February 2012

The Museum of Old and New Art in Hobart as seen from the ferry.

I got a rental car to drive out to MONA, the very strange Museum of Old and New Art about 20 minutes up the River Derwent, but then the concierge at my hotel said there wasn’t much parking available at the museum and that, for $15, you could take the ferry there, so what the hell; I took the ferry.

While I was waiting for the boat to arrive, I went into a shop along the wharf and bought a polar fleece jacket just to keep me warm on the short trip over the water. I also thought about getting a wool hat but didn’t. I guess the one thing that has surprised me the most about Hobart and Tasmania is how damn cold it’s been. I mean, this is Australia and it’s summer down here but it feels more like Seattle in the fall. I have to keep reminding myself that the major meteorological influence down here is the Southern Ocean and that Hobart was the departure point for Antarctic explorers like Douglas Mawson and Ernest Shackleton.

When I told an Australian friend of mine, who lives in New York, that I was going to Hobart, he said, “Oh, are you going to the death and sex museum?” I had no idea what he was talking about. So he told me about MONA, Australia’s largest and certainly most bizarre private museum whose owner, David Walsh, likes to call it “a subversive adult Disneyland.”

The reason my friend called it the “death and sex museum” is because those are the artistic subjects David Walsh is most interested in. In the introduction to a book about the museum, Walsh wrote: “My name is David Walsh and I’m an arseholic. I originally wrote: ‘My name is David Walsh and I’m an artoholic.’ I thought it was pretty clever but it turns out I was plagiarizing the title of a book by Charles Saatchi, the controversial English collector and dealer. So I changed the first sentence to something completely different and ploughed on…You should know that the most important forces behind me and this museum stem from my dark side.”

Well, that’s just coming right out with it, isn’t it?

In 1995, Walsh purchased the land where the museum is located and installed a Museum of Antiquities. He likes to say that nobody came, so he decided to expand. He met a Melbourne architect, Nonda Katsalidis, and asked him to design a large building for his art that would allow it to be discovered rather than shown off, so that the connection (or not) with the viewer is built from personal experience rather than something imposed.

So how does one do that? By basically removing a mountain of sandstone and building down into the ground, instead of above it, and then encouraging people to sort of wander about as if in a maze. In other words, wander aimlessly and see what floats your boat. Or not.

So who is this David Walsh? According to Wikipedia, he’s a “Tasmanian millionaire, entrepreneur, and owner of a large private art collection.” According to my Australian friend in New York, he’s an autodidact who has made a fortune coming up with a gambling system to beat the house odds. Supposedly he made so much money gambling that certain casinos “bought” his system and then forbid him from using it.

Anyway, he took $75 million of that money to build MONA which opened a little over a year ago. And people are flocking to it. One other thing I might mention: My New York friend told me that when I visited MONA I should be sure and arrive before 2pm. I asked him why. He said, “That’s when the poop installation takes a shit.”

Wouldn’t want to miss that, would we.

Fish Frenzy on the Elizabeth Street Pier. Photo by David Lansing.

I was supposed to have dinner last night at Smolt, a swanky Hobart restaurant in equally swanky Salamanca Square. It’s small plates with a Spanish-Italian influence—housemade pickles, jamon Serrano, potato gnocchi with wild mushrooms—that sort of thing. Which all sounds swell. My only problems with it is that, one, I didn’t feel like dressing up and going someplace hip, and, two, it’s a joint venture with one of Tasmania’s biggest salmon farmers, Tassal. So they’re also pushing Tassal salmon ceviche and Tassal salmon and prosciutto pizza and roasted Tassal salmon with braised fennel.

Have I told you how much I hate farmed salmon? Well, I do.

So instead of going to Smolt, I walked along the wharf until I came to a fish ‘n’ chips joint called Fish Frenzy. I liked this place a lot. It was huge and not at all like the normal fish ‘n’ chip place you’d find in the U.K. that is all cramped and dirty and smells like old grease. Fish Frenzy is clean and more like an upscale cafeteria. What you do is stand in line with a dozen or more other diners and order up your fish—flake, trevally, blue-eye, or flathead, tell them how you want it battered (beer batter, tempura batter, or bread crumbs), and then go find a table. Five or ten minutes later, a young kid will run the food over to you.

I had the Fish Frenzy itself which was two pieces each of beer battered fish, scallops, calamari, and a big cone of perfectly fried chips. Lovely. Much better than farmed salmon, even if there were no housemade pickles to go with it.

The old brick walls and wooden beams in my room were once part of the IXL Jam factory.

We’re motoring around the Huon Valley south of Hobart, Sally and I, passing by roadside stalls selling cherries and peaches and raspberries and apples. Lots and lots of fruit. Sally, who runs a food and wine tour company called Herbaceous Tours, tells me that the acres of fruit trees and berry farms we are passing through are nothing compared to what they used to be around here.

“Did you know that the hotel you’re staying at, the Henry Jones, used to be a jam factory?” she asks.

I did not.

“For a hundred years,” she says. “That’s the Henry Jones of the Henry Jones Hotel. A jam maker. IXL Jam.” Sally pronounces it as “I-x-cell” and says it was the personal motto of Mr. Henry Jones—“I excel at everything I do.” At one point in the 50s and 60s, just about every farmer in and around the Huon Valley was growing fruit of one kind or another for IXL Jam, Sally says. Then in the 70s an Australian businessman, John Dorman Elliott, bought the Hobart jam factory and closed it down. “Thousands and thousands of acres of fruit trees were cut down overnight,” Sally says. “Farmers couldn’t give away their fruit.”

Gleefully, Sally tells me that Mr. Elliott got his comeuppance. “A few years back he was found guilty of illegal trading and went bankrupt. I hear he’s having a hard time of it these days. Just as well.”

