Hobart, Tasmania - Feb 18

Hobart, Tasmania - Feb 18

Hobart is quite a large city – about 500,000 people and very spread out. We were already well up the channel to the port when we woke up and there were lights and houses all along the shore all the way. We had a morning tour to the Bonorong wildlife sanctuary so we were dressed and out of the cabin in pretty good time compared to our usual lazing around. The wildlife park was small, but nicely arranged with an easy circular pathway all the way through it. They had containers of food throughout the park so you could feed the kangaroos so that was the big draw. The kangaroos aren't dumb... they stand right in the middle of the path so you'll feed them but that blocks up the pathway for anyone behind and makes it impossible to get around. We finally got around the big groups of people at the beginning of the path and enjoyed seeing the other animals, many of them in nice fenced areas without cages so the photo ops would have been good except it was quite sunny and hot so most of them were hiding in their houses or deep in the bushes. I did really get a kick out of watching some of the kangaroos boxing in a rather distant enclosure – there was too much in the way to get any pics, but I loved watching them – either they were playing or perhaps it's mating time. After the wildlife park we went to the town of Richmond – one of the oldest towns in Australia. It was one of the original penal colonies. It had a lot of great old buildings but most are now tourist shops and restaurants so after walking around for a few minutes we decided to get coffee and an éclair at a cute bakery and then it was back to the ship via a different route. Tasmania is in the midst of a bad drought and it looked much like Colorado during our drought years; dry and brown. The fire danger was extreme and the whole area is under a complete fire ban. We saw several large burn areas from earlier this year. We sailed away at 4:00 so it was light enough to see everything as we sailed out the channel and into the sea on our way to Adelaide.