Tasmania

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Searching for mutton bird oil

Friday, February 3, 2012 in Tasmania | 3 comments

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.

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Don’t mention the Titanic

Thursday, February 2, 2012 in Tasmania

The captain and DL on the bridge of the Orion.

We are on the final leg of our cruise. Tomorrow morning when we wake up, we’ll be in Hobart where we’ll disembark and I, for one, will spend another week seeing a bit more of Tasmania. So this afternoon I went up to the bridge to say hello to the captain, Andrey Domanin. He wasn’t the most gregarious guy in the world. Maybe because he was miffed I’d turned down an offer to eat with him in favor of dining with the whisky maker, Bill Lark, and the Bruny Island pig farmer, Ross O’Meara. Or maybe ship captains are just naturally taciturn.  I don’t know. As I said, this is only the second cruise I’ve ever been on and the first where I’ve actually met the captain.

Just making small talk, I asked Captain Domanin where he was from (his English accent is very thick) and he told me the Ukraine. Which I found interesting. He didn’t really expand on that (as I said, he doesn’t talk much) so, just to keep things lively, I said, “Well, if you were a Ukrainian sea captain fifty years ago, what sort of a ship do you think you’d be on? A submarine?”

He didn’t like that question. “What are you talking about?” he said.

“I’m just saying that if it was 1961 instead of 2011, I don’t think you’d be the captain of a cruise ship sailing around Tasmania, would you?”

Well, that set him off. Why not? he said. Even in 1961 Russians captained all kinds of ships. Why would it have been so unlikely for him to captain a cruise ship in Tasmania?

Seeing that I’d sort of stuck my foot in my mouth (although I still can’t imagine that a Ukrainian would have been in charge of a cruise ship in Australia fifty years ago), I decided to change the subject. I told him that I’d had a wonderful time at sea and it gave me a greater appreciation for how grand it must have been back in the Golden Age of steamship travel when a ship like the Titanic cruised across the Atlantic and it was such a grand event.

Captain Domanin fixed me with his steely blue eyes and in a hushed voice said, “It is very bad luck to mention the Titanic when you are at sea.”

Oh. Okay. My bad.

With two big strikes again me, I decided to cut my losses. I shook his hand and told him I really had to be going. He nodded without smiling. Just one last thing and then I’ll get out of your hair, I told him. “Would you mind having your picture taken with me?”

“You want to take my photo?”

“If you don’t mind.”

He sighed, I handed the camera to one of the other officers, and he quickly clicked off six or seven photos. This one was the last one. And the only one in which Captain Domanin smiled. I think because I had just said, “I think we’re done here.”

And we were.

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A Filipino version of La Bamba

Wednesday, February 1, 2012 in Tasmania

Lobke and the wait staff singing La Bamba. It was painful.

Last night was the Orion crew show. Which was sort of like an early American Idol tryout. Without any talent. It’s hard to say what was more painful, watching the male housekeeping crew put on coconut bras and line dance or listening to the ship’s bosun (short for boatswain; the deck crew foreman) sing not just one but two Tom Jones numbers (who knew Filipinos were so crazy for Tom Jones?).

Actually, no. Listening to bad Tom Jones (is there good Tom Jones?) was not the low-point of the evening. That would have to be when my pal Lobke Verburg, the tall, stately South African maitre d’, came out holding a Corona and wearing a sombrero to join several of the wait staff in singing La Bamba.

Ay-yi-yi.

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No penguins for Mick

Tuesday, January 31, 2012 in Tasmania

Mick and Corina Fogg. Photo by David Lansing.

Orion’s expedition team leader, Mick Fogg, sat down at lunch with me today. He wanted to apologize for sending me on the Oyster Lovers Tour in Cole Bay when there were no oysters. Not a problem, I told him. There was nothing anyone could do about it. It was just the weather. Besides, I said, I got my oyster.

“So I heard,” said Mick, laughing.

He’s a great guy, Mick. Way over-qualified to be doing a Tasmanian food and wine cruise. Mick has degrees in Marine Biology, Marine Chemistry, Physical Chemistry and Geographic Information. He also ran James Cook University’s field research station at Orpheus Island for five years. So taking guests around Wineglass Bay or to various Tasmanian wineries isn’t exactly the most challenging thing in the world for him. Still, he’s been a good sport about it and I’ve certainly enjoyed his company. I asked Mick what was his favorite Orion expedition cruise (he’s been doing this for five years) and he said going down to the sub-Antartic islands like Macquarie, a World Heritage site and home to 850,000 royal penguins, 150,000 breeding pairs of king penguins as well as rock hopper penguins, gentoo penguins and elephant seals. “You stick out a wide-angle camera in front of the penguins and they just fill up the entire viewfinder,” he said. “It’s the most amazing thing you’ll ever see.”

I think I need to come back to Tasmania some time for that cruise.

Mick’s gorgeous wife, Corina, is also on the ship. She helps out organizing the expeditions and does a hundred other tasks as well. Like everyone on board, she’s happy to help out wherever she is needed. Corina is also very pregnant (due mid-March). After we dock in Hobart, the Orion picks up a new load of passengers and heads off for an 18-day expedition to Antarctica. Mick and Corina won’t be on that voyage. They’re getting off with us in Hobart and flying home to prepare for the birth of their first child. And, penguins or no penguins, they’re both very excited about spending a little time at home and preparing for Corina’s upcoming birth. As well they should be.

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Grinding rogues into honest men

Monday, January 30, 2012 in Tasmania | 1 comment

The prison at Port Arthur as seen from sea. Photo by David Lansing.

It was cold and gloomy when we hopped aboard the Zodiacs taking us from the ship to Port Arthur. Appropriate weather for our visit to Tasmania’s infamous convict prison. This is the way arriving prisoners would have seen it. From the water. If you got sent here, you were in for it, mate. The system used here was concocted by a British sadist named Jeremy Bentham who described is as “a machine for grinding rogues into honest men.”

I don’t know how many honest men emerged from the cramped, dank quarters of the prison. Not many, I reckon. The cogs of Bentham’s machine included discipline and punishment for the slightest offense. The cat-o’-nine-tails was a popular form of punishment but the biggest form of torture was psychological torture. The coffin-sized cells in an area called the Separate Prison were for “prisoners of bad character” who had hoods placed over their heads and were forbidden from talking. They were locked into these cells for 23 hours each day with just one hour a day allowed for exercise, alone, in a high-walled yard. Can you imagine? No wonder so many of the prisoners ended up going crazy. So much for reforming criminals into “honest men.”

I walked around the ruins of the prison and even sat in one of the brick-walled cells looking out at the harbor where whisps of low-lying clouds, like smoke, floated over the dark waters, trying to imagine what must have gone through the heads of the men who stared out at this same scene a hundred and fifty years ago. How hopeless you would feel.

After touring the prison, we were given the option of taking a boat to the nearby Isle of the Dead where some 1100 of the convicts (most of whom died from respiratory disease in this cold and dank spot) were buried, but I declined. It was just too sad.

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