Hearing this story makes me think back to a conversation I had yesterday with Christine Scott, the art curator at the Henry Jones. We were walking around looking at the art work and I commented on how beautiful I thought the exposed brick and stone walls were. She said, “I hear that when they first started to rehab the building, jam was oozing out of the mortar in the bricks.”

I thought it was just some weird Tassie colloquialism for moisture since the building is on Macquarie Wharf and flush-up against Sullivans Cove. But, no. When Christine said the walls oozed jam, that’s exactly what she meant. (From a historical document at the hotel: “In the boiling room there are 17 large copper boilers in which the jam is made—Messrs H. Jones & Co. use no fewer than 2,000,000 tins each season, which are all made on the premises. The IXL Jam people emply from 150-350 hands, according to the season of the year…”)

When I got back to my room later in the day, I sat on my bed and took a deep breath. Was that raspberries I smelled or was my imagination just being particularly active?

The medallions of wallaby at Henry's in the Henry Jones Art Hotel. Photos by David Lansing.

As I was walking through the hotel lobby Saturday afternoon, the concierge called me over. He had an envelope with my name on it, a note from Chef Andre. It said: “Ross’s wallaby has arrived. Will prepare it for your dinner tonight in Henry’s.”

Well, I’d asked for this but I have to say that now it was coming to fruition, I had mixed emotions. On the one hand, I’m always excited about trying things I’ve never had before–like wallaby. On the other hand, I had agreed to eat–well, wallaby. Something I’d experienced so far as either an animal that looked like a miniature kangaroo or else as a flattened road-kill. Neither image made me particularly hungry. Still, I’d asked Ross to procure a wallaby for me and he had and now Chef Andre was going to cook it.

I have to say that the menu at Henry’s rather bucked me up for what I was about to do. It was broken down into “Classics,” on the left-hand side, and “Evolution” on the right. The Classics were all the normal, boring dishes offered at most nice restaurants—salmon, filet mignon, oysters.

Wallaby tartare. And a good glass of Tasmanian Pinot.

Evolution, on the other hand, was something a bit more exciting: Bruny Island goat, Hudson Valley wild rabbit, Wessex Saddleback pork, licorice braised leg of lamb, duck legs.

When my waitress came over she said, “Are you the gentleman that brought in the wallaby?” I told her I hadn’t exactly brought it in, but, yes, the wallaby was for me. Well, she said, Chef Andre was going to prepare it two different ways: first as an appetizer of wallaby tartare, and then as an entrée of wallaby loin. She told me the portions would be small and the Chef suggested I order a couple of other entrees to get a feel for the rest of the menu.

I figured if I was going to have wallaby tartare, I might as well just go for the whole wild thing menu, so I also ordered the Bruny Island goat (thinking maybe that was one of Ross’ animals as well), as well as the Hudson Valley rabbit. So—wallaby, goat, wallaby, rabbit.

So, you want to know, what was the wallaby like? It was wonderful. The raw meat was blended with chives, capers, smoked paprika and a little local olive oil. It was rich but not the least unctuous (wallaby has very low fat) and much more flavorful than beef tartare. The wallaby loin, rare-cooked medallions the size of half dollars, were as tender as fillet mignon but more flavorful—kind of nutty, actually. They were served on a bed of Jerusalem artichoke puree and lovely fava beans. The goat reminded me a bit of lamb—definitely a rich, full flavor with a bit of crunch to it. And the rolled loin of rabbit almost tasted like an extremely mild, large-flaked tuna. I mean, you couldn’t honestly call it gamey but it definitely wasn’t to be confused with chicken. All in all, great Tasmanian tucker.

Busy Sullivans Cove in Hobart with The Henry Jones Art Hotel in the middle.

The Orion pulled in to Macquarie Wharf in Hobart while we were having our breakfast; we disembarked around nine this morning. I had to walk all of about a hundred yards to the Henry Jones Art Hotel where I’m staying for a couple of days. It just so happened that as I was checking in, the executive chef, Andre Kropp, came out of the hotel restaurant, Henry’s. I introduced myself and asked if, by any chance, Ross O’Meara had sent over the wallaby he’d promised me. Andre said this was the first he’d heard of it. Which was kind of disappointing. I’d really been hoping to sample a little wallaby before I left Tasmania.

Since my room wasn’t ready, I decided to just stroll sort of aimlessly around the harbor and downtown area. I got a map from the concierge and decided on a route that took me past some beautiful old wooden ships docked along the piers in Sullivans Cove and then up Murray Street, which is lined with historical old sandstone buildings that glowed the color of honey in the morning light. Half way up the hilly street I passed a small vitamin store called Natures Works and went in to see if they had any mutton bird oil. There was a very nice young man working in the store. I told him about visiting Flinders Island, where millions of mutton birds migrate each year to hatch their eggs, and how I’d been told that the aborigine population still made mutton bird oil and I was anxious to try some. Naturally he thought I was a little crazy.

“A guy came in here about a year ago and offered to give me the Hobart distributorship for mutton bird oil but I didn’t take any,” he told me. “The truth is, you’re the only person who’s ever asked for it.”

I asked him if he could think of any other shop in Hobart that might have some and he shook his head. “I think it would be almost impossible to find.”

So I thanked him for his time and headed back up Murray Street. I hadn’t gotten very far before I heard the guy from the store yelling at me and running up the street. “After you left, I realized that I still had a bottle of mutton bird oil in my samples cabinet,” he said. “You’re welcome to it if you want it.”

I went back to the store and offered to buy it but the guy refused my money. “I’d just throw it away if you didn’t take it,” he said.

So now I had my mutton bird oil. Now if I could just find some wallaby.