CHEPE Iron Horse

The Sierra Madre Occidental's relief turned the dream into a construction nightmare that lasted six decades. In 1961, at last, the prodigious Chihuahua al Pacifico Railroad was opened. Its 643km cross some of the most dramatic scenery in Mexico.
Merida cable car, Renovation, Venezuela, altitude sickness, mountain prevent to treat, travel
Society
Mérida, Venezuela

The Vertiginous Renovation of the World's Highest Cable Car

Underway from 2010, the rebuilding of the Mérida cable car was carried out in the Sierra Nevada by intrepid workers who suffered firsthand the magnitude of the work.
Young twin women, weavers
Daily life

Margilan, Uzbequistan

A Tour of Uzbekistan's Handicraft Fabrics

Located in the far east of Uzbekistan, in the Fergana Valley, Margilan was one of the essential stops on the Silk Road. Since the 10th century, the silk products produced there have made it stand out on maps; today, haute couture brands compete for its fabrics. More than just a prodigious center of artisanal creation, Margilan values ​​and cherishes an ancient Uzbek way of life.
Masai Mara Reservation, Masai Land Travel, Kenya, Masai Convivial
Wildlife
Masai Mara, Kenya

A Journey Through the Masai Lands

The Mara savannah became famous for the confrontation between millions of herbivores and their predators. But, in a reckless communion with wildlife, it is the Masai humans who stand out there.
Passengers, scenic flights-Southern Alps, New Zealand
Scenic Flights
Aoraki / Mount Cook, New Zealand

The Aeronautical Conquest of the Southern Alps

In 1955, pilot Harry Wigley created a system for taking off and landing on asphalt or snow. Since then, his company has unveiled, from the air, some of the greatest scenery in Oceania.